Posted: 3/5/2013 2:07:42 PM EDT
| Anyone have a backpack/BOB fold up/roll up solar panel kit packed in their gear for charging small electronics? Looking for suggestions. |
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Have had good luck with my PowerFilm f15-300 and f15-600 panels. Prebuilt, pretty tough, good connector.. Basically, it's not chinese-built crap that will break at the very worst possible moment when you need it. The f15 indicates 15 volts max output, the -300, -600 indicate current output in milliamps. PowerFilm also has some accesories that plug right in, but if you're handy with a soldering iron and wire, you could roll your own.
Check Amazon.com for decent prices, the -300 was on sale for like $55. I use it in my HT ham bag with a small charge controller to charge a 12Ah lithium iron phosphate battery. -300 keeps it from running down when transmitting a lot, -600 actually charges it. |
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Anyone have a backpack/BOB fold up/roll up solar panel kit packed in their gear for charging small electronics? Looking for suggestions. Stick with PowerFilm, Goal Zero, Bruniton and Global Solar/Sunique. They all make either rollable, or foldable panels in the 10w-62w+ range. Powerfilm is milspec, for their 30w and 62w panels, but you'll pay a good $420 for that 30 watter. Anything over 20w total (and you can daisy chain them together) and you'll probably want a digital controller to regulate voltage to say 12vdc. A 10w panel outputs 600mA, in ideal conditions, so you kind of have an idea of their limits. I went with rigid panels, as I just need things to be portable and not backpackable. My solar rig Chris |
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an archived thread on this http://www.ar15.com/forums/t_10_17/632626_.html&page=6 |
| I use a Powerfilm f15-300 or f15-600 and a Maha MH-C401FS to charge Sanyo eneloops to use in a Fenix L1P for light. I can use the eneloops in a Midland XT511 to listen to news and weather, or I can use either of the Powerfilm foldable solar panels to charge the radio's internal nimh battery. Powerfilm sells the foldable solar panels through Amazon with a great discount a couple of times a year. Rigid panels have a better warranty and are cheaper per watt, but the set up I use was not expensive. I am looking at some of the newer flashlights like a Fenix LD15 or E25 with diffuser tip and headband so they can be used as a flashlight, a lantern, or a headlamp. The newer lights put out so much more light, have more modes, and last so much longer on the lower modes than the 40 lumen L1P I have. A Sangean DT-400W takes 2 fewer AA batteries and is more portable than the Midland radio that I use. You could have light and news/weather for quite a while with a set up like that. If you need to run more than that, you could go with rigid panels, a controller, golf cart batteries, and either a 12vdc load or an inverter and the conversion losses that go along with it. This set up would be better for larger loads that you want to run at home or a base camp. If that is the way you want to go, there is some great info in the thread linked to above by ChrisGarrett about his set up. |
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I use a Powerfilm f15-300 or f15-600 and a Maha MH-C401FS to charge Sanyo eneloops . Will that f15-600 power that charger to fully juice 4 AA's in a few hours? 4 x 2000mAh Sanyo Eneloops at 50% SOC (state of charge) = 4000mAh divided by 600mA (ideal conditions) less any charging inefficiency, say 15%, so 600mA x ~85% = 510mA (net). 4000mAh/510mA = 7.843 hours. Figure that most places in America get a good 3-4 solar hours a day and well...you're not doing much with 10w/600mA. With solar panels, even the flexible ones, bigger is always better if you can hump them along. Look to the 20w-27w panels and a cheap digital controller. Chris |
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this guy did a workable write up on in the field solar use http://terminus.attitude.net/survival-technology-solar click the link on the page and find the PDF |
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I use a Powerfilm f15-300 or f15-600 and a Maha MH-C401FS to charge Sanyo eneloops . Will that f15-600 power that charger to fully juice 4 AA's in a few hours? 4 x 2000mAh Sanyo Eneloops at 50% SOC (state of charge) = 4000mAh divided by 600mA (ideal conditions) less any charging inefficiency, say 15%, so 600mA x ~85% = 510mA (net). 4000mAh/510mA = 7.843 hours. Figure that most places in America get a good 3-4 solar hours a day and well...you're not doing much with 10w/600mA. With solar panels, even the flexible ones, bigger is always better if you can hump them along. Look to the 20w-27w panels and a cheap digital controller. Chris Well, I don’t use it like that and have never charged 4 fully discharged eneloops. I use it to keep 1, 2, 3, or 4 batteries, in various states of discharge, topped off. Most of the batteries I use are older lower capacity Energizer and Radio Shack nimh. I am in the process of switching over to eneloops and want to use up the older batteries. The calculation above would be pretty close if the batteries were charged at 12V, but these batteries are charged at less than 12V, so the charger trades volts for amps and probably some conversion losses. I’ve been working on an answer your question for a while, but I’m having a hard time nailing this down, so here is an upper limit best case scenario, although I don’t run it like this. In ideal conditions, a new F15-300 will produce up to 15V DC and 300mA. A new F15-600 will produce up to 15V DC and 600mA. The spec for DC input for the charger is 9-15V DC and up to 1000mA, although I usually run it on less amperage. The charger has a switch on the side to set the charge current to 300mA or 1000mA for AAs and 300mA or 500mA for AAAs (and then switch to a 50mA trickle charge when done). I don’t know the min input amperage necessary to support charging 4 batteries at the 1000mA setting and I don’t know the charge voltage other than it must be < 12V because Watts out (Volts X Amps) must be < Watts in. I’ll assume the charger has to have 1000mA input to support the 1000mA charge rate switch setting. To get to the max input amperage for the charger, so that I can be sure it is running at the 1000mA charge rate, I would have to connect 2 of my panels together with a daisy chain cable that I have. Although, I have topped off a couple of batteries in a few hours with the charger plugged into an F15-300 lying in the sun on the dash of my car. Then, to charge 4ea 2000mAh eneloops at 50% state of charge would require 4000mAh. Charging them at a rate of 1000mA would take 4 hours. It would take 13 hours and 20 min to charge the same batteries at the 300mA setting. You might want to top off batteries at the lower rate if you didn’t have the solar energy to drive the charger at the higher rate or if you wanted your batteries to last for more charge/discharge cycles. (Please correct me if I am mistaken.) Finally, rigid panels have a longer warranty and are cheaper per watt than these flexible panels. Rigid panels produce better in ideal conditions but output suffers in hazy less than ideal conditions. Flexible panels aren’t as efficient as rigid in ideal conditions but produce better in hazy less than ideal conditions. Both types produce better if repositioned to face the sun throughout the day. I feel the best solution for bigger loads at home or at a bug out base camp could be constructed with rigid panels. However, if you only need to keep a few AAs charged and you have to pack it, you can put together a system that does the job with Powerfilm or Goal Zero. I am happy with the small solar system I have, but would like to eventually put together a larger system also. PS. I just looked at the tag on the back ot the charger. Charge voltage is 1.6V DC. 1.6V X 1A X 4 batteries = 6.4 Watts. A new F15-600 produces 15V X 0.6A or 9 Watts under ideal conditions. The charger requires 6.4 Watts over time to charge 4 eneloops at 1A and the panel is capible of producing up to 9 Watts for as long as there is good sunshine, so I think the panel should be able to power the charger, but I really want to make sure. It's going to rain this weekend but as soon as we get sun I'll do some testing to see if my math is any good. |
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There are 2 models at www.powerfilmsolar.com that are designed to charge AA batteries.
The AA generates 3.6V at 600mA and can charge 4 AA eneloops in 6 hours (or 2 eneloops in less) according to the website. The USB+AA generates 3.6V at 400mA and can charge 2 AA eneloops in 4 hours and then use the charge in the batteries to provide 5V at 500mA to a usb port according to the website. |
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I use a Powerfilm f15-300 or f15-600 and a Maha MH-C401FS to charge Sanyo eneloops . Will that f15-600 power that charger to fully juice 4 AA's in a few hours? About a month ago TXJoe wanted to know how long it would take a Powerfilm F15-600 and a Maha MH-C401FS to charge 4 Sanyo 2000mAh Ni-MH Eneloop AA batteries. I’ve been using other batteries and didn’t have any discharged eneloops. So I opened the package of eneloops and put 4 in my Midland XT511 radio to run them down. I don’t have any way to measure the state of charge, but I ran them until the radio wouldn’t turn on. The leds on the radio would still light and each of the batteries would still run my Fenix L1P flashlight. Yesterday we had good sun. The sky was clear and the temp was 43`. I positioned the solar panel, plugged in the charger with the 12V DC adapter, set the switch on the side of the charger to fast (1000mA), and put 4 eneloops in the charger. The indicator leds turned solid red but soon started flashing. According to the charger documentation, red flashing indicator led means a bad battery, but I am sure the F15-600 just couldn’t power the charger with 4 batteries on the fast setting. I removed 2of the batteries and started charging the remaining 2 at 10:00 a.m. By noon, clear sky turned partly cloudy and the 2 batteries finished charging at 12:20. After that, the sky turned mostly cloudy to overcast, ending testing. I believe and would like to verify that I could daisy chain 2 panels together to power the charger with 4 eneloops on fast. I believe and would like to verify that I could set the charger switch to slow (300mA) and one F15-600 would power the charger with 4 eneloops on slow. I’ll do some more testing the first chance I get and post the results. |
I put together my own kit. This is what I need to support just 1 Yaesu FT-60 running 24/7/365:
Not in the picture is the 12 AA battery smart charger..... One of the reasons I like the FT-60's is they can TX while on the 12V charger. However, one draw backs to the FT-60 is that they will not TX while hooked up to the 110 AC charger. All dogs have fleas........getting the experience and knowing the strengths and weaknesses of your equipment before you need it... is one of the most important steps in preparedness... Cheers, CT |