PieFedI bought a portable 30W solar panel to get ready for the apocalypse
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I’m only half kidding. I’m a bit of a prepper and I have lots of powerbanks and devices that charge from USB but besides idling my truck I really had no other way to charge any of them in case of a long-term power outage which seemed a bit of an oversight on my part.
Not like this solves the issue. 30 watts (under ideal conditions) isn’t much but it’s a start.
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Nice, that’s a good deal. If the panel just has a single USB, I would guess there’s no internal regulator; it seems to be one of those panels that just gives you the juice and relies on you to manage it. With the price point of that power bank, it doesn’t seem like it would have one either. I’m sure the spec sheet or manual will tell you for sure.
If you don’t care about that cheap power bank, then you can abuse it until it misbehaves then replace it. If you want to protect it, prepare for a bigger bank, or just tinker with your setup, a charge controller for a system your size should be around half the price of your power bank.
Those big Jackery boxes and others claim to not need one. But they’re also like $2,000. A charge controller is like $10. To me, it seems worth the $10, even if it does ultimately do “nothing”.