I’m more interested in the technology, the innovation, either a newer better or at least a cost reduction.
The two breakthroughs of solar and nuclear fusion, then feeds into nanotechnology then we’re gods.
If you can bring solar down in cost so it becomes embedded in most items, we only need to capture a tiny fraction of the sun energy which hits the earth and it’s then nearer free energy, but not reliable. If you then top it up with nuclear fusion reactors you then have cheap and reliable and safe energy.
selected a standard port, like a typical 12V barrel.
let whatever voltage the solar panels wanted to output, so would vary 2V to 12V depending on sunshine
make a Powercore which took the variable output of the solar panel and converted it to the internal cell’s required voltage, typically 3.7V although it would be most efficient to make it 7.8V
USB PD output of the Powercore.
a generic cable between these to allow a 3ft-9ft distance. This lets the Powercore be in shade
make the Powercore IP rated to handle damp surfaces, light passing showers.
offer a range of Powercore to suit capacity, budget, weight uses. Some could offer pass thru.
offer a range of solar panels, 2, 3, 6 panels. Make them use the same input and output barrel connector so you can daisy chain multiple to aggregate power collection.
offer one cable which did USB PD directly to allow not using Powercore for lightweight scenarios.
I believe they already planned this for the Powerhouse so just extending into simpler DC as most don’t need AC.
It would be very cheap to make the only part expensive would be the DC-DC boost converter to handle a range of input and convert to cells voltage. That is well within Anker’s capability, but it would add, say, $5 to the electronics costs.
The solar panels would be likely OEM branded and use generic current solar technology, like they did with the 21W and 15W one they sold/sell.
Then as these are all my ideas, pay me in sending me a set of the products to test.
Well you’d actually have a few Fusion reactors near the sea coasts as they use sea water as fuel (heavy hydrogen, deuterium from heavy water) and these are more efficient if larger. Extremely safe as if anything goes wrong they simply stop working.
Solid state batteries store energy for cars, bikes, etc.
Solar is done using very large arrays in the low population desert areas in each continent and then pumped to the population areas.
So the car would be a traditional electric car, just with better batteries. Sorry no Deloreon.
The only thing stopping us are the vested interests in expensive fuel.
Yep, unless the oil companies, and countries, start to run out, clean environmentally friendly sources of power will never become significant or cheaper to the consumer.
Until there is a battery technology improvement I’ll stick with the view all items with batteries you cannot replace must be an item you can use daily, pocketable, low cost. There’s plenty of low cost items you can put in a battery device like a $3 Qi loop, or a speaker.
But until such battery technology improvement then items like this will sit unused and die as a wasted investment.
price $110. This product as it has multiple sources of heat (sun, wireless, light) will age fast if used. I cannot see a warranty. I don’t see mention of any of life extension battery technology. I’d expect this if used regularly to die in a year to 2 years.
weight. Larger items get used less.
light. Plenty of flashlights are a good idea, they are with you more often because they are small, pocketable. This unit will barely ever with you when there’s a use for it.
solar, those cells are so small it will suffer from fake charging, the voltage is high enough to light up an LED but not enough to charge cells, unless you place in strong sunshine for a long time and so age the cells. These small panels in less than ideal conditions either have too low a voltage to charge cells or if you run it through a boost converter the energy loss of the conversion exceeds the energy from the sun. So it doesn’t actually work most of the time. Link below to prove the problem.
a cell in the sun performs less well, see below.
you’d be better getting the separate components of a larger solar panel you carry when off-grid in sunny times, and a flashlight you carry most times, and a portable charger. The portable charger would get used more as smaller and when it does a few years later you buy another and the solar panel is still working.
These 3 separate products could be made better, the DC-DC in the solar panel and the DC-DC in the Powercore together lose energy, if there was a solar compatibility between these products then they’d work more efficiently when connected.
Link to how fake charging happens.
Watch at 5m28s.
Electronics explained:
to charge cells you feed them a voltage a little higher than their current voltage, typically empty cell 3.6V rising to 4.2V charged.
in strong sunshine you can get 5V.
in weak sunshine you don’t, may be 1V.
So in weak sunshine you must pass the voltage through a boost converter, these raise the voltage and lower the current. The boost converter is not efficient and consume energy. So there is a minimum solar energy where the boost process needs more than input and won’t work. This state of too little energy to work happen more on smaller solar panels, so they’re useless most of the time. Observe in the video how a 2/3rds sized panel produces 1/6th the output because of the fixed cost of boost converter.
but an LED is not a converter, you can connect one right off solar panel and it will light up , so in a typical solar battery combo you see the LED and think it’s charging but it isn’t. Fake charging.
Example illustration of a boost converter efficiency, observe it nosedives at lower voltage and higher voltage and is best when close to cell voltage. This is where I see the Anker opportunity, don’t do two DC conversion which in weak sunshine gives no energy, align the electronics to do it once.
Observe how the powerbanks when in sunshine worked half as good, it’s because heat makes cells slower.
The example competitor product shows exactly the problem
They show how the LED comes on but it doesn’t charge, what is happening is the heat of sun is interering with the charging chemistry, slowing recharge and accelerating ageing.
I’ve heard of a few tests from creators and it seems to be true in general (I guess if you watched a TON of YouTube then it may be different).
Youtubers can look into the advanced analytics and crunch a few numbers to see how true this is for them. But in general the difference is pretty significant.
The idea of a battery and solar is with current battery technology a bad idea.
Lithium batteries charge slower, discharge slower and age faster under heat. The sun is warm.
A small solar panel causes a long time in the sun.
Duh.
Bad implementation
They made it black so it’s heats faster, white would be better.
They added light which makes it thicker so it traps in heat more.
They ruggedized it so it traps in heat more.
They put on an LED which lights when itt see light, not an indicator of charging, actual charging would require sufficiently strong light there is a net energy to the cells after losses in the electronics.
Bad company
I don’t know about this particular LitSolar company so I cannot speak about them. I see the negative reviews, but Anker gets negative reviews too and have to read in detail if bad company or bad user.
Use ad blockers for sites with obnoxious popup ads, not YouTube! Help out the creators.