One traveler who frequents Africa wonders whether it’d be practical to carry a portable solar charger rather than trucking along extra batteries.

Jack in Chicago writes:

Hi, I love traveling and find myself in situations where I am days away from electricity. Not wanting to carry around a million batteries, I have been trying to research other options. The most practical thing I have thought of so far is solar. I travel a lot through Africa, thus plenty of sunlight. So what advice do you have about either solar charging or other options? Thank you…I have looked into the Brunton SolarPort 4.4 charger but am not sure if it would provide enough power for a DSLR. I’ve got a Canon 40D.

Thanks,

Jack

 

 

Hi Jack-

 

Thanks for your question.

In most cases, if you can get away with bringing additional batteries and simply recharging each time you’re near a power source, that’s the way you should go.

But if you’re in a remote village for weeks on end and you need to generate juice for your camera batteries in the absence of locally available power, solar is pretty much what you’ve got to do. You’ll have to deal with two major drawbacks: Time and money.

Charging things with affordable solar panels small, light and durable enough to tote along with you is generally a pretty slow process. If using a common, 10-watt consumer panel that operates on the “trickle charge” method–meaning it sends electricity directly to your camera battery rather than storing it in an on-board battery–you’d want to plan for a minimum charge time of about four hours per battery in broad daylight.

The Brunton SolarPort 4.4 you’re considering, which, as its name suggests, has a maximum output of 4.4 watts, wouldn’t be powerful enough for you. That charger is better suited for the smaller lithium-ion batteries you’d find in an iPod or standard cell phone.

Brunton makes excellent equipment and does offer some larger though still durable, portable panels that would definitely get the job done, but as you may have seen they’re considerably more expensive: The Solaris 12 sells for $409. Their waterproof, highly portable SolarRoll 9 would also work quite well, but it runs in the neighborhood of $480.

There are plenty of other companies that make less-expensive portable solar panels–a quick Google search can turn up quite a few–so if you figure you’re pegged to solar power I’d suggest shopping around a bit and asking specialists how quickly the devices would charge the BP-511 in particular.

Still, we’d encourage you to see if you can get away with bringing along extra batteries and charging when you can. Depending on where you are in Africa, sitting in one place for four hours with an unfurled solar panel might not be a viable option. 

The BP-511 is small and light enough that bringing say, eight–which would give you more than 8,000 shots as long as you’re not operating in freezing temperatures–wouldn’t do much to cramp your style. Also, you can find generic BP-511 equivalents for less than $5 each on Amazon.com. Just remember that you can no longer pack spare lithium-ion batteries in checked luggage; they need to stay in your carry on.

Best of luck in your travels!

 

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