I know a similar topic has not long been posted but please bear with me.
I'm considering a solar panel to keep my power bank topped up whilst away camping purely for the use of keeping mobiles and other low power items charged. It is a 10ah 5v battery pack but with little knowledge and a mine field online to search through I was wondering if anyone could advise me please on what might suit. I'll be camping in UK so sun is obviously not a given!
I would also appreciate any input as we will be doing a two week 200km walk next year and would like to top up power banks. We are thinking a solar panel that can go on our rucksacks to power 26800 mah banks.
Would something like this be suitableanger solar
------------- Hypercamp Alaska
Vango Force 10 mk3
Vango F10 Helium 1
Coleman Cobra Pro 3
Coleman Cobra 2
Naturehike Star River 2
Eureka! Solitaire
Dutch army goretex bivvy bag
Not sure when you want to be away but output varies considerably from month to month.
This is the typical output in watt hours from a 1w peak panel for each month. You need to divide by the number of days to get it per day. This is in Bristol with angled but fixed panels. In Leicester you probably need a bit more as you are further North.
Your battery pack of 10ah at 5 volts is 60 watt hours. In April you have 103 watt hours divided by 30 days = 3.4 watt hours per day. So for 60 you need 60 / 3.4 = 17.6 watt panel plus a bit for losses etc.
This is only average data from the past so is no guarantee of the same in future or for any particular year.
Jan 26
Feb 42
Mar 78
Apr 103
May 124
Jun 125
Jul 122
Aug 114
Sept 92
Oct 61
Nov 36
Dec 20
At Ewen, your power pack is 2.7 times as big. if you want to fully charge it every day you will need 2.7 times the panel size of mk33sy. But then, you may not discharge it fully every day.
So what power bank size would be best paired to a panel like that? Maybe a 40 or 60 watt panel would be better? I don't want to go too bulky and heavy.
Post last edited on 12/07/2017 22:57:06
------------- Hypercamp Alaska
Vango Force 10 mk3
Vango F10 Helium 1
Coleman Cobra Pro 3
Coleman Cobra 2
Naturehike Star River 2
Eureka! Solitaire
Dutch army goretex bivvy bag
Ewan, I have just got one of those panels, but haven't tested it much yet. It did charge up a partially used 5000mA battery pack in an hour in good sunlight.
Your 26800 pack will fully charge 9.5 iphone 6's so it will depend how many devices you expect to charge from your pack each night as to how much topping up it will need from the solar panel each day
Navver, thank you very much for the advice. It'll be for use mostly between April and September so looking at that the 21W panel navver linked to would suit for my needs.
Thanks Navver and David.
I think I will take my 10000 mah bank with the 21w panel and keep the large power bank fully charged as emergency back up.
------------- Hypercamp Alaska
Vango Force 10 mk3
Vango F10 Helium 1
Coleman Cobra Pro 3
Coleman Cobra 2
Naturehike Star River 2
Eureka! Solitaire
Dutch army goretex bivvy bag