Solar light
 

Are there any lights out there that are solar, but provide heat ? not after sustained heat just a little glow of warmth for an hour or two ! ambient?

CB

Dont know about heat but I have some great security solar lights. Picked them up for around a tenner from b &m. They are ever ready and have really bright leds. Brought one then they reduced them! Now have every corner of garden lit up!

I did see some big spotlighty lookin low watt bulbs in Home Bargains for a fiver, thought about grabbing for dark corner of shed but dont know if they would give off heat?

I know Maplin do solar powered kits for camping etc but not sure what sort of power they would give and they are very pricey to just run one light off!!:)

we used to have a solar trickle charger for the battery on the boat, from the battery you could run electrics etc,. I think the battery would have been the big Leisure ones, car battery size, if you looked into something along those lines it might work, I think it had to be leisure rather than just a car battery as leisure can be charged over and over again I know our system gave us enough for what we wanted.

Solar technology is changing all the time but I don't think it would be easy for a solar panel to generate enough power to run a heating appliance. I'm guessing that you want the heat when there isn't much light in the sky?

Solar powered lights generally work by expoiting LED technology which produces a lot of light from a small amount of power. And of course LED lights don't produce heat.

A solar panel can be used to store energy in a battery but there are two problems there. The first one is that storing energy in a battery is very wasteful. The second one is that batteries are generally 12 volt or less and it might be hard to find any worthwhile heating appliance that works off 12 volts. Heaters are likely to be 240 volt appliances requiring a minimum of 13 amps.

ooh ok ! crikey its complicated isn't it ! I liked the idea about the battery source storing energy to output as heat, but see that's fruitless. Arcadia might come up with something someday maybe ! isn't it funny that tortoises store heat like little radiators and then ooooze heat from their shells when the sun has gone down. maybe they can generate their very own solar system one day !!

thinking again along the camping caravan idea can't you get a converter to run normal wattage items from a battery? our cool box had for example plug in adapter to run it on 240 from 12 if I remember right. I assume the battery would have to be connected to a normal socket the same as in the caravan and boat.

I'm sure PG is onto something here CB. You are only looking for a limited amount of heat so there must be an appliance that wouldn't drain the battery right away. I just don't know anyone that's done something like this for torts.

I know you can buy ceramic car heaters that plug into the lighter socket - wouldn't give light but ??may provide background heat if it could be rigged up straight to the battery but not sure how quick it would drain it etc as I am useless with this sort of thing but sometimes see gadgets that catch my eye!!
Here is another thought if using a greenhouse:
http://www.reuk.co.uk/Solar-Greenhouse-Heat-Sink.htm

That's a really interesting site Vikki. Though my back was aching just thinking about digging out that cubic metre of soil for the heatsink!

And the car heater that plugs into the lighter socket sounds promising - it must be running off direct current and in the right range power-wise or else it would drain the car battery too quickly.

If the heater was only on for a short time there is every chance that the trickle charge during the daytime would be enough.

What we need is for CB to be at the cutting edge here and get the necessary bits and give it a try!!