Solar Battery Charger's

[dddave]

A good friend who lives close to Cebu, the Philippines is without electricity because of the local devastation caused by typhoon Odette.  I watched some YT videos of the area and practically every utility pole is snapped in half and wires in the streets.  It looks like it could be a month or more before service can be restored.

 

She wants to buy a solar battery charger for her phone and battery powered fan but doesn't know what to look for.  Scalpers are charging 4 times the normal price and it's likely a lot of what they are selling is junk.

Does anybody know what to look for in a solar battery charging set-up?   How much should a decent but not high-end unit cost?

[MJCM]

Maybe something like this helps?? It will be good for the phone but not for the fan!

 

https://www.lazada.co.th/products/eloop-solar-power-bank-90000-i2855582233-s10413817645.html

 

 

[Crossy]

Nasty!! I hope she's OK.

 

Any solar charger is only as good as its panel.

 

My A30s has a 4,000mAh battery, at 3.7V that's about 15Wh so a full charge will need, say 20Wh accounting for losses.

 

Let's say her fan is about the same.

 

So we are looking at 40Wh per day.

 

A 15-20W panel would be the minimum I'd be looking at. Such a panel would be around 35 x 45 cm (about 12 x 18 inches). If it has built in batteries too then they should be around 10,000mAh (I'm assuming 3.7V Li-ion here).

 

I strongly suspect that anything of this magnitude is going to attract a major premium even if available right now. ???? 

[ChrisP24]

I've used this exact model pictured below (GoalZero Nomad 7 solar panel with GoalZero Guide 10 power bank) to keep a cell phone charged on multi-day backpacking trips, and the combination works great.  The trick is to use good quality rechargeable batteries like Eneloop (either 4 AAs or 4 AAAs) in the power bank, use the solar panel to fully charge the batteries in the power bank before charging the cell phone, and then use both the fully-charged power pack and the solar panel in tandem to dump power into the cell phone.   For me this approach fully charged an i-phone within approx.  three hours without fully depleting the power bank.  These run around $120-$150 USD.    The power bank includes a USB outlet that will charge pretty much any cell phone plus also tablets and perhaps a laptop although I've never tried it with a laptop.

 

 

If you can't find this model, in general I would recommend using a solar panel / power bank combo instead of just a solar panel by itself.  You can charge a phone much faster that way, and then keep charging the power bank so that you have it fully charged to potentially re-charge a phone overnight without having to wait for sunlight again. 

 

I would stay away from the solar panels that are built into cell phone covers as they are just too small with too low of a wattage to do very much.

 

For scale, this model of the GoalZero solar panel is about the size of an open college textbook, but of course much thinner.  

 

 

[Crossy]

The secret to disaster mitigation is preparation (hindsight is always 20-20 of course).

 

It's likely too late to sort anything decent now, but typhoons aren't exactly rare in the Philippines, so get something once this particular disaster is over and be ready for the next one. 

[BritManToo]

27 minutes ago, Crossy said:

The secret to disaster mitigation is preparation (hindsight is always 20-20 of course).

 

It's likely too late to sort anything decent now, but typhoons aren't exactly rare in the Philippines, so get something once this particular disaster is over and be ready for the next one. 

Most of the people had their homes and belongings blown away.

If they had prepared in advance it would all be gone now.

 

Unless they built a concrete bunker to store their prepper gear inside.

[Crossy]

3 minutes ago, BritManToo said:

Unless they built a concrete bunker to store their prepper gear inside.

 

Or even an ammo box bolted to the slab. Assuming of course there's a slab to bolt to.

 

[BritManToo]

1 minute ago, Crossy said:

Or even an ammo box bolted to the slab. Assuming of course there's a slab to bolt to.

Sealed plastic dustbin buried in the garden maybe.

They'd still need to find a shovel after the typhoon passed.

[ChrisP24]

Not to turn this into a prepping thread but that's a secondary reason that I bought the solar charger.  It's a portable way to charge a cell phone or other small device while traveling or during an unexpected power outage.  I've tried using it with the sunlight coming through an airplane window just to see if it works, and it does.   

 

In the real world, during the time immediately after a disaster like a typhoon, people initially use their cars or motorbikes (if they had the foresight to get one with a charging outlet, and then took the precaution of topping off the fuel tank before the typhoon arrived) to charge their phones.  Within a couple of days as the area starts to recover, the neighborhood typically bands together and sets up charging stations to help each other.   By now OP's friend ought to be well past the stage where she really needs a solar charger for the cell phone.  Not sure about the fan but she'll pay top peso for a solution on that right now, and there'll be lots of cheap junk that doesn't work being sold right now.   I'm with Crossy in that the time to prepare for this one is long past.  For the next one, if her concerns are being able to run a fan and charging station, maybe she will want to have in place a practiced/validated way to run them using a car or motorbike as the generator.  Some people would want to add running a fridge to that capability.