rekmeyata

Kayaking is a bit different than cycling in that you don't need to recharge bike-mounted GPS, headlights, and taillights, plus, as you said, cell phones, so batteries could be easily carried; but this sort of gear on bikes are rarely powered by disposable batteries so we need a method of recharging them, so we either need to use a dyno hub, wall outlet, power bank, or solar, or a combination of one of those with something else.

The Rav Solar charger I have doesn't weigh a lot, and so far it's worked out great combined with a small power bank. I save the fully charged power bank for cloudy days when the solar won't work, then when a sunny day occurs I charge the power bank with the solar charger. Like a dyno hub, I can use the solar charger while riding, I simply strap it onto the rear or front bike rack on top of my camping stuff and charge whatever I need to be charged while riding.

The other thing I learned about dyno hubs is that they seem not to last that long according to Forums I read, they seem to only average around 15,000 to 18,000 miles, and for those riders reporting that was about 5 to 6 years of use averaging 3,000 miles a year. That was based on the Shimano brand, so not sure how long the other brands last, but the SON hubs website claims they will last the life of the bike...not including bearing replacement of course. It seems most people buy the Shimano, probably because they're the cheapest, couple of reports of failure occurred as soon as 2,500 miles and one as long as 20,000 miles. Most solar panels are good for 20 to 30 years of unlimited miles.

gauvins

Came more or less to the same conclusion wrt solar. Well -- we live comfortably for months on end, off the grid, with 3x70W solar panels, so I certainly am a believer in solar. But for bike touring... I came to think that we either travel in an energy rich area so we can splurge on devices and recharge our power bank(s) every few days, or in a more problematic area where we limit our consumption to bare essentials. Which translates into something like 1 Wh/day to power a Fenix 5 for navigation, and a couple of hours of low powered headlamps. We probably have an autonomy of a month+ with our power bank.

Tourist in MSN

Congratulations, that is quite an achievement. A decade and a half ago a co-worker and his wife decided to build a new house, it was located far enough from a power line that they decided to go with solar to save money. They bought a propane generator as a backup. Later added a small wind generator.

At times my co-worker would complain a bit about having to get up at 2am and figure out why the propane generator was not automatically coming on when their batteries were low - and it was below freezing outside. Their inverter would shut off if the battery voltage was low and their furnace needed electricity to run.

My powerbank for touring is 44 watt hours, I am assuming that on average I produce 10 to 12 watt hours a day with a dynohub when on reasonably flat terrain, probably half that on more hilly terrain and nil on really hilly days.


Kayaking away from cell service, I don't have taillights, but still have headlamp for my head in the campsite. But the big power drain is the GPS, I use just as much power for the GPS kayaking as biking. I now bring enough camera batteries that I do not need to worry about charging them.

GPS is not in the photo, it was much closer to me where I could easily reach it. But it was there and I referred to it every few minutes to see where I am on my route. As I see my bearing change on the GPS map, I can get a new bearing and use the compass to steer so that I do not have to constantly look further down at my GPS. But, I still needed to check my GPS every few minutes to make sure I am still on course, as my course was never a straight line all day.



You never know when the fog is going to come in, two hours before I took the above photo in fog, there was no fog when I started out at sunrise.



Also carry a marine band radio but I try to only use that for weather reports twice a day so that the batteries in it last for the whole trip.

gauvins

(sorry to disappoint, but this is on a sailboat. Similar strategy, this being said -- first of all, reduce energy expenditures to a minimum. We no longer have to run the engine. Blissful )

rekmeyata

I don't know how many watt-hours I use a day, but when I tour I do use both my front light and rear light during the day, so those have to be charged when I get to camp, along with the cell phone. I only take my lower lumen headlight not the one that uses AA bats because that one doesn't have flash mode. I have yet to buy a GPS so nothing going on there yet, but that is a future possibility. My watch is automatic, with no battery to replace or charge, So I don't think my power requirements are that much but I do need to charge up the lights and phone, neither of which run off of AA batteries. The cell phone since I put in a new battery will only be at the most 10% discharged, but the lights could be around 90% discharged.

I don't even know how I could calculate my watt-hours used.

I have a small flashlight as well but like I mentioned before that runs off of 3 AAA bats and I carry a spare set, AAA's don't weigh much nor take up much space.

gauvins

Most devices will give you the battery capacity expressed in mAmps. You multiply by the typical voltage of a lithium battery (something close to 3.8) and you obtain the capacity expressed in Wh. Then you try to figure out how many hours or days your device works on a charge. For example, my Fenix 5 has a 240 (or so) mAmp battery, i.e. close to 1Wh. It'll last for several days (difficult to say how many exactly, depending on how it is being set, but certainly 2, perhaps as many as 5). My headlamp is rated at 2.4 Wh and can last anywhere between a couple of hours up to several weeks depending on how many lumens I want/need. In my experience, a phone battery will hold 12Wh and last a few hours if the screen in on at all times, or a couple of days in standby mode. A laptop could be close to 60Wh. etc.

Then, it is useful to compare your energy budget to your power bank's capacity so you get an idea wrt autonomy.

Tourist in MSN

I mentioned above that someone put a headlamp (for your head, not bike) on a free shelf which I got. Takes one AA battery. That is one of the best camping electrical tools I have, I usually can go over a week on one Ladda 2450 mah battery. That is somewhere between 3 and 3.5 watt hours.

My waterproof point and shoot camera, not sure on capacity but I have started carrying five batteries for it. That will last over two weeks, but I do need to charge some of them if a tour is over a month long.

Charger that I use for my camera batteries, is this tiny little one.
https://www.amazon.com/Universal-Cha...dp/B001RGYZJS/

But I learned that my phone has some smarts in it that will prevent it from operating on a battery that was charged with a different device other than the phone,which was a bummer to learn. Now have two batteries that won't function. Be careful about external chargers for phone batteries.

vmaniqui

I have this light and love it. I charged the battery and it's been 9 months and the charge is still 100%.

znomit

Thats quite big compared to this one... will charge NiMH or lithium.
https://olightworld.com/olight-uc-magnetic-usb-charger

Tourist in MSN

Looks very small, but looks like it only works on cylindrical batteries.

Hanging from my USB charger are two older Eneloop two cell AA chargers (the white box shaped things) and my Li Ion charger charging a camera battery. The Li Ion charger clamps onto the battery like a clothespin.



Your charger won't work with a flat camera battery that has tiny little recessed rectangular contacts on a flat surface.

Photo is four and a half years old, I now use the AA/AAA charger shown above in post number 20 instead of the Eneloop ones.