SunLinq 6.5

In November 2006 I went on a month long trek through Nepal culminating in a summit attempt of Mera Peak at 6500 metres. I also completed a month long trek through Nepal in 2004, and knew that access to power for recharging was an issue. It was to be more of an issue this time as we were going completely off the tourist path. So I did some research on solar panels and recharging. I eventually found an American website www.21stcenturygoods.com which were selling solar panels. I figured out I would really only need the 6.5V model. After doing some calculations, I worked out it would take a full day to recharge my 6 AAA betteries for my head-lamp, and about two days to fully charge my Canon batteries.

The Canon batteries tended to tell me they were empty, when really they were just affected by the very low temperatures. Leaving them for a bit or putting in my underwear next to body warmth soon returned them to an operating state. Trickle charging my three camera batteries resulted in power all the time for my Canon. I was using my 17-40 fairly exclusively, and my friends' 70-200 2.8 IS (I WANT one of these lens), and power was always available.

The experience tells me I was a bit off with the AAA batteries guestimate, running out of batteries on the summit morning. Luckily our guide had spare batteries, and we were still ok to go.

How did I carry it? I ran some key rings though through the top eyelets, and then attached them to some clips in the top of my backpack. I took a shoulder-strap from my waist-bag, which I ran through the waist strap of my backpack (but behind me), and clipped this onto the bottom eyelets of the panel. I could then adjust the angle of the panel on my back depending on where the sun was. I found the AA and AA battery charger needed alomost the full 6.5 volts to actually charge whereas my Canon charger was a little more forgiving. I then had the charging apparatus in the top pouch of my backpack.

All in all, a brilliant investment, and I got asked about it everywhere we went. I even had a surreal conversation with some English guys at about 5500 metres on a high pass with a 500 metre drop on the left hand side to your death. "oh yeh, you just need a cigarette lighter adapter and you can charge anything"

I even have plans of building a receptacle for it into the the bike trailer I will be building for my new bike.