6 Useful, Portable, Solar-Powered Products

Everyone loves a good little solar-powered product, right? Here are six potentially useful and portable ones via sister site Green Building Elements:

Guest Post: Top 6 Useful and Portable Solar-Energy Powered Products (via http://greenbuildingelements.com)

Have you missed an important call or appointment because while shopping all day long your cellphone runs out of battery and there’s no available electric outlet wherein you can recharge it? Have you ever wished you can bring your electric outlet (at home) to your camping site so that you will have…

Zachary Shahan (2302 Posts)

I'm the director of CleanTechnica, the most popular clean energy website in the world, and Planetsave, a leading green and science news site. I've been covering green news of various sorts since 2008, and I've been especially focused on solar energy, electric vehicles, bicycling, and wind energy for the past few years. You can also find my work on Scientific American, Reuters, Think Progress, GE's ecomagination site, several sites in the Important Media network, & many other places. To connect on some of your favorite social networks, go to zacharyshahan.com or click on some of the links below.

Bob_Wallace

Sorry Zach, what I see is a lot of fail.

$300 for a solar cooker? You can quickly make one for a few bucks from free plans on line.

A solar backpack with the panel pointing toward the horizon? Can you say “almost no solar gain”? As useful as golf cleats on the tops of your shoes.

$80 for a solar lantern? Shop carefully. There are several available for less than $30. Make sure you’re getting some sort of extra benefit for your money.

$265 to $350 for a solar tent? Make sure it’s a damn good tent because you’re paying top dollar. You can buy a very good ‘family’ tent for under $100. Paying more would probably make sense if you needed very lightweight one because you were going to carry it a few miles. And remember those <$30 solar lanterns.

$40 – 60 for a solar fan. Maybe. Probably not. A $1 folding fan works pretty well. I'd want to give this a very critical check before writing a check. If it had 8 – 10 hours of storage then it might be good for keeping you cool and the mosquitoes away while you sleep, but it doesn't.

If you're going to be out away from the grid for a while I'd recommend you look for a solar battery charger that could charge up some AAs/AAAs in a decent amount of time.

Head lamps with AAAs are great lighting. Hang one in the tent for general lighting and use personal ones for tasks/reading.

Make yourself a solar cooker out of cardboard and aluminum foil. They work great. I knew someone who made dinner for her family every good-weather day, using the same box for two or three years. She'd prepare the main dish, put it in the box up on a high stand where the animals couldn't get to it and take off for work. Solar slow cooking. Cost about $5 to make.

Take the money you save and donate to one of the organizations that help very low income people purchase small solar systems so that they can quit using kerosene.

All that kerosene they don't burn over the next decades? You've helped someone have a better life and you've lower the world's carbon footprint.

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Writing a check. It's almost a lost art.

I had to write one a couple months back and it took a moment or two to remember the process….
http://www.nationalsolartraders.com.au/contact.html wholesale solar

These solar power products are very useful like for example the solar battery charger. Cellphones is the most important device one should have. And with the use of solar battery charger, we can charge our phone for important use with the absence of electricity .