Solar AA battery charger

Using a solar AA battery charger is an incredibly efficient way of charging your batteries. Some of the biggest advantages of using a charging system lik this are as follows.

- Endless and abundant energy supply

- Save money on fuel

- Charge your batteries in the middle of a desert or on top of a mountain

- Take one more step away from dependency on fossil fuels

Things to look out for

If your considering investing in a solar aa battery charger, there are a few things you need to bear in mind.

The first things is does the charger you want to buy have a big enough solar panel. It may sound obvious but the larger the panel the faster the charge.

Make sure your AA battery charger is fitted with a charge cut off to stop the chances o damaging the batteries by over charging.

Is it portable? There areloads of fantastically designed battery chargers which are made for portability and there are some that are not. Make sure you know what you want before you buy.

At night solar panels cannot produce energy so you need to make sure that you charger has a cut off point to stop reverse energy flow.

How long does the charge take?

As a general rule, solar AA battery chargers work best in full sunlight where they can charge four batteries in about 15 hours. Currently solar panels only work at about 13% efficiency meanig that they only convert about 13% of the suns light into electricty and as a result are not as powerful as mains power.

How much do they cost

AA solar powered battery chargers have been around for a while and as a result they can be picked up relatively cheaply. At the low end you can get a fairly good charger for about $10. It is not worth going any lower than that as you will pay the price later.

For a bit more money, like $60 - $80 you can get a multi charger which utilises a usb port to charge phones, ipods, AAA and AA batteries and other small devices.

Recommended Chargers

The following solar chargers all come highly recommended by Think Solar Power, simply follow the links for more information.