My, my! It´s been a minute since my last post about using the Sun as my source of power. I´ve grown the inventory a bit (namely two new batteries and a second solar panel charger) and I´m settling nicely into using my batteries as power sources instead of the wall outlets.
I believe that distancing oneself from the grid would increase not only independence just in case something goes wrong but also future expenses by relying less on others´ resources and thus not having to pay as much.
So let´s get into the inventory! I´ll go through the batteries and talk about how they perform with the panels.
Anker Battery:
The battery on the far right was purchased from Walmart as my first battery -- it´s came in handy and can actually support my phone for 2-3 charges. It´s very raggedy when charging via the panels though, it seems to not charge at all even on sunny days.
Plugging it into the wall made me figure that sometimes it just doesn´t know how full it is -- showing about a quarter full for around 30 minutes, and then gaining charge. It´s definitely more reliable to be used out of the outlet.
Nektech Solar Charging Battery:
This flat boring thing (left of the Anker) needs the button to be pressed before it shows how much it´s charging. This was purchased a little after the Anker and I thought it´d have a lot more capacity, however 1 charge from my phone drops this by around 40%. It´s okay for a few days of small phone use or (at my guess) a week of portable radio use.
TERYEI Solar Charging Battery:
The bright middle battery is the Teryei, and I think that it´s a very fair battery. Shining any sort of light on it turns on the LEDs though, and I feel like the LEDs are a little brighter than they need to be, maybe even wasting a chunk of the power as it charges. The LEDs also give a false impression of actual charging strength -- they give the vibe that they´re about to be from zero to full in 30 minutes while when charging via the panels takes about a day to charge halfway.
This is good because it can support around 3-4 phone charges, which I can push to 2 weeks of phone use if I only really needed to use my phone for a thing at a time.
Nekteck Power Bricks:
The left two batteries are absolute beasts compared to the previous batteries. I´ve been able to charge my phone, vape pen, and radio for almost a week, with charging my phone out of the wall once. This led itself to days worth of contact with friends and family, plenty of ¨sessions¨ inside, outside, alone and socially, and days worth of community news, talkshows, and local radio all on a single charge of one of these bad boys.
Truth be told, I´ve barely charged them since they came in. They really do supply plenty of power for my simple needs, so I haven seen the rate of their charge much under the panels. Though, I can say that for 4-5 hours of sun, less than 1/4th of the capacity was recharged. This doesn´t alarm me too much though; in the event of a power outage, my phone and radio will be able to be supported. As long as I had sunlight, I would be able to have (a roughly estimated) 30-60 minutes of potential human contact per day.
I plan to take both solar panels and all four batteries out one day when their capacity is down to give the solar panels a shot and collecting as much energy as possible. At my area of operation, I get around 5-6 hours of sunlight for charging, there are buildings and walls in the way so there aren´t many non-shade spaces to place them.
You can get all of these batteries off of Amazon with the exception of the Anker battery; it´d be better to get a more powerful one of those for the same price.
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