Are portable solar panels effective?
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2017-05-06
·
2,131 words · ~10 min read
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solar power is awesome and harnessing it is awesome too because it's just kind of
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usually around during the day especially in somewhere like mexico while we are
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right now well it can power devices if you have solar panels connected to them
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and it can power cities if you have giant networks of solar panels connected
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to them it can also make it kind of hard to see which is why i'm squinting
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from now until june 20th 2016 you can pre-order the MSI gtx 1070 founders
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edition through massdrop learn more at the link in the video description
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one thing that has gotten rather popular lately is the advent of solar panels for
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stuff like hiking or solar panels for charging things like small battery banks
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or your cell phone seven eight watt five watt solar panels that claim to be able
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to charge your device that sounds pretty cool and you see pictures of people
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strapping them to their backpacks and stuff and then going hiking through the jungle
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how applicable is that how well do those actually work that is the sole reason
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why we came to mexico okay that's not necessarily true but it is one of the
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things we'll be doing here the first two solar panels i want to introduce are the
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anker 8 watt and the all powers 8 watt they look actually almost identical but
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there are some minor differences they both claim 8 watts at 5 volts and 1 amp
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so i might have limited knowledge here but
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i don't think that's how that works but oh well we'll test that later on both of
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them have little cable loops where you can attach carabiners or something like
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that to attach it to your bag both have little pouches where you can manage
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things like maybe putting a battery in and both have a tethered usb port so you
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can move them around which is actually rather nice neither of them feature a
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kickstand neither of them feature a battery these are pretty bone standard
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solar panels the goal zero offering is a seven watt number which closes using
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magnets which is actually kind of nice has little loops for carabiners comes
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with two carabiners and has its pouch on the outside inside pouch there is a 12
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watt connection a usb connection a connection for their guide 10 which is
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another device that goal zero offers and a chain input so that you can connect a
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bunch of these together it also features no battery no kickstand and claims that
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it can charge your phone entirely in one to two hours so we're gonna see how true
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that is so when it comes to these solar panels they have lots of warnings and
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notices and whatnot on them telling you that efficiency will be hampered if you
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have a cloudy day if it's if it's not that sunny if it's different various
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conditions can affect it if it's not tilted towards the sun
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well we're in mexico it's pretty obvious where the sun is there are very very few
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clouds i really don't think that's going to be an issue so let's see how well
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they stack up to their claims so what i have here is a usb amperage voltage
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tester that is plugged into the unit and then hidden under it because it's
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incredibly hard to read in the sun then it's about noon-ish and the sun is right
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above us so i'm just going to hold the solar panel basically like this and try
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to read the reader which will be below it and i'll tell you guys the readout
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and then maybe we'll try to get some footage of it but that's going to be really difficult so the all powers is
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the first one that i'm testing and with a little bit of plus or minus on both of
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these calculations it's reading at about five ish volts or 4.9 and it's reading
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at about .85.9 amps the anker solar panel is
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running at about 0.9 amps and about 4.9
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to 5 volts unsurprisingly extremely similar to the all powers eight watt so
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the goal zero is a little bit harder to read because the connector is fixed into the
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body instead of being on a tether but we're running at about 4.9
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volts and waiting for it to switch over
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about 0.7 amps so not quite as strong as
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the other ones edel and i noticed some key differences
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between the goal zero panel and the anchor slash all powers panels in
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between testing one eds will notice that there's a much more glossy finish on the
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goal zero and a very much matte finish on the anchor and all power solar panels
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also the line density on the anchor and all power panels is much higher than the
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goal zero panel and the goal zero logo takes up more space than the anker and
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all powers one so there's just overall more panel and this big guy gets a solid
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five volts one amps in the sun so what one is this one i didn't introduce it
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well this is a 20 watt neck tech which looks like it's basically built in the
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same place as the all powers and anchor solar panels the reason why i wanted to
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show this off is the other smaller ones are often shown off as hiking solar
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panels but in not completely perfect conditions aren't always that great so
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this one did exactly five volts one amp in the sun which a little weird
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considering it claims to be a 20 watt panel my battery can take 1.7 amps but
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it's only outputting 1 amp if it wanted to be 20 watts as far as i can tell at 5
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volts because of usb 2.0 it should be two amps out of both of its output ports
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because it has usb 1 and usb 2. well usb
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number one and usb number two not usb version one usb version two don't worry
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about it anyways so i'm a little bit not stoked about the specs on all of these
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guys although if i'm doing something wrong in terms of calculations let me know in the comments down below but now
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let's test in the shade one of the most commonly shown off scenarios for these
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solar panels is just attaching them to the back of your backpack and going for
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a hike in the jungle or a forest that's going to cast shade on them for a huge
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percentage of the time and they are almost never going to be at an ideal
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angle so let's test that as well what i'm doing is i stepped into the shade
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just outside of the sunlight and i have them vertical while the sun is directly
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above us this is not an ideal position the crazy 20 watt that we just tested is
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running at 5 volts which is great kind of expected that and at about
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0.65 amps which is actually really solid
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considering how it's positioned that can probably be attributed to the fact that
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it not only has a third solar panel but it's also much larger per solar panel
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than the other guys the width is about the same but the height has increased a
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very noticeable amount this guy is much smaller standing in more or less the
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same spot the goal zero struggles to get to 0.1 of an amp sometimes going as low
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as 0.08 sometimes going as high as 0.12
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not very much you're going to struggle to charge a lot of devices on this the
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anchor doesn't fare all that much better 5 volts just like all the rest of them
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all the time its amperage goes at about 0.15 to 0.17
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still a little bit sketchy if you want to charge a lot of different devices my
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cheero tuff would reject all of these the all power is yet again proving that
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the anchor and the l powers are probably more or less the same thing having the
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same voltage and save amperage as the anchor so our camera is giving us a
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temperature warning and to be completely honest i'm done we've tested in the sun
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we've tested in the shade we've tested improper angles all that kind of stuff i
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don't think brand ended up being a huge factor here what ended up being a huge
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factor here was surface area the big
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massive one with three panels and a taller overall design did quite well in
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the shade and in the sun the anchor and the all powers which were more or less
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the same performed more or less the same
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and then the goal zero which had some glossy panels which as far as i know
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seems like a poor choice but i don't design these things so i could
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be wrong and had smaller overall panels didn't do quite as well as the others
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fairly straightforward one thing that i am frustrated about is the math on this
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kind of stuff maybe i just have no idea what's going on in terms of solar
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calculations you guys can let me know on twitter at luke underscore afr go there
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call me stupid let me know in the comments down below but i don't understand how 5 volts 1 amp equals 7
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watts or 8 watts and how 5 volts one amp and five volts one amp on one solar
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panel equals 20 watts i have no idea how that's supposed to work and we didn't
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get those calculations here what we did get here was like in ideal conditions
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five watts on all of them so yeah let me
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know comments down below another thing that i did find was that you're probably
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not gonna want these seven or eight watt panels
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i would recommend something like the 20 watt panel at a minimum why because the
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wattage number no because of the three larger panels that were on that charger
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giving you much more dynamic positions that you can be in it can be on your
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backpack at a not ideal position and still charge a fair amount off the sun
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another thing to pay attention to is what you're charging certain devices
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aren't gonna like being charged at not one full amp i know my chiro tuff is a
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little bit particular about different things because it wants to save the
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battery that's inside which is a good thing for a durable battery and the
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slightly less scrupulous chiro ingress charger didn't care as
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much and was able to charge off of all of them at pretty much whatever amperage
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you threw at it so pay attention to what battery you're pairing with these things
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get a bigger better panel and i hope you guys enjoyed the video
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if you liked it stay subscribed like it dislike it do whatever you want buy a
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affiliate code probably a bigger than seven or eight watt solar panel and
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check out the forum to discuss about how i probably don't know math because all
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of the companies did some weird math anyways i'll see you guys next time