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The Battery Charger Cleverly Disguised As A Solar Path Light
Are You Prepared for the Next Blackout?
Did you know that you can charge your "AA" rechargeable batteries with those spooky solar lights outlining your driveway? Yes, you can! What does it take? Very little effort - they are already designed for charging batteries.
Solar garden or landscape lights provide little real light; however, they do have two very important features:
1. They won’t break your budget
2. They serve very well as simple solar charging units for AA size NiCad (Nickel Cadmium) or NiMH (Nickel Metal Halide) rechargeable batteries.
As of this writing, Amazon.com sells Moonrays 91225 Solar Powered Plastic Path Lights in a package of 10 for about $30. I haven’t used this particular model but most are about the same.
Most of these solar garden lights are powered by one or more replaceable “AA” sized NiCad batteries – which obviously means it can also charge them.
For $30 I get a charger for at least ten “AA” batteries. Not bad at all.
These solar garden lights may not be an important part of your property lighting; but if your regular battery charger is nowhere to be found or broken, they might bail you out and more than pay for themselves. In some cases, these little solar battery chargers can be lifesavers; in a blackout, you may need them to charge up your batteries. Using that solar light to charge batteries may be your only option. You might view it as the smallest possible solar backup emergency system.
If you do have them lighting your garden, that’s fine but keep in mind that they will keep on cycling every day and even the best rechargeable battery wears out in a year or two at this rate.
I prefer to keep a backup set and not use them at all until needed. Of course the batteries still need to be tested and charged every once in a while and not left to sit for long periods uncharged.
You’ll also have to check to see which kind of batteries are recommended for the model of solar path light you bought. Most recommend NiCad but some will take either.
There is a difference between how NiCad and NiMH batteries are charged and it appears that I should be able to charge NiMH batteries in any of these solar light chargers because they charge so gradually. These are probably “trickler chargers” and seem unlikely to be able to damage any battery.
Because of the extremely high capacity of NiMH batteries, it might take several days to fully charge them, depending upon light conditions. But I still have not tried it.
Another important point: Most of these lights (perhaps all of them) have a photo-sensitive switch to turn the light on and off at dusk and dawn. If you only use your solar patio lights as lights, it’s not a problem. But if you are going to use them as dedicated emergency chargers, you should disconnect the bulb to avoid discharging the battery.
This is a simple way to make sure you can recharge small batteries.
To do the more serious work of recharging my heavy-duty 90-pound lead-acid batteries, I built two 65 watt solar panels out of low-cost grade “B” solar cells, plywood and some acrylic sheeting. I used the design from the GreenDIYEnergy demonstration videos.
It was easy to make and works very well. You may want to take a look at the Guidelines for Sizing a Solar System before you start building your own solar project.
Intelligent AC-6 Lipo Charger Review with charge examples.
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