Solar Power for BGAN, Laptop, etc...

Has a good reputation.

Thanks for the reply, Daniel. I’ve owned Brunton products in the past, and they’ve always served me well. I’d be interested to know if anyone here knows of a manufacturer that sells something comparable in quality/wattage. Just weighing my options. Thanks.

See
http://www.solarcell.fr/

Check out the gear from Goal0
http://www.goalzero.com

Thanks for the info PJ, Goal Zero has my attention now. Looks like they include an inverter with their arrays, too. Definitely a plus.

Robert- While I’d prefer to travel without solar power, many of the areas I’ll be in next year simply have no electricity available. I’ll be on the road for most of 2012 and there will be times when I have access to power and web, but those will be few and far between.

Max:

If you decide to go with Goal 0, check out working-woods on eBay and make an offer on the gear you want. From your description above, you could probably get by with the Nomad 27M, Sherpa inverter and Sherpa 120 battery.

hey max, how we doing fella?

i have had the same drama as your having, i needed something lightweight, robust & something i can count on & if not be able to fix in the field.
i have a samsung nc10, small lighweight & does the job, i have 2 os, windows for the mediaplayer & ubuntu (linux) for the work, linux has to be used due to the low screen resolution. it only runs at 19v too. i also have 2 500G passport hard drives to back up all my work. i also keep copies of all the programs & the os ready for any drama.
as for the solar power i use a solar gorilla which will charge up all of my electrical equipment, camera, laptop, gps, phones & so on. i have found this to work spot on. the solar gorilla charges the power gorilla which is a 20’odd volt battery. all of this equipment has been tested & use by me in some rather demanding environments, from freezing cold & hot & dusty & still keeps me going.

https://powertraveller.com/iwantsome/primatepower/solargorilla/

http://www.ubuntu.com/

hope this has been of some use all the best danny

Solar panels are small, light and have no power to even carge your mobile or they are very big, heavy and very expensive. My experience is if there is no electricity there is a car. You find cars nearly everywhere in the world. I use a 12 or 24 volt converter to charge my equipment from a car battery. They are powerful and cheap. Something like

http://us.kensington.com/html/10359.html

Maybe a better solution.

Wow, great advice from everyone. I’ll check out all of this stuff, and then report back with my decision.

Thanks.

Max, Hinrich is right.

At NPR reporters working in locations off the power grid often relied on car battery inverters, using the auto battery as the key element for power. Indeed sometimes they pulled the battery from the car at night and used it for editing, then replaced it the next morning to get it recharged. It was effective and simple, and the inverter was pretty lightweight (though dragging the battery inside took a bit of muscle). But fully-charged auto batteries can general a lot of energy.

You just had to be damn careful that you did not run the battery down at night! Good inverters have a meter to monitor that. Often the batteries belonged to drivers and fixers, who could be pretty grumpy when they couldn’t get going the next morning.

I would suggest – call and speak to the people at Brunton they were extremely accessible and helpful to me. I was in the Amazon,no cars,boats etc. to use just the sun for four weeks, it was very portable. What they suggested was perfect and worked well for laptop, camera, small video camera etc. no problems. In fact the indigenous people I visited now use it collect and store energy on a solar storage device for their GPS, Laptops and cameras and to run a TV for Video playback.

Angela- Thanks for the reply. Do you have a contact number/email address for the Brunton rep you spoke with?

Max . . .

Not pushing you toward Goal0, but be sure to search around for reviews on some of the Brunton stuff (I think the battery was one that got pretty poor marks).

Also, make sure that everything you buy will work together and that you won’t have any issues plugging in and recharging things like your Macbook or camera battery charger.

Sorry can’t remember was a while back – I just called the number on their site.

Hi all,

Check this out: http://www.voltaicsystems.com/
Saw something like this backpacks for the first time in Lisbon during one of EU summits. Portuguese government offered some of this packs to journalists and I had the opportunity to try on my laptop and it worked fine. Though not sure if this is what you´re looking for.
All the best,
Cheers,

I’m prepping gear for a five-month trip on a 35’ sailboat and will be using a combination of inverted power off the diesel engine and solar panels. I’ve been exploring Brunton and Goal0; have heard good things about both.

Manuel, I’ve briefly checked out the Voltaic Systems – great idea. Thanks for the heads up!

Max, thanks for starting this thread – great info here.

I’m prepping gear for a five-month trip on a 35’ sailboat and will be using a combination of inverted power off the diesel engine and solar panels. I’ve been exploring Brunton and Goal0; have heard good things about both.

Manuel, I’ve briefly checked out the Voltaic Systems – great idea. Thanks for the heads up!

Max, thanks for starting this thread – great info here.

Manuel- I was familiar with the Voltaic backpacks, but hadn’t seen their universal panel/charger combo. Cool stuff. And light, too.

Jessica- I won’t be pulling the trigger on a setup until late September. If you purchase yours before that, let me know what you ended up with.

Thanks for the great links.. I’m dropping into Tunisia/Libya and will definitely need solar power.