Here’s an excerpt of what Darren says in his review: “It used to be that when the battery in my camera, GPS, MP3 player or whatever electronic gadget I had with me would start to get low, I would have to seek out some kind of public business (a restaurant, supermarket, fast food chain, campground, etc) where they would let me plug in my charger and device. Then I would either have to sit there with the charger for several hours while it regained power, or I’d have to leave the charger and my valuable electronic item in the care of some stranger, and I’d be worried about it getting stolen, lost or broken while it was out of my care.”

Here are some nice shots of the charger in action. Note that when you are charging camera batteries from the Fuse 4W’s solar panels, you’ll want to disconnect the Voltaic battery so that all the power goes into the camera battery.

Read more about bicycle touring with solar in our guide.

Here’s Jones from Empower leading a training session on the solar lighting kits.

The goal is to provide a clean, safe, and inexpensive source of power for lighting and cell phone charging, and the results from an earlier deployment of Voltaic lights have been fantastic. The solar lights will allow for extended working hours and replace or greatly minimize the use of kerosene and firewood. In addition, villagers are helping to build up assets in the Zatuba Community Bank. Each customer pays the full cost (excluding shipping) amount for the light over six months and those funds go into the community bank. For their part, Empower provides the capacity building, pays for transport and monitors the systems to make sure they are being fully utilized.

Extended work hours and savings on lights
Abshai (pictured above) purchased one of the first lights and phone charging systems from Voltaic. Prior to lighting, Abshai’s work day had to end at 5 as the village got dark. He is now able to work 6 extra hours before going to bed, and now he can work in his shed grading his tobacco up until 11pm without even knowing it. Before solar, he used to spend MK2000 ($5) on batteries for small torches and kerosene for small smoke producing lamps. This was one of his biggest expenses.

Less expensive phone charging
Phone charging is now simple and free. Previously, Abshai paid $0.30 per phone charge.

Permanent setup
The battery in the system is portable, but the panel is mounted semi-permanently on the thatched roofs of the homes. This ensures that the panel is pointed towards the sun (the installers are trained by Empower) and is generating power whenever sun is available.

Abshai has told Empower and Voltaic that he wants to be able to run multiple lights and charge multiple phones at the same time from his system. We’re working on the components that will make this happen and hope to have these in production and in Malawi soon. If you’d like to help send more solar lighting kits to Malawi, get your own lighting kit here.

His bicycle is pretty tricked out. Two of our 16 Watt portable solar panels are “attached to the long-tail platform of my bike for the project (these would be used to power the electronics for the project). The bike in question is a 700c Surly Long Haul Trucker frame extended using an Xtracycle Free Radical bike extender.” The solar panels are being used to power a GoPro camera, lights and a tablet.

Follow Joseph live here.

Here’s some of the homemade chalk he’s made. He estimates he’ll need about 200 pieces to draw the 400+ mile circle.

Here’s the setup…

We started with this Jamstand for DJs and cut down the legs a bit with an angle grinder so it would fit on our bicycle trailer.

The Jamstand is mounted on this cheap and simple bicycle trailer.

We made a frame for 4 of our 16.8 Watt portable solar panels to get gives you 67 Watts @ 18V.

We can control the angle to point them directly at the sun for fast charging.

The panels feed into 4 V60 universal laptop batteries in this lockable drawer. They have 60 Watt hours of capacity which translates into up to 8 smartphone charges. With a solar panel connected, you can keep them charging all day.

The USB output is capable of 2A output, so split that to get 8 1A outputs. We went out to a mix of MicroUSB, Apple 30 Pin and Apple Lightning Adapters mounted on a nice soft felt surface (we don’t want to scratch anyone’s new S4).

During this test run over Brooklyn cobblestones, we realized that we didn’t have support for the drawer so that had to be beefed up.

We’re ready to charge!

Email us if you’re interested in renting this mobile charging machine.

We started by going over the Brooklyn Bridge.

At the first tower, there were lots of kind folks from Transportation Alternatives and KIND Snacks. We also downed some cold brew from our favorite DUMBO coffee maker, Brooklyn Roasting Company.

Next, we headed over to the Staten Island Ferry Terminal. Definitely fewer bikers coming off the ferry than going over the bridge, but that gave us time to become a member of Transportation Alternatives.

Finally, headed back over the Manhattan bridge to DUMBO. The re-fueling station on the Manhattan Bridge was packed and the stream of bikers coming over the bridge was nonstop.

If you’re interested in renting out this solar charging beauty, please email us.

20 students at UW-Madison recently built a solar charger as part of IEEE Student Projects.  The goal of the program is to provide students hands-on experience with practical design skills as many of the students had never before been exposed to electronics assembly tools and techniques.

A solar photovoltaic (PV) charger for smart phones and digital music players was one of several possible student projects.  A Voltaic 3 Watt solar panel provides power to a DC-DC buck-boost converter to regulate output at 5V, the USB standard. The participating students did their own PCB layout and assembly based on a schematic developed by the project officer.

The chargers worked as intended and charged MP3 players, iPhones, and Android phones, including newer models like the Galaxy S3.  Students even learned how to configure USB pins to get different devices to work (welcome to our world!).

The Altai region includes steppes as well as a diversity of important mountain landscapes including lakes, mires and forests. It is an area of international importance for biodiversity, and supports a number of globally threatened species. Arita will be connecting the scientific and local traditional knowledge to help future conservation for the area. We wish her success and look forward to some spectacular pictures, hopefully she will be graced with a rare sighting of the elusive snow leopard!

We developed a set of adapters that allow you to connect the AC Charger that came with your laptop to our V60.

If you already have one of our V60 batteries, determine the letter of the adapter that connects into your laptop with the best fit. Then get the corresponding adapter from the section entitled: “Adapters for Connecting Laptop AC Charger to V60 Battery – M 5.5 x 2.1mm to:“. Currently, we don’t have AC charger adapters to match all of our laptop adapters, so be sure you find the right match for your laptop. You can also pick up the set of 6 for $15.

Sorry, this doesn’t work if you have a MacBook.