What's your favorite Solar Charger?

Pollster1 :" Actually, that is what I was looking for.
It’s the classic solar heating used for a greenhouse, just applied to a home."

I imagine a Preppers 'dream' home as being somewhat remote location, sitting on a rise in a hill facing to the Southeast exposure.
On the southern slope, a black sidewalk, 'encased' in glass panels allowing the rising heat to warm a greenhouse, or a heat exchanger system.
The back wall of the greenhouse, made of darkened stone would serve as a "solar gain mass" to retain accumulated heat for when it was needed at night time coolness.
Back in the day (1960's), Helen and Scott Nearing (then, both in their 80's) used solar mass to grow year round crops in their solar heated, earth bermed grenhouse/garden.
Much solar gain information, limited then, came from the funky MotherEarth News and the Whole Earth Catalogue.

I picked up an Allpowers Solar Panel off Amazon, works great, works with my USB charger for one of my ham rigs, and it was great for the price. I did a video review on it a while back. It works great. Here is the vid

https://youtu.be/PW53bW4kB20

Also have a more portable battery with solar, this one works very well, smaller panel so it takes longer to top off but it works very well and will charge up a laptop or tablet as well

https://youtu.be/1OVye6LVGs0

I imagine AC (as one example) will be a luxury I would skip if the power went down for a long time.

I have a couple of 5000BTU window units I can easily run. Of course I have a small house.

There is a *key* consideration though.
This is a “low thermal mass” structure.
It is not suitable for a greenhouse because the temperature gets much too high during the sunny days, and gets much too low at night. (At night it goes to ambient temperature).
It’s value is that the day heat is available for use and there is no expense for insulation or thermal mass, making it incredibly cheap.
I am going to try to modify it to allow use as a greenhouse during early spring though, with ventilation and shade. Can’t say yet how that will go.

So don’t think of a greenhouse- it’s more like a solar furnace.

Was very easy to do in my rural area. It’s about 4’ by 16’ and extends over the stoop and along the wall to a window.
Open the door and window and the cold air flows out and hot flows in. I added a fan in the window that helped.
I used greenhouse plastic installed on removable frames for most of it, regular plastic for parts at the ground, and clear vinyl for some windows.

I bought a Renogy 100-watt panel.

It is awesome, and produces current even in the shade.

Not disappointed at all.

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