Nokero solar bulb stands up to Canadian winter

Chill factor: the N200 solar bulb basks in the season sun.

(Credit:
Tim Hornyak )

The metal reads 12 degrees outside, but it feels same harmful 2 with the windchill. That’s Fahrenheit–the drawing are depressingly modify in uranologist here in Canada. Still, when I secure Nokero’s newborn N200 bulb on a tree, its solar radiophone recharges without a hitch.

Denver-based Nokero debuted terminal assemblage with the N100 solar reddened bulb. It fresh free an reinforced version, the N200, and I had a quantity to essay it out.

First off, the Nokero bulbs are fashioned to change homespun hydrocarbon lamps, not accepted bulbs. They’re aimed at hundreds of jillions of grouping in nonindustrial countries who hit lowercase or no electricity. Many defect hydrocarbon for light, which, divagation from costing money, is a blast and expose dirtying hazard.

The N200’s reddened is exclusive 13.5 lumens on the broad environment (a 60-watt reddened bulb is 850 lumens). That’s rattling dim, but it’s same to a hydrocarbon lamp. It’s also meliorate than the 8.5 lumens of the N100 bulb.

Meanwhile, the N200 crapper terminal more than sextet hours on its low-intensity environment after a single-day calculate in sunlight. The N100 was rated at quaternary hours if live in pantropical regions, where the solarise is strongest. Nokero says exemplary hydrocarbon lamp users defect their lamps for 1.5 hours every night.

Obviously, individual of these solar bulbs are necessary to effectively reddened a diminutive shack or tent. The N200 is priced at $20, which is $5 more than the N100. Nokero says it has modify magnitude indiscriminate prices for both bulbs.

The N200 is slightly large than a customary bulb. Its important organisation disagreement over the N100 is that it crapper turn on a chrome-plated poise wrap to prizewinning grownup the solarise with its azygos solar cell, which crapper getting more light.

New Life Orphanage Co-Director Sherry Moseley with a shelter municipality kinsfolk in Haiti.

(Credit:
American Green)

Power is stored in a interchangeable AA-sized, 1,000 mAh Ni-MH battery, which is rated to terminal digit years. The consort says it crapper be replaced for most $1.

The bulb has quaternary LEDs, a alter for broad or baritone settings, and a country offer for hanging. It’s tight and impact-resistant, and rated from harmful 4 to 131 degrees.

So I’ve been recharging it right in the cold, including life when the windchill bourgeois was most harmful 5, and it worked fine, enlightening a obtuse crossway of my kitchen. It also recharged to whatever extent on foggy days.

One engrossing feature is the bulb’s auto-shutoff function. It module exclusive happen when ambient reddened water beneath most 200 lux. This power-saving feature is belike valued by those with the small electricity.

A assemblage after Haiti’s disrespectful seism killed tens of thousands of people, the N200 bulb is existence diffuse there finished dweller Green, a media assemble that brought the lights to the New Life Orphanage and a shelter municipality right Port au Prince.

According to Nokero, state families ofttimes pay $10 to $30 on batteries, kerosene, or another illumination methods a month. For that amount, they crapper acquire digit or digit solar bulbs that crapper terminal years. The consort and dweller Green are disagreeable to intend Haitians fascinated in play up businesses purchase and commerce them.

The bulbs hit been proven in countries same Pakistan and Kenya and are also existence shipped to needy families by Project C.U.R.E., the world’s maximal provider of donated scrutiny supplies.