Solar Chargers

Green is in. And solar energy has always been green. It used to be expensive and thus not very popular. And we did not have too many things to power with solar. They were not portable enough or consumed too much energy.

Today I can buy a small garden lamp for $2 retail. This is a small lantern, with white LED inside. It also contains a small rechargeable battery and a solar cell. It charges during a day and stays lit during a night. $2 retail means it has to cost virtually nothing to manufacture. Are solar cells that cheap now? Yes and no the answer is, it all depends, especially on the expected efficiency. But if you are fine with just an average, something you would call a value solar cell - it is cheap. There are many technologies promising to make solar cells even cheaper. Like ink jet printing them. Or using polymers instead of silicon. We have plenty of surface. Why an LCD cover in a laptop could not be covered with solar cells? Or my jacket... it should be constantly recharging my cellphone... why not? Seems we are not that far off this vision...

Recently I noticed many products based on solar cells... Saturn for example sells little two - way radios with solar built in. Great idea. Gear like that is usually used outdoors, when hiking or sailing or kayaking we want to stay in touch with the rest of the group. Sometimes we do not have electrical outlet for several days and having solar keeping the gear running is great. Especially as it does not really add to the final price. If a solar garden lantern is $2 retail, than solar walkie - talkie cannot be more than a dollar more expensive compared to non - solar one. Say $42 instead of $41. Do you care? Which one would you buy?

I did some tests recently, just to estimate how good or bad the consumer / gadget solar products are. I started on eBay purchasing a pure solar panel. Something like 5-by-8 inch board you can strap to your backpack. Consists of nothing but solar cells and has an USB port. Yes... USB, or as I used to call it Universal Supply Bus rules! What a great idea... a solar panel with USB socket, so I can directly plug in any device (iPod, Blackberry...) and see if it charges. Unfortunately it does not. I soon discovered I need some middleware between the solar panel and the device to be charged. A middleware, to medate :). Solar panels output voltage varies depending on the amount of light that shines on it. And it looks like most of the current gadgets expect fairly constatn charging voltage on their inputs. That is why a stabilizer / buffer between is needed.

And I found a good one. The Solio H1000 hybrid charger looked like a good fit. Hybrid means it has solar cells of its own and also an internal rechargeable battery. So you just hang it out to catch some sunshine and it recharges itself. Later you can use it as a power source to charge almost any gadget. I found my pure vanilla solar panel with USB output can be attached to the Solio to boost its recharging efficiency. The Solio has - what is common among hybrid solar chargers - the ability to be charged from wall socket (or any power source). It even comes with an USB cable, that I plugged to the panel, and this way my Solio was recharging with twice the speed (or more) as originally. Once the Solio is charged (charge status can be checked by pressing a button), you connect it to just about any device and the charge flows.

The Solio works really well, but unfortunately they wanted to be a little too smart designing the cables. They introduced a system of power tips, to match almost any device. Too complicated. They should just have a standard USB port. Today virtually all gadgets come with USB charging cables, with iPods / iPhones leading the pack. Then they should have a mini - USB input for charge boosting. As any USB "client" device. Today they offer you a proprietary cable for that. And they should attach a short USB - to - mini-USB cable. To be used either to boost - charge the Solio or to charge a mini-USB device. Simple as that. But cable optimizations aside, the Solio just works. Today I used it to recharge my Nokia N800. Worked as advertised.