Portable Home Solar Power
I’ve mostly talked about home solar power installations for the home up to now. There’s another area to consider and that is portable home solar power. Getting cheap electricity at home is easy. The utility company delivers it to the door, as much as you want instantly as long as you pay the bill. But what if you are back country camping or miles from land in a sailboat?
Luckily solar panel manufacturers have not been idle in this respect and there is a wide range of ready to use products to charge your cell phone or your GPS. There are even backpacks with built in solar panels. 12 volt panels are available for your boat or RV. Connect two clips to your battery, stick the panel in sunlight and you get free electricity.
Here are a few of the more popular products:
A 5W charger to maintain your car, RV or marine battery for less that $40 at the time of writing from Amazon
A backpack complete with solar panel and battery storage for camping trips. Currently a little over $200 at Amazon
A home solar powered laptop charger prices at an impressive $350. Ouch. I wonder if the backpack charger would work with laptops? Let me know if you find out.
These are obviously just a sample of the many products available. Prices are still a bit too high for the truly portable solutions but they are becoming more affordable each month and manufacturers scale up the production of solar cells.
I like the laptop charger on the bottom. Mostly just because of the small size and shape. I wonder if you can use it for other applications. It would be nice to have one in case of emergency.
For a constant traveler like, this portable solar power is really handy to charge my laptop, cellphone, and other gadgets. Though it’s quite pricey, this one is definitely a worthwhile investment, not to mention you’re also being environmental friendly. Thus, keeping it up with the financial crisis that is happening all over the world.