Playing Call of Duty on your PSP is so much fun – but now when you are racking up energy expenses in order to keep things running. The best thing to do to keep enjoying your game play without increasing your electric bill due to numerous charge times is to buy a solar charger for your PSP.

There are many solar chargers out there, and it is recommended that you look up the different features of each one in order to find out which charger is best for you. Admittedly, solar chargers can get a bit expensive – but some people see it as an initial investment which will put them in the way of many great savings in their electrical bill because they will be able to charge their PSP for free thanks to solar power.

The best place to learn more about this and to purchase one is to go online, where you can also browse their different features.

A solar charger for your PSP should ideally be a portable one, with cables in place and can be stowed away in an easy manner. If you are planning to buy one, you might probably think of getting one which will get the most sunlight even when it is a cloudy day. To spot a quality solar charger, check if it has extra ports that you can use to charge other things. There are many reviews out there that can help you pick out the best one for your own personal use.

Charging your PSP using the solar charger will probably require around thirteen hours of straight and direct sunlight in order to make a full charge. This is taking into consideration a 2.2 ampere hour battery, and a charger that has a 2 watt type of solar panel. When your solar charger is powerful, the less time you need to charge your PSP.

One good thing to try out is the Logic 3 solar charger for PSP. It comes with specially designed cables which will let you connect it to third party sources of power and it easy to tote around with you. On a full charge using this, you can power up your PSP for over four hours. You can even use this for cloudy days and can be powered up using artificial light.

Another is the Freeloader solar charger, a portable unit that comes highly recommended. You can use your PSP for over two hours if you use this model, and it is made from a very sturdy aluminum body that is also on the stylish side. Its cables and adaptors are usually compatible with different models of PSPs, and it comes in a compact size that feels very light (you can even put it in your shirt pocket). Charging is also done via USB for convenience.

And finally you have the PSP 2000 charger – a fast solar charger that comes in a unique folded design that also protects the solar panels and keeps it from being damaged. It is very durable and uses a DC charge port for its spare battery. It also comes in a very appealing lithium pack, too.

A new hybrid inorganic/organic material could usher in solar cells that absorb all solar wavelengths.

The new polymer could also enable much more efficient charge separation since electrons dislodged by light in the material remain free much longer than in conventional solar cells used in solar powered battery chargers.

The inorganic/organic hybrid polymer material can be made into polymer blends that can “absorb essentially across the entire solar spectrum–they go from about 300 nanometers down to about 10,000 nanometers,” said professor Malcolm Chisholm of Ohio State University.

Solar materials work by using incident light to boost the energy of electrons, thereby separating then from the hull of atoms in the material. They can then be harvested to generate electricity.

However, separated electrons fall back into their host atoms if not collected quickly. Usually, solar materials either fluoresce (called singlet emisson) or phosphoresce (triplet emission). The new hybrid material does both, further increasing potential efficiency.

“The materials we have made show both singlet and triplet emissions,” said Chisholm. “The singlet state lasts a relatively long time, in the region of about 10 pico seconds; the triplet lasts a lot longer–up to a 100 or so microseconds, which should be good for separating the electrons and the hull.”

Pacific Gas and Electric in California announced last week it will buy 800 megawatts of solar-generated electricity from two companies, enough to light 239,000 homes. Within three years, PG&E will buy its solar energy from OptiSolar and SunPower, which plan to build the world’s two largest solar farms in California as part of the deal.

It would nearly double the USA’s entire solar-panel capacity. Driving the trend are solar’s falling costs and state alternative-energy mandates.

Solar power has grown but still makes up well under 1% of U.S. power generation. More than 90% of solar panels have been installed on rooftops by maverick consumers and businesses. Utilities’ embrace of solar energy will help push it to about 10% of power generation by 2025, predicts Ron Pernick, principal of research firm Clean Edge.

“Just a handful of utilities doing something big changes the scale of the entire market,” says Julia Hamm of the Solar Electric Power Association.

Solar energy refers to the utilization of the radiant energy from the Sun. Solar power is used interchangeably with solar energy, but refers more specifically to the conversion of sunlight into electricity, either by photovoltaics and concentrating solar thermal devices, or by one of several experimental technologies such as thermoelectric converters, solar chimneys or solar ponds.