There is nothing much worse than a power cut when you are watching your favorite movie on a Saturday evening. When this happens you wish you had some sort of a backup power…! Things could soon be your way all you need is a solar charger. No, I don’t want you to go to the market and get an expensive machine installed on your roof top, rather Popsci has an interesting way by which you can make your own solar charger that can give you enough power to watch your favorite movie twice.
Estimated cost of the DIY Solar Charger: $150
Estimated Time: 3 hours
All that you need to make a solar charger are:
Bamboo Scraps
Five watt Sunforce
12-volt solar panel
Quarter-inch plastic mono plug
Solar DC charger controller for solar panel
12-volt 12AH rechargeable battery
Four feet of 18 gauge wire
Two female terminal disconnects
15-amp DC panel meter
Reese Towpower connector
Cigarette-lighter adapter
As you see from the above parts that there is nothing involved in the DIY that will ruin the atmosphere around you, the only natural thing used is bamboo, which is renewable and grows back quickly.
Detailed Procedure:
The first step in the whole design is to make the case. Just glue up the bamboo flooring scraps together to design a box. Cut holes in the box so that the air can pass through it and build frames to hold the DC charger controller and the battery.
Attach the panel carefully considering the latitude for optimum charging. Leave some space between the panel and the box for a good airflow.
Snip off the cigarette-lighter plug and solder the quarter-inch mono plug onto the “Y” adapter. Insert the mono plug into the 12-volt output outlet on the controller. Connect all four power leads from the battery and the solar panel to the controller’s input terminals. Hook up the meter to the controller’s input terminal for the solar panel. For more power, attach additional solar panels, and add extra batteries-but don’t exceed the 12-volt rating of the controller.
Test all connections with a volt- meter before attaching the battery. Connect the red wire with a female- terminal disconnect to the battery’s positive (+) terminal, and connect the black wire to the negative (-) terminal. Place the station in the sun, and plug something in.
Via: Popsci
