Chockstone Forum

      Sponsored By
      ROCK
   HARDWARE

Chockstone Photography

Australian Landscape Prints

Chockstone Forum - Gear Lust / Lost & Found

Rave About Your Rack Please do not post retail SPAM.

Topic Date User

solar panels 5-Dec-2007 At 5:50:46 PM ecowain

Message

Depends how much load you want to put on it.

I have a tough little Silva one, pricey, but works well for charging mobile phone, mp3 player and the like. If you have anything bigger though, you either need to add in a battery storage unit, or look at bigger panels. Check out www.brunton.com for their larger units. I seem to recall that if you wanted to power a laptop without a battery, you needed a 30Watt panel and good sunlight to provide continuous power.

The little Silva one I have is something like 0.6Watts. I have a small lead acid battery (with about the same capacity as my laptop battery) hooked up to it, and when it's in the sun, it charges it in about a day and a half allowing a recharge of the computer battery when needed.

But get one of the iriver mp3 players that take AAA batteries, and then you don't have to worry about the mp3 player's internal battery running out, just change it.

cheers,
owain.