Phone powerpacks

[tarmactatt]

I've had a ?40W solar panel gathering dust in the shed after buying for a previous car which was left for long periods and used to drain the battery.

I found this device which will allow it to charge 3x 18650 cells directly then be used as a powerbank:

https://www.waveshare.com/solar-power-manager-c.htm

It's a more expensive option for stored capacity, but:

1) it allows me to use any panel within 6-28V (I'm sure I've a lightweight "fiberglass"/plastic one somewhere, I used to use it car camping to charge phones etc...)

2) built in MPPT (allegedly), so should maximise the production from said panels.

2) I've spare quality 18650 cells which are just sat at 3.7v on "standby", I might as well make use of them.

Edit! Whoops just seen max panel wattage of 10W which is lower than I thought it was, not to worry, I'll still use as a pass-through solar phone charger with a 10W panel (and roll the dice and plug in a higher wattage panel on cloudy days).

[YAFretter]

Deleted

[Yorkshire Andy]

Look at the afery nano

https://uk.aferiy.com/products/aferiy-p ... h-31000mah

[tarmactatt]

...is manually updated and some of the models its lists are discontinued, while it completely misses some recent contenders...

Yes it's certainly not perfect but it's about as good a compilation of information I've found, it's more comprehensive for 1x 18650 and 1x 21700 lights.

...any battery power will be useful in an emergency, but a device with a 2600mAh battery will only be good to recharge a moderately-powered cellphone once and by the same token not do all that much for your lights, radio etc. I'm only considering powerbanks that deliver more than 10000mAh -- three full charges on my phone....

Completely agree, a 18650 will max out around 3600mah and a 21700 5200mah but these are lower-current cells, so you can expect to draw perhaps 5A from them for c.15W. I've considered one of the single 21700 torches with USB C powerbank functionality but the reality is that the capacity is too low to be useful for anything other than topping a phone up by a few percent.

...I may be less concerned than you about slow charging...

I've followed the long-running issue of power shortages in South Africa with some interest, I can easily imagine scheduled power outages here in the event of reduced grid capacity. At the extreme end of the spectrum, I'd want 2h of power a day would be sufficient to charge all my electronic devices. For less catastrophic situations, I've been camping with a slow charging power bank before and been annoyed at having to leave it unsupervised next to a plug socket for so long to recharge, perhaps solar would have been a good option, I didn't think of that at the time!

... I may give up on the bulky torch-powerbank combos.

Personally, my preference is separate devices, there is too much compromise involved with a "jack of all trades" device.

[itsybitsy]

Thanks all, yeah, as suspected, not enough oomph in the tiny solar panels then. Think I'll just get another standalone powerpack.

I buy Anker powerbanks exclusively now and I've got about six of varying capacity. I have an account with Anker and I like the payment options as if I'm buying something a bit spendy I can use Paypal to pay over three installments. I also get anker credits to put towards other purchases and sometimes they offer vouchers and free gifts. Just my preference.

[tarmactatt]

Broadly related, I picked up a power supply from IKEA (SJÖSS 2 port USB-C) a few weeks ago for £10 - having only ever had the USB power supplies that come bundled with phones etc.

Extremely happy with the purchase, I've measured 2 android phones charging at 20W each simultaneously; there are sufficient flavours of USB-C protocol that everything I own seems to charge at near enough it's maximum rate.

My partner's laptop uses USB-C input and this IKEA adapter has sufficient power to (slowly) charge while using the machine for web browsing, spreadsheets, etc.

I know there's the mindset that slower = better for charging, but sometimes it's valuable to be able to be able to top up batteries a bit quicker!

[rik_uk3]

If you have a 12v battery its worthing picking up one or two of these, it turns your lovely big battery into a very big power bank; they work very well
(no connection to seller)

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/166645314905 ... R6KhidvsZg