Use solar panels to save money charging Iphone & Ipad

So this is a bit of a laugh about a competition I replied to.

The competition was provide your best tips to save money.

About 40 people replied with one of more tips.

Most of the tips were related to putting all your coins in a jar and take them to a bank.
Another is looking through shopping catalogs before shopping.

Now the winning answer was something a long the lines of:

"I use my solar panels while the sun is out to save money charging my Iphone & Ipad."

If you don't know (and guess the judging panel didn't) it costs a few dollars a year to charge these products daily.

So it seems the best was to save money is doing something that saves you a few dollars a year.
I won't go into the fact the apple products are a rip off & the competition was by a bank.

 

Haha you sucked me in with the title!

The father in law used to come along and turn the laptop charger off all the time because the green light was using power when we weren't using the laptop! I tried but in the end just got used to turning the power point on all time!

Side note, those solar panels are very cheap and easy to make diy, instructions on you tube

 

The savings made over the life of the ipoo would pale into insignificance when compared to the set up cost of the solar panels.

 

I saw a neat doco where the guy who stars in Dexter went to Bangladeshi villages with zero electricity. Compete poverty. Gas-cyclinder cooking only; darkness in the huts at night.

But locals in the villages have managed to produce 1 tiny 30cm solar panel cheaply. Thet find scrap bamboo poles around town, do a makeshift job of hoisting the panel on the pole up to the light; and a day's sunlight gives them enough charge to power one lighbulb in their hut for 4 hours a night.

Might not sound like much, but think about how empowering one lightbulb can be for 4 hours a night, when you never had light before:

- the children (who are pretty much in child labour in the daytimes) can now see pages in a notebook in their evening, enabling them to learn how to read/write in the evening after work
-the mother can now do meal prep for the day ahead, under the same light bulb as her child, enabling her to spend her daytimes taking on a day-job herself, which brings more income into the hut/family each week.
-crime reduces. The light reduces thieves coming in in the darkness and stealing things. Village theft crime is localised and the light bulb is a big deterrent as criminals dont tend to break in if their face can be identified in the light.

Solar may not change much for our lifestyles but in other parts of the world, it is revolutionising the poorest and most disadvantaged!

 

@Pistonbroke more for convenience when out away from a power point