A $20 Solar Charger Runs All My Gadgets

Great post! I love hearing about how people do their eco thing. More!

I had no idea this existed- thanks!

Armand

Wait so this product alone won't power my notebook?

I looked around the site, but I couldn't find an option for getting a panel to charge my laptop. I've been looking for a solar panel to charge my laptop for a while, preferably one that I can easily get from Australia (I live in Perth) - any ideas?

What annoys me is that solar technology has greatly improved, yet is very rarely ever incorporated into the design of products to allow them to recharge on their own. I realize that many products are simply too small for appreciable charge to be attained, but there are many electronic things out there that do have enough space, and yet they aren't required to include them in the design.

How can you add to it to charge a laptop? I think these are great for small devices. I'd be really interested in finding out how to charge a laptop... More information please!!

Excellent. I have looked at these in the past but I have only seen ones for cars and rechargeable batteries. This one being able to be used by alot of objects, including phones is very cool. I will for sure be getting one.

I hate to cut this down but a lot more energy went into producing this than it will ever produce itself. I think people are too easily tricked into thinking they are doing something good for the enviroment. Treehuggers are getting taken for a ride more often then not in my opinion.

my solar installer told me that the PV solar panels on my roof will take 3 years in san francisco sun to generate all the electricity that went into making them... seems like you'd really have to put this thing into some heavy-duty service in order to ever pay back all of the electricity that went into it...

It is probably accurate to assume that more energy went into producing this panel that it will ever return, but aside from just energy numbers, look at the positive aspects:
- you're not using a wall charger, which continuously wastes energy whether you are charging or not
- you're not piping in electricy from a plant 100 miles away, also losing massive amounts of energy in the process
- you can use it for many devices, can't really say that about the dozen or so wall chargers kicking around in my desk.
- and most importantly, the undeniable "cool" factor: People like the idea of guilt-free energy and if you pull this out in the right crowd of people, you may be able to influence just one person into REALLY thinking about renewable energy and its possibilities. That is the greatest impact in my oppinion.

Actually, I don't think things are so simple.

Yes there's energy going into this solar panel, but whether or not it will make more than it took to create it depends on use - just like with bigger panels. After all, if bigger panels can be energy positive (and they usually are), these can be too.

Second, the things that are replaced by this panel are worse than it. Transformers are inefficient and take energy to make too. The grid is inefficient, costly to operated and very energy intensive too. The electricity from the grid can be produced with coal in many places, etc.

Plus you are encouraging the solar industry and making a statements. I bet that just the conversations that are started because of these small panels are worth it; just making it more mainstream goes a long way, the same way that making hybrid cars mainstream took a while and was expensive at first.

Unfortunately, as already indicated, the manufacturing process for solar panels is still so inefficient that it costs more in energy and pollution to build one that it is likely to save in its lifetime. This is partly due to lack of volume and partly lack of efficient processes and technology - both will come in time of course.

So they need to be successful so the costs can eventually be reduced. In other words, until they can do lots of good in reducing greenhouse gases through less use of fossil fuels they'll actually contribute to global warming. C'est la vie.

Solution? Simple. Everyone buy one. Volume up, costs down, more investment.

Give it a break. No, it isn't zero foot print, it won't make you rich or save the world or even pay for itself..........but...... have you ever been out in the boonies, away from a plug and have your cell phone die? Or how about your camera? Forget to pack that extra pack of dry cell type batteries for you flashlight? I can see alternatives that would could well be considered a "pay back" with something like this.

Hi

Good post.. I also found this one
http://www.uxcell.com/uxcell/retail/item/showItemLayout.php?action=showItem&id=a06052600ux0010

I thin its great and can be used for hiking, camping etc.

Solar oanel manufacturers typically use their own panels to power their manufacturing plants. That removes the energy cost of manufacturing from the life cycle equation.

In the original post, what was the $50 dollar panel referred to which, when added, would power a laptop? Does anybody know yet?

i want to know the full method to prepare solar cells by screen printing. Isn't it amazing. pls Show me how to prepare commercial solar cells by screen printing

Buyer beware! I bought one of these and have not been able to get it to work. I have tried 2 universal car adapters with no success and the usb charger only worked twice and never brought my ipod up to a full charge. This was after leaving the device in the sunlight for a week.

Going to send this back and get a replacement, hopefully I just received a lemon and the replacement will work correctly.

About charging laptops via solar cells ; it seems it's quite difficult to do this at the moment, as you need a very large capacity solar cell to accomodate the high power needs of a laptop.

So whereas the solar panel pictured above is probably 3W, to charge a laptop you might need 30W. The size of the panel will therefore be pretty enormous.

Regarding cost of energy to produce the solar cell vs. energy saved, it largely depends on the life of the cell, and frequency of use.

If you use your solar charger every day for a number of years, then you're much more likely to recover the cost of manufacturing.

For anyone else who was interested in the mention of a solar charger for a laptop, take a look at this site:

http://www.siliconsolar.com/Portable-Solar-Power-System-p-10.html

I haven't tried it myself yet, but I'm certainly investigating the possibility.

A friend of mine has a solar powered web server (charges a battery for night time use).

its a step in the right direction..

Lets say you use the sun to recharge batteries. then at east your not adding thousand of batterys to the dump . then you can recharge a whole mess of items .. and if that doesn move you how about in a disater being the very few who wont sit in the dark at night ....

For all those that are interested in using solar power to power a laptop, the solar cells will need to be somewhat large. However, a company that TreeHugger has covered has come up with a pretty neat way of using folding panels: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/01/foldable_solar.php

Cheers, and best of luck living off the grid and sticking it the man.

Al

I am going to convince my boyfriend to get one. Thanks for the great idea.

It's all well and good... if you live outside Britain... never shines here... just god damn rains!

I work 10-12 hours a day a my 13" macbook, I use external hard drives once a week for around 3 hours, and I have to use a 17" laptop (85 watts I think, without having it handy) for about 4 hours a week.

What kind of panel will I need to run this operation?
My only considerations are the physical size of the panel(s) I would need, and that the output is sufficient to run the mac full time (as though the battery was missing, so not just charging, but running).

Is it realistic to run all this on solar, or is there some other clean energy I could use?

I've searched and searched, but I just can't find the stuff I need.

Any help would be great, cos I really want to get off grid as soon as possible.

PS: I live in England. It seems the sun was never invited here.

!

The operative word in this context is "run" vs. "charge."

It would make sense that a device like this could "charge" anything. But for mobile/outdoor professionals, the ability to "run" something like a laptop is what most people like me are interested in.

Can it do that?

Many of these chargers are NOT environmentally friendly at all. A lot of these actually worsen the environment Check out the following article for more information:

http://hubpages.com/hub/Solar-Powered-Battery-Chargers---The-truth-about-going-green

Ah yes, but with all the pennies you save on your energy bills with these think of all the trees you could plant. Cycles.

I recently purchased one of these and it won't even charge my cell phone, it actually drains more power for the little charging animation to run than the charger provides.

a good read !

i actually sell portable solar chargers and the one i sell work amazing! Don't be fooled and buy that crap. My solar chargers will on a full battery will fully charge your phone and top off your ipod. I went through many different manufacturers to find one the is reliable I am a costumer as well as a salesman.

^ care to share the name of your product?

When it comes to being politically correct, and solar power definitely falls into the PC arena...you always ignore the facts, and end up as hypocrites. Solar is inefficient, a net drain on energy consumption, and pumps more emissions into the atmosphere as the components are being manufactured, than it will ever save. So if you're most concerned with being cool, and impressing your fellow ignorant (lacking information) PC friends, have at it. If you want to actually make a difference, pass on solar power.

personally i don't want solar power to impress anyone, and to he!! with PC (political correctness is ruining the world faster than carbon emissions!) I want solar for convenience AND to eventually drop off the grid - this would be GREAT for hiking, camping, emergency etc. I'm sure there are a LOT of people that are going solar because of federal and state rebates as well as power company rebates and if they stay in those houses long enough, they will never have another electricity bill - so it's more for their personal agenda than global warming (my personal opinion of course!)

I am planning a trip around Asia to several different countries, such as Mongolia, China, Cambodia, India, etc. Very confusing electrical systems, and I am not that electricity-savvy. I am bringing a small laptop, an ipod touch and a digital camera that needs to be charged externally (with a regular plug).

I wonder if it is possible, or even smart, to buy solar panels in order to forgo the adapter confusion. I don't want to ruin my stuff by using the wrong voltage. Do I have to spend $200+ to get something portable that I can plug all these things into? Does that even exist?

For those saying that it takes more energy to product this than it will ever give back, I would like to point something out.

A standard AC to DC adapter which generally charges products continually consume energy, even when nothing is plugged into it. Only a SMALL FRACTION of the energy the adapter uses actually goes into charging the product, unless you always unplug it when not in use.

I've sent several e-mails concerning solar power for a cell phone model that was not listed...Why no reply?

If they produce solar chargers and solar panels they must power their manufacturing plant with energy coming from the sun too so that this could be a win-win situation to all consumers and producers, and to the earth as well. Also, their manufacturing plant won't contribute the emission of harmful gases in the atmosphere. It would be absurd if they power their manufacturing plant with coal to make solar panels and portable solar chargers then it would be useless because that burning coal has a large impact in our environment to harm and to our atmosphere/ozone layer.

This is a great product, but does it work well on cloudy days and in northern climates such as east central Wisconsin in winter?

I am trying to find a solar charger that will be more than just a cell phone charger. Most are too weak for most of my gadgets, or dont have the proper connection.
Everything I have seen only comes with cellphone chargers. I would like to be able to charge my GPS, Camera, camcorder, etc etc with it, but none seem to come with the right DC connections.
Anyone know one that does?

Wow, I had no idea you could buy those on eBay.......I wanna get one to charge my laptop, if that's possible.

I found this company EarthtechProducts.com....they have all of these chargers from solar chargers for cell phones and ipods to solar chargers for laptops....you can find them from here: http://www.earthtechproducts.com/flexible-solar-panels---portable-solar-battery-chargers.html

I have the power monkey explorer solar charger.. it's awesome and sleek. I highly recommend it.

The SolarGorilla Solar Charger is the bomb! Sleek and sexy.. I just purchased one from Earthtech Products to add to my collection (I have the power monkey already) This thing is the larger verision of the power monkey. The power monkey is really for smaller devices and the solar gorilla is more for laptops since it's more powerful.. I also bought the PowerGorilla which is a back up laptop battery that gets charged from the SolarGorilla Solar Charger. I'm so excited to get my new toys!