100W Portable Foldable Solar Panel

A folding solar panel is what you use when the power has to come to you. Camping, a farm or a site with no connection, a market stall, a borehole hut, a fishing or safari camp, or a house during a long outage. The panel opens out in the sun, plugs into a power station or a charge controller, and starts putting power back into a battery while there is daylight.

The 100 Watt rating is the panel's output under full test sun. In real use, the figure you get depends on how clear the sky is, how clean the glass or laminate surface is, and above all the angle to the sun. A panel lying flat on the ground in Nairobi at four in the afternoon collects a fraction of what the same panel collects square on to the sun at midday, which is why a portable panel is worth turning two or three times during the day. Folding is the practical part. It closes into a carrying size, goes in a vehicle boot or on a roof rack, and does not need mounting brackets, roof work or a fixed installation like a rigid panel does.