I have been looking at solar chargers for small batteries. A fistfull of rechargables could do the duty of a drawer full of expendables. Do you have any experience with these or recommendations?
/johnny
By far the best rechargeable batteries are Eneloops, al Eneloos are great, but you may as well read (very) carefully to make sure that you are getting the 3rd generation instead of the 2nd, they will say that they are good for 1800 cycles instead of 1500, and they will operate down to minus 4 degrees F.
For solar chargers I have a couple of $26.00 ones that I bought for almost nothing, they work but they are slow and only do 2 each at a time, for me that is plenty adequate for desperate times but if you want something better, Goal Zero gets a lot of positive reviews.
I would just go to Amazon and REI and read reviews, also remember that a charger with a cigarette lighter plug would keep your batteries charged, and buying a solar battery trickle charger for you auto would make that practical for even when you had quit using the car.
I've done intensive research on this and written articles about it as to what batteries to buy and what solar charger to get. If you want this info., send me a Freepmail and I'll direct you to those articles.
Smokin, search and you will find em. They handle from AAA to Ds, and sometimes even larger. We are testing out a small one now. Wifey bought it, much smaller, so not that impressed, but IIRC, a bigger unit may run about 50 bucks. I think hers were maybe 25$.