Solar Stik, invented by Brian Bosley and in business for about ten years, sells easily deployable solar and solar/wind generators which can be easily daisy-chained into an array. We don’t think there are any other systems with these features.

Chris Crosby of Solar Stik – a woman of nearly infinite patience, given the number of questions I asked more than once – explained that their systems have their origin in marine applications, and started out with water and wind resistance as baseline design parameters.

All of the non-marine systems (and, I gather, some of those as well) break down into Pelikan cases and can therefore be hand-transported.

The ability to interconnect relieves responders from constant monitoring of charging equipment during an emergency, like having many dishes on single burners with different cooking times.

The system can also accept power from marine/vehicle batteries, AC charging – so it can be kept ready with large reserves; the reverse is true – if the sun is shining and the wind blowing, the swappable Power Paks make it possible to harvest energy while it’s available for later use – and transport it and use the energy where it’s needed. In other words, the emergency power use isn’t limited to charging items immediately adjacent to the solar array – a charged Pak can be transported – that is, carried – to where it’s needed.

We’ll try to follow up on this in the next few days, including some comparisons to other systems. In the meantime, however, this gallery should illustrate some of the attributes of the Solar Stik system(s).