solar panel for charging batteries

2

2wheelfilms

Active member
Hi all

I'm developing a project documenting a canoe trip through a large wilderness area. The biggest problem is power. I can pack lots of batteries and/or bring along a solar-powered recharger to recharge batteries while on the trip rather than growing a packful of dead batts.

I'm mostly sure the technology for portable solar recharging just is not here yet, at least something big enough (but still portable) to recharge an HVX200 battery (all of mine I bought via DVXuser btw)

Am I wrong? Has anyone seen or used a portable solar recharger that could go along on a canoe trip and recharge an HVX battery?

thx
Jeff
 
That would be a poor choice simply because solar panels bring in much less power than would be required to charge the battery effectively, at least at the sizes that you can bring with you on a canoe trip. Or at least that sounds right from last time I checked.

You'd need a good sized panel, an inverter and a lot of time. If you put the same investment into high capacity batteries I'm sure you can get as much or more time out of it with the same amount of space and weight taken up. If for some reason you're desperate for even more you could bring a solar panel and a deep cycle battery to store the photovoltaic output, which would be a large help I'm sure.
 
Using solar can, and has been done. It's not particularly easy, and it might be easier to take lots of batteries.

I can think of a few examples. If I remember correctly, Gary and Joanie McGuffin did a long canoe trip a few years ago and used solar to recharge laptop and satphone batteries. They were doing web page updates of their trip for school kids. I am sure they are not the only ones who have tried this approach.

Canadian Canoe Routes (myccr.com) is a great resource for people planning wilderness canoe treks.

Go to myccr.com, then to the forum section. Search for "solar" and "panel". The third hit on the list should be a discussion of solar battery charging. If I did this correctly this should get you there directly. Look closely at the comments of ScottW. He and his wife did a 60 day canoe trip a few years ago. Somewhere in the archives should be the trip planning reports he wrote.



Pete
 
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