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Portable Solar Power For Portable Hardware?
Tjeerd writes "Because the 'green revolution' is accelerating, I felt it was time to get involved. Last week I started with buying a portable solar energy charger for my mobile phone. But soon I was thinking of also recharging my Asus Eee netbook with a portable solar energy recharger. I found things like the Portable Power Pack, Foldable Solar Chargers, and the Solar Gorilla. The Solar Gorilla looks quite interesting and might be able to recharge my netbook and fits nicely in a rucksack. But I would like some real-life feedback. If you have experience with these or other portable solar devices, what has worked for you?"
"Because the 'green revolution' is accelerating, I felt it was time to get involved."
Have another sip of cool-aid. Everybody is doing it.
Not saying that being more green is bad - just your reasons to do it.
And I'll quote the famous wise guy Kermit.
It isn't easy being green.
I have been using solar energy to 'recharge' my houseplants for years.
Smivs on the intertubes!
Solar has a lot going for it as an alternative power supply for portable items. The problem is that many of those items aren't exposed to sunlight for enough time to actually charge the reserves.
That's why I use a hand-crank as my primary source of alternative power to my portable items. Especially in the winter time when sunlight is at a minimum, good old elbow grease is always there.
You need some big ass batteries to last you through the night. Problem with this is solar panels don't provide much power, so you need some big ones to charge those big batteries fully.
I assumme a couple hours is always better then nothing, but still...
I looked at the solargorilla but could not find any information about how much energy I need to generate with this device to reach the green break even - to offset the environmental cost of making this device. Anyone knows this information?
These panels are ridiculously expensive, and produce a pitiful trickle of energy. Save your money and get a long extension cable -- or, if you absolutely need the portability, just get some extra batteries and lug them around with you.
Solar is a great idea, but it's one whose time is not yet come.
If you are running linux, the stuff in /proc/acpi/battery/*/* will probably give you the battery voltage in Volts and current draw in Amperes, and you multiply them together to get Watts. You need about twice that to operate and charge at the same time. Charging might be 60% efficient.
Bruce Perens.
I couldn't see a wattage anywhere and that makes me very wary.
If you have to leave it a whole day to get ten minutes of power then it's not much use (and expensive!)
No sig today...
I'm still waiting for the first netbook or laptop to feature solar cells in the lid, instead of the stupid logo they put there now.
Come on, it can't be that hard? And don't tell me I'm the first to think of this?
Frys.com has some affordable solutions. Pricewatch seems to have a scant selection, although very unique.
While the sentiment is admirable, please don't use 'going green' as an excuse to buy more toys; just buy the toys. Realistically, the power ranges you are talking about are in the 50-100W range for portable solar charging. In comparison, a typical 100 horsepower car is using around 75KW. (1HP=750W), so the power savings possible by simply traveling less dwarf anything possible via solar.
If you are _really_ concerned about going green, the biggest (and likely simplest) impact you can have is to never have children, especially in the developed world where per-capita energy consumption is highest.
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
Before saying "I have found a way to save the planet!" check that the cost in planetary terms of the product is worth it:
http://www.genersys-solar.com/carbon-savings/carbon_footprint_solar-panel_manufacture.asp
seems to be saying that there's a reduction of the carbon cost when compared to other power-generation mechanisms, over the expected 35 year lifespan of the home-sized solar panels.
are the small, portable solar panels you're advocating as carbon-friendly?
I wrote a feature recently where I explored if it was possible to run all of the standard office gadgets from sustainable power - it includes quite a few product reviews.
Matthew Sparkes
In my experiences dealing with photovoltaic power supply systems of all sizes, I've become convinced that solar panels are currently not a viable solution for powering mobile devices for a few reasons, mainly cost, unreliability, and inefficiency.
First of all, look at how much these things cost. the Portable Power Pack retails online for 420 pounds, or about $660. You could buy more than a dozen eeepc batteries for that much and just keep them stocked in your car or rucksack or whatever. LiIon batteries aren't terrible for the environment, and you won't even need sun to use them...
Speaking of the sun, I live in beautiful southern California, where one can definitely count on the sun 99% of the time. But most parts of the world aren't that sunny, and even if the sun is shining there's bound to be a tree/building/civilization in the way just when you need it most. You're not going to walk or drive around the city looking for a nice open space to sit in for an hour and roast while you check your email, just so you could feel good about spending $600 on a solar panel, no matter how good your intentions are.
so how do you charge your devices with a solar panel while actually "on the go"? you can try to drape it over that rucksack of yours while you're walking somewhere, but if the panel isn't facing the sun directly you won't get anywhere near the peak power output advertised. Instead, you need to find an open space and lay out your few-square-foot mat-- and then you're tied to the ground.
And what about that generous peak power they keep advertising? solar panels output their peak power when they are laid out flat, directly facing the sun, on a completely clear, sunny day. I know from personal experience with small panels that small deviations from the sun-facing angle mean big drops in power.
So alright, let's say that you bought a 30 watt panel and it's noon on a clear, sunny day, so you're getting 30 watts out of it. Please correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that EeePCs use 36 watt power adapters. How do you plan on charging and using your EeePC on less than 36 watts WHILE charging your phone and whatever else you have plugged in? all you could possibly do is increase your battery life considerably-- which might be great, but i'm not sure it justifies the costs and the effort involved.
Here's my suggestion: Save the money you were going to spend on that portable panel. Use a little to buy extra batteries for your gadgets, and put the rest in a savings account. Save up for a large, multi-kilowatt solar system for your house, which will save a lot more greenhouse gas emissions per dollar you spend than one of these portable things. Use that home solar system to charge your batteries, and you're gold... er, green.
The power brick for my laptop claims that it draws 65 Watts. The average incident solar power per square meter on Earth is 1000 Watts. If we assume a solar cell with 30% efficiency I would need 65/300 = 0.216 square meters of solar cell for my laptop. That's a square 46.5cm on a side, or around 18.3 inches on a side.
Not too bad, but not something I would carry with me unless I was severely limited in terms of power sources.
I had a Solio Classic to charge GPS logger and phone while hiking for multiple days. It worked okay, good in very sunny conditions (in northern europe) and not enough to keep up on clouded days. But it was stolen and now I have a Solar Mio 31 which works better, even in clouded conditions. It manages to keep the batteries of a mobile phone and GPS logger charged in average dutch weather, back pack mounted or behind a south facing window. As I also use it at home, I haven't touched the normal chargers in a year...
As for price or "greeness", they won't repay themselves financially or impactwise. But I see part of it as gaining experience with solar cells and it is nice to see your week long treks through nowhere in google earth...
...is to not buy any toys at all? Does anyone know the carbon/commodity footprint of manufacturing a portable solar panel, versus the amount of energy you'd save over the lifetime of its use? Power stations (coal, nuclear or renewable) are far more efficient than any portable system. You'd probably be better off (from a 'green' point of view) installing solar at home to where it can be used all day, and then charging your phone/laptop from the mains.
Here in the UK, the gradual conversion of our biggest coal power plant (Drax) to be able to produce about 7-10% of its output from biomass is going to save more carbon than solar PV is likely to achieve for many years, far more cheaply.
So after all the negatives, what are the positives? One option is to put up a serious PV rig - say a peak of about 3-600W - and use it to charge cheap lead acid batteries, then use these to run chargers for your gear. This is in effect what many boat and RV owners do, but with a static installation you can get much better efficiency. Bear in mind that, because solar chargers can charge lead acid cells to around 14.5 volts, sulfation is minimal and the batteries can have a very long life; keep them topped up and buy proper open cells, not car starters, and you might easily get 10 years of useful life on shore. I won't promise you a net carbon dioxide saving over life, but you will get the best available performance. This system has other advantages; the cost of putting lighting in my garden shed would have been around $1000, whereas the 12V solar powered system I installed cost a third of that.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
The CO2 produced by making those things is more than you'll ever get back from using them.
Make one car journey less (eg. the one needed to go and buy the solar charger) and you'll probably achieve more green credit.
No sig today...
I had done quiet a few bike trips and generally can't be without my iPod, PSP, and cellphone so I have had some experiance using Solar Panels previously, though never for something as power hungry as a notebook/netbook. Two years ago I purchased the Soldius 1 Solar Charger, seen here: http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/travelpower/7d34/. I found that even stationary it really just drained my iPods batteries and made them unusable, as the change in voltages associated with clouds would cause the iPod to constantly redetect that the charging had started and illuminate the screen thus draining more power. I may have only gotten one meaningful charge or two out of it, in the two years I've had it. It also didn't charge some devices, that were USB powered, and seemed very brittle. This summer past, I had taken time off to go cycling for 2 months across Canada, and so invested in another Solar Panel, the SolarFocus SolarMio 31 Solar Charger: http://www.mec.ca/Products/product_detail.jsp?FOLDER%3C%3Efolder_id=2534374302697169&PRODUCT%3C%3Eprd_id=845524442620595. It was very durable, and I had it strapped on my rear rack, even in the worst rains. It also has a portable battery pack so you can charge during the day, and then have power for later, and it charges relatively quickly. I found that 4 hours would give it a full charge to the battery, (it is probably much better than this, as being on my bike rack and in motion means that it is not really positioned for optimum solar energy collection) and that would charge my iPod to 90%. It also has an external AC adapter to charge the battery overnight, and a USB port for 'most' USB devices. Some draw backs are that it didn't charge my Phone at the time, a Motorola KRZR, and after my trip I found out it doesn't charge my iPhone (which is kinda a disappointment). Another plus is that the battery is detachable, and while replacements/spares are expensive, it made it convient to charge at camping sights. They make an equivilant solar panel for laptops which is a bit pricer at CAD $595: http://www.mec.ca/Products/product_detail.jsp?FOLDER%3C%3Efolder_id=2534374302697169&PRODUCT%3C%3Eprd_id=845524442625524. Which is too rich for my blood at the moment, but if the quality is anything like this one, I'd definately recommend it. Finally some other words of wisdom: 1) The Solar Device compatibility list actually seems to matter at least for obvious devices not listed, just because it's USB doesn't mean it will charge it. 2) Getting a dead iPod (I had both a iPod 4G Photo and 5.5G Video) to charge is a bit tricky if you are charging straight from the sun in less than ideal conditions, as when it turns on, the screen comes on maximum brightness, and I believe stops charging for a moment, and will cause the iPod to turn off. I found that both the above would eventually charge by just booting it into Disk Mode a few times, eventually it would have enough power to stay on in Disk Mode and charge. Finally after two minutes rebooting it into Normal mode, so that the screen turns off resulted in a quicker charge.
You've been ripped off. Remember that it takes several years (2-4 I heard) of full scale, all-day energy production for a solar panel to produce the energy that went into producing the panel in the first place. For a laptop with a short life-span and which is not used full time in broad daylight, you will never pay back the energy cost!
In essence, what you have bought, is a gadget to make you look "green", but which was produced by coal/oil/nuclear energy... And will never produce more energy than was spent making it. But, of course, if other energy sources don't exist in your location, it can be useful.
The amount of charge you'll get will be tiny, far too small to be really useful*. Any ideas of leaving it on a windowsill for an hour to charge it are laughable.
[*] Unless you happen live in the desert, a long way from any electricity and only need to use it for 20 minutes per day.
No sig today...
Years ago Casio came out with a dual powered system and I was mighty pleased with it because it had a solar cell. Years later the calculator stopped working; no amount of light on the solar cell would bring it to life and when I opened it, I found the silver cell that had been powering it! Once I replaced the cell the calculator worked like new. The solar cell was merely a gimmick or maybe was just not good enough. Lesson learnt.
I wouldn't go for the fancy laptop bags with solar panels... Maybe they work well, but if you're a real geek why not build your own? To run a regular 15-24v input laptop for 6 hours a day you'd need:
2 x 30W Mnocrystalline Solar Panels
1 x 6amp Charge Controller
1 x 85 Ah Deep Cycle leisure Battery
1 x Cigar to Crocodile Clip Adaptor
1 x Universal Laptop adaptor
At least that's here in drizzly old england. Comes to around 250 pounds in our drizzly english money.
Carbon costs and payback aren't everything: computers today aren't green and aren't sustainable but don't just get sad and do nothing :)
Using solar panels for this means microgeneration and helps promote use of decentralised, off grid energy which I consider a positive social change towards green-ness, and it will help you in particular if you live in a place with frequent blackouts (i.e not the UK!). Think of it as a ticket to a cheap shed-studio setup, or temporary remote setups like at festivals or camping, and once it's all wired up and charging a battery, I can plug it into loads of other kinds of things.
Ale
How about you get one of these instead? Well, more something like the modern version. You can also get those in a slightly adjusted size so you can actually take it with you on your boat or whatever. As for boating I can tell you from experience that they're great.
That is definitely the determining factor.
Even if you think that the area you live is a sunny area (worthy of solar power) do some independent fact checking on the amount of sunlight which actually reaches the ground where you live, not just the amount of "sunshine" during the day. It might be less than you think, and humans are notoriously bad at subjective probabilities.
The solar charger most likely cost more energy to produce than you'll ever save charging your phone. It's great for when you're walking across Australia, not so great for saving the world.
The foldable you mention is from PowerFilm. They make many different devices as well as components for building your own. http://www.powerfilmsolar.com/products/portable%20and%20remote/index.html
I went the build-your-own route using their thin-film cells. I needed a power source for a laptop in the field, so I put one together that I could epoxy to the laptop lid. It's still on duty 4 years later. I also needed a source on board the ultimate portable device -- a rocket weighing less than 2kg total and capable of handling a vertical acceleration of 20 G to Mach 1+, supplying constant high grade power to the recording altimeter that also controlled the parachute ejection system. That system has flown over 20 times. I put their stuff through some hellacious stress testing and the only failures I've had were my fault.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
I've been using http://www.solio.com/ as my mobile phone charger. It's able to charge the 3 mobile phone we have at home (in a sunny country like mine :). It has a battery, which allows you to charge things whenever you need and not when there's sun light.
1. Build lots of nuclear power plants.
2. Transmission through or along the Earth,
2.1 Propagation as a result of terrestrial resonances,
2.2 Coupling to the ionosphere using propagation through electrified gases.
3. Sorry, no profit since anyone can access the power.
Tesla actually did all of these experiments.
You are going to need around a square meter for your laptop, and it will be quite heavy as it will need to be supported at a suitable angle, meaning it will need to be able to withstand wind pressure. Then there is the charge control gear. It's portable if you have a truck, which rather defeats the object of the exercise.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Yes! I actually have that EXACT model from the first link. It is 20 Watts and I run all my usb devices off of it simultaneously. I think I got up to about 7 or 8 devices at once before it reached its peek. It's great, I worked at the beach all summer and carried the panel in my bag every day, only taking up the size of a thin composition notebook. and the great thing is, IT FLEXES like a softback book. So there is no need to worry about breaking the "glass" on the panels.
NOMADIC POWER!
I want to get the Y adapter and bump my power up to 60 watts with a 2nd solar panel. I would suggest E.Bay for some great deals on these panels. such as this. http://cgi.ebay.com/35-Watt-Foldable-Solar-Panel_W0QQitemZ190262865303QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item190262865303&_trkparms=72%3A1205|39%3A1|66%3A2|65%3A12|240%3A1318&_trksid=p3911.c0.m14
"It isn't easy being green."
Evidently not!
http://www.sadkermit.com/
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
I remember from long ago a small experiment that used the energy of a nearby AM transmitter (I told you it was long ago) to light a small bulb.
I wonder how difficult it would be to make something that picks up GSM and WiFi signals and generates a battery charge. You already have LEDs that light up on phone polling and ringing. If nothing else, it would be an idea to charge a mobile phone itself :-)
Hmmm..
Insert
Now all your mobile gadgets are (indirectly) CO2 neutral :)
I turn cows into cheeseburgers summary cheesburgers are enviromentaly friendly
But not very cow-friendly, you insensitive clod!
Smivs on the intertubes!
one hundred forty pounds ?
Let's do a little math.
Let's assume these are the very best of next decade's solar cells, say 30% efficient. Let's guess they're about 10x15 cm. Also assume we are not in England so the sun shines maybe 30% of the time. crank, crank, crank.... this gadget can at best supply very nearly ONE FREEPIN WATT !!
This notebook I'm typing on draws about 30 watts, so this expensive gadget would let me run the laptop for about 50 minutes per day in Tuscon, Arizona.
Or looked at another way, in a year this thingy will produce about eight kilowatt hours, about sixty cents worth of power. If you'd kept your cash in the bank at 3% interest you'd have made exactly ten times as much, without the bother of keeping this thing pointed at the sun. not exactly an economic win of any sort,
10 Watt Solar Panel : $250.00
Price of electricity: $0.0775 / Kilowatt Hour
You have to leave the Solar panel in the bright sunlight for 100 hours, which is over a week at 12 hours a day, just to product ONE kilowatt Hour of electricity that you could have purchased for approximately 8 Cents.
Now lets extrapolate on that.
1 Week = $0.08
1 Year = $4.16
10 Years = $41.60
50 Years = $253.00
So, you would have to purchase one of these, hook it up to a power storage system, and run it in perfect conditions for 50 years just to pay for itself...
Oh, wait... don't forget shipping!!! Another 5 years to cover shipping charges.
"Computer Scientists can count to 1024 on their fingers" (non-mutant, non-mutilatated, human computer scientists)
there's a messenger bag with integrated cells -- sounds like an awsome concept! have not tired it tough since i tend to stick to my studio chair :-)
http://www.sakkuus.com/
I would rather people get involved now rather than never. There are no wrong reasons, just idiots like you trying to bring people down.
Another famous quote :
"better late than never"
Just get rid of your portable devices.
--I'm not talking about dance lessons. I'm talking about putting a brick through the other guy's windshield.-
ICP global....on google...they r canadian company, but r involved with making solar panels for all diff. types of usage.
I found that the recharge time (Solio Hybrid, but presumably same for other small solar chargers) is so long as to be typically impractical. How often are you really willing to leave a ~$100 device lying around _outdoors_ for hours on end? Inside your car windshield isn't good enough: the device overheats and stops operating at in-car in-sun temperatures, and glass filters out wavelengths apparently preferred by the solar panel.
Advantage of the Solio Hybrid is secondary charging from USB: fill it up at your computer, then use the solar panel to top it off when hiking.
Got mine particularly for emergency/survival situations: at least it is _a_ source of off-grid renewable power sufficient to keep a cell phone going occasionally.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
... for a week-long backpacking trip in the Wind River mountain range.
My requirements weren't large, all I wanted to do is to be able to recharge my Palm Centro. I knew I wouldn't have phone service, but I wanted to be able to use it as an e-book reader and music/audio-book player. I love the 140W panel I mounted on top of my camp trailer, so a small, portable solar panel that I could carry with me seemed like exactly what I wanted.
What I found is that there are a lot of inexpensive, lightweight, poorly-built, underpowered devices out there that would require many hours of good sunlight even to recharge my phone. There are also a few devices that are expensive, durable and provide plenty of power, but most of them were also pretty heavy, and the lightest were -- no surprise -- the most expensive.
For the price of solar power, I could have bought three or four extra batteries for my phone, and had plenty of power for a week of heavy use, and the batteries would have been far lighter than any of the solar panels. Unless your power requirements include being away from an outlet for weeks at a time, this will be true for everyone.
In the end, I bought a $10 device that takes 4 AA batteries. Each set of alkaline batteries charges my phone from zero to full 2.5 times. I took two sets of batteries, just in case, but never used the second one. Now I take the charger with me when I travel, filled with rechargeable AA batteries, so I never have to find an outlet in an airport. I use rechargeables to avoid having to buy and throw away a lot of alkaline batteries, but I like the security of knowing that unless I'm out in the wilderness, buying a pack of AAs is nearly always an easy option for instant power.
Maybe not a terribly "green" solution, but far more practical than carrying around a heavy solar charger and trying to find the sun.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
i was thinking about these problems for a while, for me it's not so much the "green" thing, but more the idea that having a computer that will still work without a power grid sounds nice (fallout 3 messing with my mind...)
anyway: my question was how a notebook could be charged with less-than-desired power. in an ideal world the notebook would just take any input above a given voltage and charge it's batteries with it, no matter what the current provided is. in reality i fear that if you hook up solar cells to your notebook, the notebook might draw too much current at some times, which will reduce the voltage in the cells, and then it won't charge at all. does anyone have ideas/comments on this?
thanks mik
I had used this unit all summer while camping and found out a few things...
1) If charging an iPhone (and some other devices), there is an issue where (according to their site) the phone doesn't report "when it's had enough" so the Solio simply turns itself off after about 3 minutes. This means you will have to constantly turn it back on. It's extremely frustrating, but I sort of understand why they implemented this "feature".
2) Charging the internal lithium-ion cell (think two CR2032s) takes a LONG time. Charging it via wall power before heading out is the only way to make it usable.
3) Panel efficiency is low. No surprise...
4) Very stupid proprietary USB connector adapters. I've taped on the standard USB-B (female) so I wouldn't lose it, but that rendered the little clip used to store the pigtail useless.
Honestly, I'm fed up with the thing. Next year I'm going to try something a little more substantial. More along the lines of a motorcycle battery/ small gel cell and a much larger/efficient panel.
Maybe that explains why it should be renamed SLAPSHOT SHODDY
The tricky part is that the my cubical wouldn't actually move; space itself would move underneath the stationary cubical. A beam of light next to me would still zoom away, same as it always does, but a beam of light far from me would be left behind. warp drive
I'd like to point out that this article belongs in the "Ask Slashdot" category and not the "News" category.
The CO2 produced by making those things is more than you'll ever get back from using them.
And all that CO2 will go to waste unless someone buys and uses the thing.
Plus the CO2 created transporting it to the store, then from the store to the recycling center or garbage dump.
Where it will at best create even more CO2 being recycled or just plain sit there for the next 10.000 years slowly leaking chemicals into the ground.
On the other hand, if you DO buy it and use it you WILL reduce some minuscule amount of CO2 created and you will feel better about yourself while at the same time you will be investing in the clean energy industry.
Stop with the "And how much CO2 was created in making of the gadget?" already.
Its not as if when you pay for it someone presses a button on the ThingyMaker3000TM and on the one side it pops out a new gadget and on the other side it blows a giant cloud of CO2.
Those things are already created. Use them.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Are we talking Jonestown Koolaid or the Electric Koolaid Acid Test Koolaid? Because the former is quite awful (I hear) and I can personally attest to the wonderful nature of the latter. If you were referring to the latter, I say, "Yes, more Koolaid for everyone!" If you were referring to the former (and I suspect that you were) then I say, "You are a jerkface and large dirty animal should sit on your head."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Don't knock someone because they choose to be environmentally-conscious.
We would all be so lucky if green became a fad... a fad that, contrary to its definition, lasted.
Go with it
I got a decent deal on a Powermonkey Explorer (newegg has them, but for full price). It's a neat device, but you would absolutely not want to be reliant on the solar panel for day to day use. The little battery charges up in an hour or so if you plug it in; from the panel it takes several days of sitting on the windowsill to get to a fully charged state. It's a nice backup, but I honestly never use it anymore. The plug comes with interchangeable international plugs, and there are tips for most phones and gadgets in the kit, so it's great for travel, but you'd need a much bigger solar panel to be able to go off grid for any length of time. I'd be kidding myself if I thought that buying this was in any way "green", and I imagine that you'd be much greener buying a larger set of panels you could tie into the grid.
Because the 'green revolution' is accelerating
Is or was? Now that gas down enough that old people don't start every conversation with "have you seen the price of gas today." Will the 'green revolution' really keep accelerating? I hope that we aren't that short sighted, but its hard to get people excited about alternate energy when the payback time just (more or less) doubled after oil price halved...
Not to get political (on election day nonetheless) but it will be interesting to see if this continues to be a "high priority issue" for whatever administration takes over in January...my gut feeling is that its will be in a top 5 list, but it probably got bumped down a slot or two.
When I have a kid, I want to put him in one of those strollers for twins and then run around the mall looking frantic.
Along the lines of several others comments, why do we ignore human power. I work out daily (run, rowing machine, bike, etc.) for a minimum of an hour. For the purposes of this post, let me focus on the rowing machine. I use an 'outrigger' style rower with two hydraulic resistance pistons. After 1 hour with the resistance cranked all the way up, the waste heat coming off of those pistons is sufficient to cause serious burns from simply letting your leg rest against it by accident. The amount of electric energy that could be generated from exercise is emmense and for the most part untapped. Granted, much of the exercise equipment that is sold become close racks, but think of the billions(?) of joules wasted each day. Capture that and you've got a serious back-up power source available. My two cents.
Backpacker magazine had some of these devices a few months ago. They are widely used for remote trips and mountaineering. The devices work, but they can't power your PC all day long. You can get just enough power to do some quick stuff, and that is it - the solar cells in the portable units simply don't have enough collection power to run the device all day long. You would be better off if your electricity supplier has green credits you can buy and recharge off that, rather than using the solar cells - unless you are going somewhere where there is no electrical grid.
If you want to do something for the environment, recharging a cell phone with a soloar cell may not be the best use of your funds. It is likely counter productive when you figure in the cost to make the system and that it is heading to a land fill in a few years. The power "saved" is triveal.
For better to put your money into something like compact fliourecent bulbs or turnning down the temperure on the water heaters or using solor heated water. Think in terms of "bang per buck"
You cell phone uses only a few amphours per week. Even with expensive power at $0.25/kwh the cell phone 'burns' less than a tenth of a penny per week. Save more power by turnning your TV off when you leave the room
Those products are a rip off. The price for what you are getting is beyond all reason. Check our solar cell products and make your own connectors to suit yourself. You should be spending about 10% of what these jokers are asking.
First of all, it depends on the country. Oil is subsidized in many developing nations--China's a big one--but in the U.S., it's mainly lower taxes as opposed to, say, the U.K. If you want to call that a subsidy, fine. BUT, the amount of fuel spent to create and deliver solar energy to the home (batteries, solar cells, etc.) is about the same as the fuel you'd have spent leeching off of the power grid, IF you get at least 20+ years of life out of your rig. That fact is masked BECAUSE of the heavy subsidies that solar gets ON TOP OF whatever your utilities and oil may be getting.
I have always wondered why mobile phones have some empty plastic on the back of the battery pack rather than solar cells. There must surely be some better way to use all that space than leave it as empty plastic.
Are we talking Jonestown Koolaid or the Electric Koolaid Acid Test Koolaid? Because the former is quite awful (I hear) and I can personally attest to the wonderful nature of the latter. If you were referring to the latter, I say, "Yes, more Koolaid for everyone!" If you were referring to the former (and I suspect that you were) then I say, "Yes, more Koolaid for everyone else!"
FIXED
bingo, consumerist green wash. average person will never get enough use out of those to offset the waste of creating half baked tech/products. the awful truth? whats green? stop buying so much junk!
I'm all for solar power. But I've become convinced that all the people trying to "help out" with their spending on home solar crap are wasting their money. And under "home solar crap" I even include those who spend big bucks covering their roofs with solar cells. Not only are they absurdly expensive for the power they provide, but they cost serious energy to manufacture and install — in most cases more energy than they'll ever generate.
To succeed, alternative energy needs to operate on a big scale. Huge thermal solar plants, windmill farms, tidal engines, geothermal engines and so on. If you want to throw your money at the problem, invest in those. Though there is some danger you'll actually make a profit, but I think most people can live with that.
Another thing: stop looking for little gimmicks that serve only to assuage your environmental guilt. There's no way you can make a real difference without making some basic changes. If you think you're green because you have some solar powered gadgets and you recycle your water bottles, you're fooling yourself.
"make your own connectors to suit yourself."
While I'm at it, as a busy executive perhaps I will cook all my own meals, repair my own car and write all my own software.
You need to understand that having someone do stuff for you is worth money. You should make your products more user-friendly and make more profit!
any portable solar unit that charges a small lithium ion battery or device powered by such would probably expose the battery to heat. this shortens battery life span, further reducing the greenness of the panel:P peoople abusing lithium ion batts is why many ipods and such don't last. leaving em in cars baking etc.