I have NO electrical experience and can't tell a watt from a volt. But I do ride an electric scooter (E-Max 2006) and would like to make my household electricity usage more green.
Is there a solar panel out there,( VERY user friendly), that connects to a battery I could use to charge my scooter, my iPods, my cellphones etc? Cost is ot an object, I'm really just wanting to make a small amount of my energy usage "off-grid". What do you think?
Yes, there is...I am sure others will chime in but I can tell you I have seen expensive ones and cheap ones including some from this often cited online store and several very cheap ones I saw made by Coleman at Walmart the other day (please note this was the second time I have ever walked into a Walmart, hated both times and don't plan to ever return...just for those of you keeping score).
If you do get one, be sure to post your findings so we can all benefit!
Cheers!
Vinnie
Broomfield, CO
Wal-Mart rules. Whatchoo talkin' bout, Basile? :P
Anyway, yeah. I've seen some pretty basic ones from Fry's and the like. I don't know how user friendly they are, though; I'm not really into solar panels other than for the novelty factor. They're just so expensive for the amount of power they put out. The one I saw at fries was a mere 15W (12V 1.25A) and cost like $150. :/
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This is kind of what I had in mind, but I wondered what else was out there
Sunforce 50044 60-Watt Solar Charging Kit
That is actually a pretty decent setup, but to practically use it, you may need to also buy a second battery pack so you can ride one, while the other charges. Dang inconvenient for the sun to not shine at night when we park our rides. At 60 watts, it should be able to charge a set of 12 ah batteries each day. A lot of folks want to mount a 15 watt panel to the bike, and don't realize it would take about a week to charge. Nothing wrong with that though if you only ride one day a week. I have figured that if I wanted to do that, I'd need a 100 watt panel for my 20 ah pack. The only real issue with this is, $300 bucks might be able to buy something else even more green, like a room ac that lets you turn off the central air, window treatments that cut cooling costs, tires that get your car better mileage, etc, etc. Since the green contribution of not using the car is so huge, saving the half a killowatt hour on the charger is pretty small. My work commute uses one $4.00 gallon in the car, but the ebike when I ride uses $.10 in electricity. That is a much bigger green impact than saving the dime to charge it.
Be the pack leader.
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