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Monday, February 8, 2021
CONTINUITY: A Clever and Efficient Solar-Powered LED Lantern
Nokero (“No kerosene”) produce solar-powered lamps intended to replace kerosene lanterns (with their attendant fuel expense, fire hazard, and indoor air pollution) for the approximately 1.2 billion people without access to reliable electric power. The design uses a lithium-iron-phosphate battery which, although having a lower energy density than lithium ion batteries, withstands more charge/discharge cycles without loss of capacity, is more tolerant of overcharge and discharge, less likely to explode or burst into flames, and uses a safer electrolyte.
The Nokero lamp uses a current regulator driven by a microcontroller to extract the most useful light from a battery charge, providing constant light and avoiding losses due to voltage drops in regulator components. In typical applications, the lamp provides around 15 hours of light from one day's charge in sunlight and about 2000 charge cycles without loss of capacity.
In this video, Big Clive reverse engineers the circuitry and explains how it achieves its admirable performance.
Posted at February 8, 2021 15:50