i was listening to a 2001 repeat of Coast to coast Am and a caller mentioned seeing these and that the company was bought out and he hasn't seen them since. i did some googling and didnt see anything and was wondering if we can use our collective searching powers to find these.

Sounds like a silly idea to me. Batteries usualy are in enclosed areas. Now, a solar powered charger...

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You don't have to think I'm right, as long as you think.

the idea behind them was that when they were drained you could just throw them in your window and they would charge back up. i see huge potential for camping here.

Aren't batteries quite fussy about the amount of current they receive when recharging?

I would think the amount of current the photovoltaic cells produce would fluctuate a lot depending on intensity of sunlight received and temperature.

Maybe you would need somekind of power buffer in between the panels and the battery?

This idea makes almost as much sense as a solar powered torch.

I'm guessing you mean 'torch' as in 'flashlight'. Yeah, I've seen them.

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You don't have to think I'm right, as long as you think.

Naa, if you recharge a battery slowly enough you can pretty much keep chargining it indefinately. The problem is that the batteries would also charge very slowly. I can see it working though.

If allelse fails a small zener diode could just dump excess current when the voltage gets too high.

Usualy that's because they don't have solar panels on them, you think?

They wouldnt be terribly efficient if the whole battery was wrapped in PV cells, as cells not in sunlight would be a drain on the system. A strip down one side could work, provided they were able to supply a usable level of charge

Sean