Low-Priced Solar Chargers Enter Market

Portable solar chargers to power your boat’s electronic devices and appliances not only provide a back-up source of power, but also help reduce the power drain on your boat’s main batteries.

Today, you can find a variety of solar chargers that not only match your budget, but also can power a variety of electronic devices and appliances on your boat. You can purchase solar chargers for as low as $20.00. However, these chargers are often just used to charge everyday flashlight batteries. For between $40.00 and $120.00 you will find solar chargers that can directly charge your GPS units, your cell phone, digital cameras and games. Around $200.00, solar chargers can be found that will charge or power larger boat appliances like coolers, stereos, and televisions.

The newer entries in the solar charger market include the Freedom Portable Power Device from Bruntron. Priced at around $90.00 and designed for the water, the new solar charger measures a tiny 5.7″x3″x0.88″ and weighs in at just 5.7 ounces. The solar chargers come complete with a tight-fitting carrying case that is water resistant and rubberized for extra durability.

When the case is opened, the solar panels of the Freedom are ready to directly convert sunrays into a 100 milliampere stream of electrical current. Besides receiving power directly from the sun, the solar charger itself can be recharged from a USB port on your laptop or with a DC wall adapter.

Giving the Freedom a longer charging life, are its on-board batteries, which are rated at 2200 milliampere-hours. With a peak current of 1000 milliamperes, the Freedom can also charge your electronic devices in a shorter amount of time than most solar chargers in its class.

The Solar Juice Bar is one of the lower cost and lower weight portable solar chargers currently on the market. Priced at a little over $40.00, it measures 5″ x 1.6″ x 3.75″ and weighs in at just 2.5 ounces.

On-board it has a 1500 milliampere-hour battery to store the energy from the sun, a DC adapter or your laptop. All of this gives the Juice Bar the capability to charge an MP3 unit so that it can provide 15 straight hours of playing time or completely recharge a mobile phone up to two times.

Notable about the charger is that it can recharge at very low levels of light, a light bulb or the moonlight will do. The Juice Bar charger also includes 12 of the most commonly used adapters needed to charge cell phones, iPods, MP3 players, and portable gaming systems.

The PowerMonkey-eXplorer AC/Solar Charger, priced at about $150.00 is used to power iPods, MP3s, GPS units, cell phones and portable game consoles such as the Sony Playstation and Nintendo DS and DS Lite.

The PowerMonkey solar charger without its solar panels measures 90 x 45 x 38 mm (1 inch = 25.4 millimeters) and weighs in at 83 grams (about 3 ounces). The solar slave device, that is the solar panels, which are rated at 200 milliamperes, adds another 83 grams of weight.

The internal batteries of the charger can store up to 2200 milliampere-hours of power and generate a maximum current output level of 700 milliamperes. This means that with about six hours of sunlight the charger can store enough energy to completely charge your cell phone relatively quickly.

The PowerMonkey also has a LCD display from which you can monitor the remaining battery capacity. Additionally, the PowerMonkey features short-circuit protection, over-charging protection and over-discharging protection. It is also wall socket compatible; that is it can be charged directly from your standard wall socket. It can also be charged from your computer through a USB port.