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Solar Powered Laptops
smitty777 writes "Greentech is running a story on a solar powered laptop concept. The device was created by industrial designer Andrea Ponti, and includes a solar panel on the outside of the case as well as one below the keyboard. The idea seems to be taking shape; Samsung has a design they've been developing as well."
Seriously, solar cells get hot, and laptops themselves have enough trouble from getting hot, I'm curious as to how bad the hit is going to be in terms of device durability.
So does this mean that my porn habit has to be fed during the day, and out doors? Kinky...
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Why not put solar panels on E-ink based e-readers? You have Amazon et al. bragging about their battery life, but if you put a solar panel on the things you'd never need to charge them.
I would do it all the time if my screen weren't glossy, and used to when my screen was matte....
Because Laptop screens are SO awesome in direct sunlight and everyone uses computers outside!
Never say never. Ah!! I did it again!
Just silly. A 150W solar panel costs $530 and is a square meter in area: http://www.ecrater.com/p/5169726/sunflex-grade-a-150w-mono-solar# It's too big and too expensive even without the extra battery.
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
Why do you need an inverter? The Laptop itself takes DC, the solar cell generates DC, at best you'd need a voltage regulator to output the laptop's dc input. You'd lose a lot more energy putting it through a double inversion process.
-Restil
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All these comments comparing calculators to laptops...
- Have you ever felt a calculator or MP3 player get hot? Ever come across one that gets so hot that it needs a fan?
- Have you ever felt a laptop get hot? Ever come across a laptop that doesn't need a fan?
- Calculators use so little energy that a small strip indoors is enough to power it. Laptops are still not solar powered because the amount of energy required has so far been too much for solar cells to produce.
My point is that, in terms of heat, laptops and calculators are very different.
Have you ever used a laptop in the sun? I have, when sitting next to a window where the sun shines in. I soon move because the laptop gets uncomfortably hot. I don't know how bad that heat is for my laptop, but it's considerable, and I think it might be too much for the little fan, so I'm not about to test it.
Summary: In terms of energy use and heat... Laptop != Calculator
Considering how well most laptops work in the sunlight, does this mean that you can either power it or see what's on the screen?
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
About 1992, a coworker and I seriously looked into doing a solar-powered laptop charger. The idea was going to be something that would either attach to the back of the lid, and/or detach and sit someplace convenient. Yes, I know there are solar trickle-chargers for things like boat batteries; but that's not the point.
When you start looking into this, you will soon find out that PV cells suck so incredibly hard that, unless you live someplace like Arizona, that the rated output of a typical PV cell, which is almost always rated at "1 standard sun" (I kid you not! It's a real unit-of-measure), is so far below that number, that you end up having to have something that folds-out like the solar-cell arrays on Skylab.
Yes, PV cells have gotten a little better since 1990, and there are some mobile CPUs that are better on current consumption than what was available at that time, too; but not enough to matter in either case; because so many people live in areas where their average sun exposure is closer to 0.5 Standard Sun, and they will never even get close to 1 Standard Sun's worth of solar energy.
It's a great idea; but it needs a real breakthrough to make it practical.
The capital energy cost of manufacturing can always be produced by clean, abundant nuclear power.
doesn't it seem like this is way overdue ? brilliant idea.
It's been tried repeatedly. The problem has always been that, with available solar panels, computers, and displays, the laptop doesn't have enough area by a LARGE factor to collect as much power as it uses. It also doesn't present its surface to the sun very well when in use. About the best you could get is a laptop you could leave in the sun all day to charge enough for a few minutes use. (Want to leave it unattended that long?)
Further, more crunch has been the target for a long time and that requires more power than less crunch at the same silicon fabrication technology level. A lot of people have not wanted their laptops to be several-generations-back stupid. Improvements in run time have been driven more by improved batteries that store more power and hacks to turn parts of the machine off or down to slower running when not in use than by actual improvements in watts per crunch (though the latter has been worked on as well - beyond the desktop "keep it from melting as you make it faster and smaller" target.)
And then there's radio-based networking to eat more power. If you can't be bothered to plug in the charger you certainly don't want to find a network jack. And if you're out in the boonies with no outlets (or even in a city park) you're probably far enough from the wireless networking access point that the transmitter has to be running at the high end of its power range.
With new high-efficiency panels, low-power processors, e-ink displays (which only use power to change, not to sustain or to backlight) or LED backlighting, and a leveling out of the demand for crunch when just browsing non-animated web sites, editing documents, or the like, a low-capability machine that's fully solar powered may be coming into reach.
Or at least for people in perpetually-sunny areas who are willing to expose themselves to the thermonuclear cancer-generator in the sky for hours per day. And it might be useful in disaster scenarios (though I really don't want lives to depend on it not running down in a crunch).
But I think we're still far from on that is practical for most usage scenarios.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way