a leisure battery would be under £100 and the solar trickle charger a lot less with shopping around I know Halfords used to do them and you can buy them on line, the converter wouldn't be much so I suppose you could do it that way for a few hundred if not less. I'd say a caravan place would be the best to ask about connecting the battery to a plug socket, but once done should last for years and you could always charge the battery conventionally every so often and of course it could be used without having mains electricity outside. We made a simple solar heater for our 'easy up' swimming pool it consisted of a coiled black hosepipe mounted onto a piece of board and covered with Perspex or glass, the sun would heat up the water running through the hose which came from the pool and it was hot when it went back into the pool after going around the pipe. I think they now sell something very similar, the more hose the better but it only really worked on a sunny day, the ones you can buy have a proper solar panel which should work in daylight although not as well as a sunny day.
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