5 Cool Solar-Powered Gadgets To Cut Down On Your Electricity Bill – BGR

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With the proliferation of solar-powered gadgets and appliances, it’s easier than ever to cut a few dollars here and there from your electricity bill by picking up some well-placed devices. From solar-powered trickle chargers that you can leave in your window to ensure your car’s 12-volt battery is always charged to solar-powered attic fans that’ll keep things cooler in the upper floors of your house all summer long.

Now, how much money you’ll save will depend on how much you already pay and what appliances and gadgets you own, which will vary for everyone. This is why we’ve concentrated on tech that is used day-to-day, so that your savings, no matter how big or small, will add up over time — whether you’re pinching pennies with a solar keyboard or phasing out your regular refrigerator for one that is completely solar powered.

Heck, by pairing a portable power station with a solar cell, you can turn just about any tech in the house into a solar-powered gadget. In other words, it’s easier than ever to supplement with solar power around the house for all types of tech. While taking into account user and professional reviews, with a healthy dose of our own expertise on the subject, we’ve come away with five hand-picked solar-powered gadgets that can indeed shave some money off your electricity bill.

Let’s start with something easy, a gadget that can be installed in just about any home. You know how the roofs of most houses contain a fan or vent to help circulate hot air out of the top of the house (hot air rises, after all)? These are often powered from your house’s grid, either directly or plugged into an outlet. So, rather than spending money on electricity for your roof vent, you can install a Patioasis Solar Attic Fan, which is self-contained and has zero operating costs once installed.

A powered roof vent typically uses anywhere from 300 to 400 watts and can run up to 9 hours a day in the summer, which means it’ll cost you about $15 to $40 a year in power usage. Over time, this adds up. Plus, this solar attic fan is only $249.99, which is a similar price range to regular powered options. So if you have the privilege of choosing your home’s first vent, there’s no reason not to get a solar-powered option when it will reduce how much money you spend on your electricity bill. The best part is that this particular vent can handle cooling for 2,800 square feet, so anything under that will be a breeze. Even user reviews note that the fan is easy to install and useful for auxiliary buildings like sheds and detached garages.

The Patioasis Solar Attic Fan is an easy addition to any home that, once installed, can be forgotten about, all the while slowly saving you money. And that’s why this gadget qualifies as a cool way to cut down on your electricity bill, both figuratively and literally.

Kodiak’s 6-cubic-foot Solar Refrigerator is the smaller unit that retails for $699.99 (though it’s often on sale), but if you require a larger size, 9-cubic-foot and 17.2-cubic-foot models are available. What makes this line of refrigerators stand out is that they are built for low-power consumption and are solar-powered. There’s a convenient 12- to 24-volt DC plug built in, which is common for solar systems and one of those things you should know about before installing solar panel batteries. So if you already own a solar setup, all you need to do is plug this fridge into it. This is especially handy for cabins and RVs, but also great for any home looking to supplement its grid-powered tech with solar.

If you don’t already own a solar system, you can also snag this refrigerator with its own panels for $1,398. So no matter if you’re already invested in solar or just starting to build out your system, you have options. If your primary concern is saving on your electricity bill, you could replace an aging spare refrigerator in the garage or basement with a low-powered Kodiak Solar Refrigerator, hook it up to some panels (whether you buy a power kit or tie the fridge into yours), and that’s energy you won’t have to worry about paying for.

On average, the fridge runs at 48 watts when connected to 12-volt power, with user reviews noting that you can even run the 6-cubic-foot Kodiak off a Jackery Solar Generator 2000 and its included Solar Panels, meaning you could take this fridge anywhere with a portable power station in the mix — not too shabby. This is a fridge you’ll never have to actually connect to your city’s grid.

There are certainly more solar-powered appliances out there, from washing machines to clothes dryers, but as Jackery points out, they can often cost more to run compared to a non-solar appliance and hooked up to a portable power station. So, rather than diving deep into the world of solar appliances primarily designed for camping and RVs, picking up a Jackery Explorer 2000 v2 Portable Power Station (which comes with two 200-watt solar panels) will provide you with enough juice to run many appliances around the house.

You’re also not tied down by your home’s solar system if you opt for a portable power station to supplement your power usage, meaning you can take your Jackery and its panels anywhere, like a cabin or even a tailgate party. And since you can charge the power station with the included panels, you won’t have to spend extra money keeping your battery topped off. Lastly, power outages happen, and having a Jackery on hand is a great way to keep even a standard refrigerator running for 24 to 48 hours (depending on its power consumption), saving hundreds of dollars in groceries when your power is out.

The Jackery Explorer 2000 v2 Portable Power Station and its included solar panels at $1,299 can literally save your bacon. In between emergency uses, you can easily power a wide selection of household gadgets and appliances, thus saving on your energy bill one watt at a time. Users and professional reviews agree that the power station works great as a backup battery and as a dedicated power source for off-grid activities. A Jackery power station is one of those solar-powered gadgets everyone should consider, not just people who are thinking about going completely solar.

If you’d like to save some money on replacing dead car batteries, the Suner Power Waterproof Solar Battery Charger can easily keep your car battery charged with a set-it-and-forget-it solar-powered trickle charger. Much like a traditional trickle charger, you get standard alligator clips for connecting directly to the car battery, along with a cable that plugs into a cigarette lighter port. This way, you can attach the charger’s solar panel to a window (using the included suction cups), then plug it into an unused 12-volt auxiliary power outlet (cigarette lighter port) to trickle-charge your car battery directly through that port. Easy-peasy, with all of the safety measures you’d expect, like overcharge protection.

For $59.98, you get everything you need, including a solar panel and three types of cables to connect the panel to a car battery. The panel is surrounded by tough rubber, built to handle “extreme weather,” which means you can not only hang it inside a vehicle’s window, but also outside (which is why the third cable offers bare-end wire to connect permanently to your battery).

Not only is this solar trickle charger handy for any car, but it’s also useful for RVs or any off-grid situation where you need to keep a car battery topped off. Rather than using a traditional trickle charger that plugs into a wall outlet and draws from your on-grid electricity, you can supplement that power usage with solar. While a standard trickle charger uses 5 to 15 watts, which is close to what a CFL lightbulb would use, it isn’t much in the grand scheme of things. Still, that’s electricity saved, and users agree this is a handy gadget to have around.

Last but not least, we have something everyone should be able to enjoy: a solar-powered keyboard. That’s right, much like the solar calculators of yesteryear, Logitech has created a slim battery-powered keyboard with a solar panel built into the bezel (as a convenient pen holder, no less) so that you can keep your slim keyboard and its low-profile keys fully charged without a plug. Known as the Signature Slim Solar+ K980, this keyboard retails for $99.99.

Of course, you’ll need a bit of sun or light at your desk to take advantage of the solar feature, but since this is a slim wireless board, it’s easy enough to carry around the house chasing the sun as it moves, like a digital nomad cat. But really, since there is a battery built in, you’ll only have to charge the board every four months, or longer if you have some lighting in your home that the keyboard can suck up. You will have to rely on the built-in solar charging, as there is no USB port; you can’t charge this keyboard any other way. So you’ll need to be fully committed to charging the board with solar, which can take up to eight hours.

Ultimately, the Logitech Signature Slim Solar+ K980 Keyboard is designed for portability, which makes it well-suited for use in any room where it can also charge through ambient light. While this can limit its use case for some, many user reviews note that the keyboard is light and easy to carry, and since it doesn’t require the constant churn of dry-cell replaceable batteries like AA, it’s eco-friendly. Users are also pleased that the solar charging even works with indoor lighting, ensuring you can easily keep the board charged, no matter if it’s sunny outside or not.

This roundup is themed around solar-powered gadgets that can reduce your electricity bill. To dig up the best options, we not only leaned on our tech expertise but also took verified user reviews into account to compile a list of cool must-have devices that will indeed lower your bill and reduce your dependence on electricity delivered to your home over the grid.