Solar charger for iPhone and 1.5V batteries

prowla

Have solar chargers progressed to a point where it is practical to use them to daily charge a mobile phone (iPhone) and rechargeable batteries (eg. Duracell 1.5V ones)?

Are there any (portable) products worthy of recommendation at the moment?

I had a bit of a look and several seem to be based on fully charging them via a mains supply and then using solar to keep them topped up.

grumbler

Define 'practical'.

What's practical' in the middle of nowhere isn't practical at home.

My AA solar panel for maintaining my car battery is 45cm x 35 cm and produces  4.8W of power in good weather. It's neither  5V nor 1.5V, but the main parameter is power and  it's defined by the size/area.

prowla

Well, I did say portable, so bigger than a laptop probably fails that.

That said, I don't know if the size/area is solely what defines the power; I'm assuming the technology is improving year-on-year.

And yes, my requirement is 5V (USB) and 1.5v (AA battery); I'd guess that there may not be a single unit which will do both.

One use-case could be to put it on the window sill daytime and plug in the phne overnight; I suppose that would require inbuilt storage.

forgotmyname

The money you spend on setting a system up will pay for many years of charges.  As you put above you probably want
to charge phones late evening or during the night so solar needs its own battery for storage which may need replacing
every 5 years or so increasing the cost.

DC-DC converters that take solar panel voltages and drop them to 5v or less are VERY cheap.  10 LiPo charging boards
cost me less than £2 a few years back and I still have lots waiting to be used. Super reliable if you don't abuse them.
Bought them to charge 18650 cells. Battery holders less than £1 each so no messing with wires when charging.

These are 1amp charge rates, you can get better for little money still if you want to fast charge.

Solar power improves but only in little steps, new panels are better than ones made 20 years ago, but not a huge amount.

prowla

forgotmyname said:

The money you spend on setting a system up will pay for many years of charges.  As you put above you probably want
to charge phones late evening or during the night so solar needs its own battery for storage which may need replacing
every 5 years or so increasing the cost.

DC-DC converters that take solar panel voltages and drop them to 5v or less are VERY cheap.  10 LiPo charging boards
cost me less than £2 a few years back and I still have lots waiting to be used. Super reliable if you don't abuse them.
Bought them to charge 18650 cells. Battery holders less than £1 each so no messing with wires when charging.

These are 1amp charge rates, you can get better for little money still if you want to fast charge.

Solar power improves but only in little steps, new panels are better than ones made 20 years ago, but not a huge amount.

Thanks - that's interesting.

So, you've done a roll-your-own solution.

I'd really like something off-the-shelf, as I have so many projects and things to do that this would just be another. :-)