Instant gradification

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ancient puffer

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Okay...just took at look at Harbor Freight. Mounting terminals, hardware, etc. -- I'm so not the handy type. Thanks, though. I think I'll just stick with plugging the charger into the wall.

I hear ya on THAT! That's why I also have enough batteries to power my grands/minis for at least a week. They're my first line of defense, it would have to be a VERY prolonged outage to be worth fooling around with solar panels.
 

FeistyAlice

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Some of the battery chargers come with a plug for use in car 12v sockets or emergency batteries with 12v sockets. I have a couple of different Xtars like that. Our electricity goes off a lot. I hate to pull out the generators if it's off for only a day or less. The best insurance we have for always having vape batteries is having a bunch and diligence keeping them always charged. I have a small, emergency radio with flashlight that can be charged solar, plug in, or wind-up. It has a USB port to charge cell phones and such. It might even charge batteries with the Xtar that came with USB charging cable but I think that charger can only do the shorter batteries. I haven't looked at it in a while. Also, the wind up radio that can charge phone probably puts out low amps so probably won't be good for charging or running things much bigger than cell phone.... but wanted to put it out there. I'm going to check into larger wind up power sources. The concept works very well for small drains.

Feisty Alice

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ancient puffer

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To my mind, there's two scenarios here.

One is charging directly from solar, and I doubt anything you can hold in your hand has the capacity to do that, even given, at best, 10 hours of sunlight. You need an output of around 4.2v and around 500mA to 750mA (what my charger puts out)

The other is charging a "holding" cell from solar. Once that's topped off, you can recharge an ecig battery from that using your normal charger and an inverter (changes the battery's DC current to AC current that your charger likes). I haven't conducted a field test, so I have no idea how long it would take to charge a 12 battery from a "drained" condition (12v batteries should never be drained below 10v). I would expect hours at a minimum, maybe even a full day in ideal conditions.

A 12v battery, going thru an inverter, to power your normal ecig battery charger, could easily handle it. But I'd guess a small solar charger would have to be recharged several times or run for a few days just to recharge one ecig battery.

I'm using the same approach as Alice noted above, I can charge my ecig batteries using the car if I have too, but you can't have too many already charged (I keep 9 18650's charged at all times). My solar panels are really for lights, TV, etc. If we were without power, I doubt I'd divert any of that mission critical energy for ecigs.
 

debzcf

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During Hurricane Sandy, most of the cell phone towers were kaput. Verizon was the only working tower -- I can't tell you the amount of time I spent in my car keeping my business cell charged. My Blackberry was our lifeline -- I kissed the phone a lot. At the time, I was still smoking stinkies. THAT was a disaster.
 
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