Solar Cells For Laptops?

P-Weasel hooked us up with linkage to a solar device designed to work with laptops. It's about the right size, and if you happen to ever find yourself outside, this may be just the ticket to circumventing those ridiculously short battery lives on those P3 laptops ;)

Comments

This is not for running your laptop outside!

[CaseyB]

It's not even for saving money on power bills. Where this thing is useful, is for charging batteries in a location where there is NO power available. Think being at a remote cabin, where you leave the charging unit in a sunny window all day, to afford yourself a couple hours of hacking in the afternoon.

Every discussion involving solar energy always brings out the guys saying how impractical it is to have huge panels strapped to your car / body, and how solar panels don't have enough juice to run a TV all day, and how your device will shut down when a cloud comes by.

Duh.

Solar power application today is always about charging batteries, and it's always about low-power requirements in a place where more conventional power is not available.

Save power, use PPC!

[neutrino]

Of course you could also use a laptop that doesn't suck down the power. Why plop an x86 cpu into a laptop? Ever notice that most x86 desktops have enormous fans and heat sinks on them? That heat has to come from somewhere. Get an Apple Powerbook. PPC chips don't drain a battery like a PII does. Plus, then you could join us LinuxPPC users out here on the fringe! We don't need no stinking binaries!

Posted on a Powerbook G3 running LinuxPPC2000

Life cycle costs and energy economics

[ForteBravo]

Your life cycle cost calculation is a step in the right direction -- it does show exactly how cost-ineffective these panels are in relation to wall power. But I'd like to take issue with a few of your points.

First, if you are comparing to wall power, then these are obviously a bad deal. Distributed energy is always a bad deal compared to existing wall power. That's because the utility has already made all the capital investments for you, and they get the best deals on long-term financing -- it's hard for an individual to do better, even with all those utility investments in nuclear.

But these are an outstanding deal if you live off-grid. They are convenient to move around, they have a cord so you can keep your laptop in the shade and the cells in the sun. Unfortunately, the level of ambient light even in the shade is too high to comfortably view a laptop screen. It takes some getting used to, especially during the middle of a sunny day.

Second, regarding solar power plants. $0.56/kWh is not "just on the edge" (edge = $0.03/kWh) and photovoltaics are the least likely technology to be used in a commercial powerplant, barring commercialization of that Australian guy's silicon wafer manufacturing improvements. Yes, it is true that efficiency and output are directly related to the amount of sunlight shining on the panels. However, they are inversely related to the temperature of the panel. The hotter they get, the worse they work.

I'm afraid you are also taking a bunch of disparate facts about the energy industry and taking them out of context here. The reason prices hit $6000/MWh several years ago was because of market speculation and a series of shady deals. It had nothing to do with the real cost of producing energy.

I am not trying to rain on anyone's parade, as I am in fact a die-hard renewables supporter -- I worked in the energy industry and I know how much we need cleaner technology. But there are many other emerging technologies which will change the industry drastically, much more so than photovoltaics. For instance, fuel cells - technology with a chance. Prototypes of fuel-cell powered laptops and cell phones exist, and will soon allow you to run your laptop 28 hours without "recharging". Not only that, but you'll probably able to carry around a couple of very small canisters of hydrogen or other fuel much more easily than toting batteries.

Now that is mobile computing.

----------

Re:cell tech

[StaticLimit]

Let's note the sales lit. on their site first:

Assists the internal battery of your portable computer adding many hours to your normal run time from a charged internal battery2 (runs many computers, not just extends).

Recharges the internal battery of your computer or device. Also capable of running an external charger for your batteries3.

Dell's Inspiron 7500 (top of the line notebook) runs 3.5-4 hours on a 79WHr battery, so it draws approximately (79 / 3.5 =) 22W. Not too bad. The solar charger as noted provides 13.8W which should be more than enough to justify their claims above. It should extend the life to about 9.5 hours, a significant increase.

79 / (22 - 13.8) = 9.6

In addition, full recharge of the battery should take about (79 / 13.8 =) about 5.72 hours. That's a full recharge... Every hour of use (assisted with the solar panel) will take ((22-13.8) / 13.8 or 5.72 / 9.5) = .59 hours of charging with no use.

Assuming Dell's estimates aren't too low and theirs aren't too high, and the sun is shining... I'd say this is a good deal.

- StaticLimit

Re:Ahhh

[rcw-work]

Out side the door I seen people I knew from when I was younger. They starting talking to me, and poking me and making this awful sounds (Bob said it was probably laughter), confused and dazed I retreated back into my room to review the sisuation with Bob.

The laughter thing has an easy fix - you have to put these things called "clothes" over yourself. Bob probably just assumed you already had them on.

Ahhh

[jbarnett]

I got one of those, bought a new laptop also, full stack P3. I got it on monday, plugged it in and NOTHING worked. I called tech support and they said

"Sir, the unit must be in direct sunlight for it to work"

"Excuse me?"

"Sir, you must take the unit outside with you, it needs to be exposed to direct sun light for it to harvest enough engry for it to power you laptop"

"uh, ok"

At this point I had no idea what he was talking about, but at the risk of sounding dumb I replied

"right-o boy, thanks it is working now"

Having no idea what 'sunlight' was, or where to download a copy, I did a search on http://www.google.com and came up with a few links.

My finds indicate that "direct sunlight" is "light" that is not produced by a light bulb, but rather an object that is referered to as the "sun". Easy enough I though, I take the unit and my laptop into the server room, and place the unit directly under a Sparc Station 20. Giving it 20 minutes (has to charge) the laptop still was not receiving power from the unit. Thinking quickly, a SS20 these days isn't /that/ powerful.

Pushing pass ethernet cords I set the unit directly under an a cluster of Ultra 10's. "That should do it" I proudly thought to my self, waiting, waiting, I was sure it was going to work this time. After 30 minutes I re-contacted tech support.

"Sir, *THE* SUN, you know, *OUTSIDE*."

Ah, I felt really stupid at this point. I decided to contact Sun tech support and see if it was a defect in the rays their servers where giving out. I relayed what the other tech support told me to Sun's kernel group, they to where making refereres to the "OUTSIDE". Hanging up before they thought I was stupid.

Loading up Netscape on my workstaton, I typed in http://www.theoutside.com and came across a punk band. After searching their site for 4 hours staight I still didn't see any "SUN"

*sigh*

Really depessed I started talking about my problem with this unit on IRC. A helpfully person by the name of "Bob76" on #bob_channel enlightened me to a whole other world. Not methophically mind you, but really a WHOLE OTHER WORLD. See said that someone in my room there would be an object called a "door" that was either made of wood or metal. Searching around and relaying my finds to "Bob76" I finally found the "door" after many failed attempts.

"Bob76" insturcted me to go out the door. Bob even helped me Crack the security methods on this certain door (I feel elite! :) Out side the door I seen people I knew from when I was younger. They starting talking to me, and poking me and making this awful sounds (Bob said it was probably laughter), confused and dazed I retreated back into my room to review the sisuation with Bob.

He said these strange cretures where *REAL* "people" and that this was known as "*real life*". Bob started getting weird with this topic, about people and life, really deep, but creepy.

quickly changing the topic, bob insturcted me, that their would be yet ANOTHER door after the first one, and maybe something called a "hall way" of other rooms with strange names like "kicthen" or "living room". Bob advised me to quickly open the door, keep my head down and quickly find the other door. He said this second door should take me outside.

Packing up the solar unit and the laptop, I thanked bob and decided to go for it.

I quickly opened the other door and these people started using strange launge like "hi" and "how are you", I keep my head down and didn't say anything like bob instructed, I quickly moved in and out of this maze of other rooms and "halls" and finally came upon the second door.

I started to sweet and time seem to stand stil, I reached out and opened the door. tossed the solar unit and laptop out on what appeared to be "green carpet, but real dirty" I push out and I knew I was outside.

My eyes started to burn from this intense light, and my skin started to burn, the light was really intense and bright, pushing on me, burning me, making me really disilluated and confused. I feel to the ground and all I could see was WHITE, burning my eyes, face hands, arms

I managed to find my way back into the second door and quickly close it. confused, but a lot better, I made my way back to my workstation, making sure I closed and re-enabled the security fearture on the first door I orginally found.

I felt really terriable for days after the experince, my laptop and the solar unit is still traped in this hell know to bob as the "outside". I think Bob is the devil.

I hacked out 20 thousands lines of ASM code, porting the Linux kernel to a embedded device I found in my alarm clock, after that I felt a lot better. It was only a 2-bit cpu with 32 byets of main memory, but quickly rewiring it, and using some ram I pulled from a CD-players LCD I was able to get a nice port of kernel 2.2.13 to it.

Anyways, I still don't know how I am going to get my laptop back, hell can keep it's "solar panel", I think it was sent here as a temptation from bob (the devil) to lure me out into hell ("the outside").

But I don't WANNA go outside!

[Saint Aardvark]

...and just how the hell is my DSL connection supposed to reach down to the beach? Huh?