My biggest use of electricity is my laptop and monitor.
Any ideas on a portable solar panel that could power those during the summer?
Portable because I rent and can’t fix anything down, it doesn’t have to fit in a backpack or anything like that.
Cost is probably what killed that project, but it's not entirely stupid, although it would certainly be better with a foldable panel at the back of the screen that can be positioned optimally.
A 30x20cm laptop could get at best 12-10W of sun power with a solar panel on its surface.
You could build a useful laptop with the same spec as a smartphone with a standard 4000mA battery and need about a charge a day in normal use.
Since the exposure of your laptop to the sun would be suboptimal, you may only get 4W for say 5h a day, which seems fairly reasonable and is enough to recharge the battery every day.
Even on bad days, you would probably be able to use your laptop half of the time, which could still be a few hours and enough to make a difference to someone with otherwise no access to technology.
Also having off grid solar cells (coupled with charge controller accumulator and inverter) helps a lot. Even if you don't intend to switch off the gird - you can easily power your notebooks/cell phones from solar power.
Seems like the easy solution is one of those solar systems marketed as being for camping, right? Not sure it's economical, but easy.
Personally I'm interested in a DIY mod to add solar panels directly to the back of a laptop screen. It probably wouldn't be able to actually charge unless the machine is in sleep mode (which also would have the lid closed which would help), but it would extend the battery - if the machine averages 10W and the panel gives 1W, that's an extra 10% runtime for free, and better if it sleeps in the middle (which works, because I'm unlikely to use a laptop continuously for 10 hours).
This idea made more sense before batteries started to get good. But solar + batteries can get you through the night now.
A panel in space can capture maybe 3x as much energy as one on the ground over a 24 hour cycle. But there are losses in transmission and huge costs to get the thing into space.
I don't understand the convergence here at all. Isn't it better to just have whatever laptop is best for you and whatever solar power source is best for you?
Very cool! I've been reading a lot about solar power as a form of backup energy. We have power outages every day here and I'm looking for a way to at least power my wifi/modem and charge a laptop so I can keep working.
Hobotech in YouTube might be interested in your idea! I've been watching a lot of his videos lately.
Hi, neolog! I lead the solar/low-power OS group. The picture in the article is from a Samsung NC215S from 2011, though few, if any laptops have been made to run solar. I am researching ways to use microcontrollers to run a limited form of linux as well as drive a basic e-ink display like a solar calculator, rather than long recharging times as in the Samsung, which used an Atom cpu. In this video I was able to power a microcontroller on just indoor light: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ztj_MDNRcI
I've tried to put together a laptop with a solar panel, but of course it is not yet practical: https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1784621#p...
Our discord group is here: https://discord.com/invite/nnxKnxh Feel free to check out our #solar & #paperterm projects!
I need an off-grid solar kit that can generate enough energy on average each day to power: a Macbook for at least 5 hours, a router for at least 8 hours, and a single desk lamp overnight.
i love the minimalist concept of a laptop with so much battery life: Dell and Apple could learn something from this.
so that gray piece on the right is the solar collector, right? since it can go 2 years, what's to stop it from going forever? what if you added a 2nd collector on the left? how big would the solar panel need to be in order for it to run indefinitely?
You wouldn't want to power directly from the panels without a battery. It would cause high instability on cloudy days, possibly leading to file system corruption.
reply