The consumer-focused solar charging sector has been damaged in recent years by the influx of cheap China-manufacture red solar chargers that really don’t do what they say. This solution from Changers.com is in a different league. I had the pleasure of speaking to the founders today and got a bit of tech talk in. What I found out got me excited about doing another solar computing tour because the intelligent power pack is one of the best i’ve seen. I want to pair it with the Lenovo Lynx PC. Clovertrail is perfect for travel computing and the Lynx even charges via micro USB. In theory, one 4hr charging session will charge about 60% of the Lenovo’s internal battery for about 4hrs of work. 1hr charging for 1hr computing is a real groundbreaking achievement, if it works.
Here’s a video of the solution from CeBIT 2013. I’ll be following up with a view to seeing how far I can push it. Price: 150 Euro for the kit.