can anyone sugest a solar panle to charge my batteries?
 

Hi,

when i'm in the mountains some times i am far away from a place with electricity to charge my batteries.

i've look around and found a few panels that can fold up and give decent power in good light, but i was wondering if anyone had any specific recomendations on what to get.

thanks.

I don't know if there are any good solar panels to charge batteries. Too weak.

I plug (or connect) a small $40.00 inverted to my car battery and plug my normal battery charger into that. Works Great!

Hi Charles,

All the solar systems that I have used are quite large. The panels are large and require a battery bank of numerous lead acid cells. These then feed into a power inverter that goes from 12V to 110/240V. I have tried a couple of smaller panels that promised to trickle charge my camera batteries but they were not very successful, the problem being that many batterys are designed to be charged at a steady voltage- that being either 12V or 110/240V and solar panels are not very good at providing a steady flow of current and a voltometer could display between 5V and 16V on even the largest panels, hence the use of battery banks to store energy and provide a steady (12-16V) flow.
I generally work far away from mains power, either from a car a boat or in a camp of some variety. I use a very small 'Tiger', a generator that is not much bigger than a small cooler box or a 12V inverter like Barry suggests. The other thing you can think about is taking enough batteries to last your trip without charging. I don't know what camera you are using but you can buy a number of 12V adaptors that with fit to many smaller video cameras. You can then carry a couple of smaller lead acid motorbike batteries which will last you days.
I too would like a self contained solar charging option that is fully portable, imagine a solar blanket/tarpulin that produced a steady/stable 12V. Until that comes along I cannot trust the smaller options, they are fine for C-cells etc but the bigger batterys loose juice.

Good luck,

James

Charles, I second what Barry and James says. When James are not able to charge his battery near the equator when the sun is strong, think of us here up north with freezing temperature during wintertime.
I use a generator myself, when I'm in aerias without electric power, stored in my car + I carry with me lots of spare batteries to the location.
I think this is the only way to do it until the solar charger technology has been improved.

This site might be worth a look. I have one of their AA chargers and am pleased with it.

http://www.powerfilmsolar.com/produc...ote/index.html