As more and more people prefer to travel outdoors to experience life and relax themselves, solar-powered electronic products are also popular with travelers! However, many travelers don’t know what kind of solar chargers they’ll use for their outdoor electricity needs! Some travelers do not have much knowledge and understanding of solar charging, who first consider the convenience of carrying and the lightest weight, so they finally choose a solar charger with a small solar panel. It turns out that it doesn’t make much electricity. Therefore, they think that solar energy has no effect. There are also some travelers who buy solar chargers with their own feelings. Instead of learning about solar charging, they blindly choose a solar charger with power storage function. After using it for a period of time, they found there was no need to choose a solar charger with a storage function and ended up paying “a tax on their IQ”! So what kind of solar charger can suit your electricity needs?
It’s not just a small solar panel that makes a solar charger work
There used to be a solar charger on the market, which was a power bank with a small solar panel on the back. Without much time to learn more about solar chargers, many travelers simply buy a small solar charger of this kind. Then, after a few days of use, it turns out that the solar power bank doesn’t have much use at all! They want to use the solar panel on the back of the solar charger to fully charge the power bank. They find that the power in grid 1 is still flashing after a week! In fact, this small solar charger is just for rescue and emergency. It’s impossible to use solar energy as a way to charge a battery, because solar panels are too small.
One factor that affects the speed of solar charging is the area of the solar panel, which is critical to the ability of solar chargers to generate power! This small solar charging treasure has only a small solar panel. Theoretically, the current generated by exposing it in the sun is only about 0.1A-0.15A. Even if it is continuously exposed in the sun for 1 hour, it can only produce a small amount of power of 100mAh-150mAh. However, a mobile phone’s battery capacity is generally around 3000-4000mAh, and it takes a full 20-40 hours to fully charge a mobile phone with such a solar power bank. With this kind of charging efficiency, if the travelers were outside, I think the power would already be out!
Not that a solar charger can generate electricity at night when the sun is not shining, as long as it has a power storage function
Many people who come into contact with solar chargers for the first time have an initial understanding: it would be better if solar chargers had the power storage function! There are also some people who are confused by the claim that “solar charging can be done by day and night”! In fact, as long as you calm down to carefully think about it, you can completely understand solar charging! Solar charging should be viewed from two aspects: one is to use solar energy to generate electricity, and the other is how to deal with the electricity generated by solar energy. The electricity generated should be stored or used directly in electronic devices. Many travelers mix generating electricity and storing electricity. They think that as long as the electricity is stored, it can be made at night, but it can only be used at night! If you want to store solar energy, you can just store it in a power bank.
On the one hand, the storage solar charger is a product that combines solar energy with electric cell. It seems that it is 2 in 1. In fact, it is charged by the electricity in the cell, not directly by solar energy. It has to have a storage process. It doesn’t work until there’s some electricity in the cell. This results in a situation where the sun is shining but you can’t charge it into your mobile phone. There is also the fact that when the battery is full and the weather is good, you find that you can no longer make electricity from the sun. This is a waste of sun when the power is so scarce outdoors! However, pure solar charger is different, as long as there is sun, it can directly generate electricity, and can charge a variety of electronic products. Whenever the sun is there, it can store electricity at any time.
Storage solar charger, on the other hand, can’t use the sun’s rays to charge at night, nor can it use the sun to generate electricity at all. However, some storage solar chargers have an input port for charging, so they can be recharged at night with a charging head. In this way, it looks good, but it’s not necessary at all! First, the solar charger is used in the field. We know that there is no electricity in the field at night, so the charging head won’t be used at all! Second, if there is electricity at night, there is no need to use a solar charger. You can directly charge the electronic products with electricity, or you can directly charge the power bank for the third day! Therefore, storage solar chargers are not suitable for the needs of field application scenarios.
For the solar chargers with storage function, attenuation and safety risks are its fatal points
For the storage solar charger, because the solar energy and the cell are together, when it is used outdoors, the cell should also be exposed to the sun together with the solar energy. We know that the capacity of a cell decays faster at high temperatures. Perhaps after the cell is continuously exposed to the sun for 1 week, the original capacity of 10000mAh may be only 8000mAh left! However, the solar panel has a long life, and the cell cannot be replaced after its capacity decays, so the storage solar charger is basically useless after a period of time! For the pure solar charger, the power bank can be stored in a cool place or blocked from the sun, so its service life will not be affected!
Because the storage solar charger has the same cell structure as the power bank, and the cell is afraid of high temperature and cannot avoid the sun to achieve the purpose of charging. The electric cell often exposed to the sun is like a time bomb all the time, which has potential safety hazards of explosion. Because of this, few storage solar chargers are currently developed, and more than 99% of solar chargers exported abroad are pure solar chargers.
Through the above explanation, I believe that more travelers will have a deeper understanding of solar energy charging. How do you buy a solar charger that suits you? First of all, pure solar charger is a wise choice. Secondly, we should calculate the daily power consumption according to the electronic products we use every day, and then choose what rated power solar charger to use according to the power consumption. A pure solar charger plus a power bank is the solution for travelers outdoors!
