Portable Solar Power For Portable Hardware? 262
Tjeerd writes "Because the 'green revolution' is accelerating, I felt it was time to get involved. Last week I started with buying a portable solar energy charger for my mobile phone. But soon I was thinking of also recharging my Asus Eee netbook with a portable solar energy recharger. I found things like the Portable Power Pack, Foldable Solar Chargers, and the Solar Gorilla. The Solar Gorilla looks quite interesting and might be able to recharge my netbook and fits nicely in a rucksack. But I would like some real-life feedback. If you have experience with these or other portable solar devices, what has worked for you?"
Come again. Because what? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Because the 'green revolution' is accelerating, I felt it was time to get involved."
Have another sip of cool-aid. Everybody is doing it.
Not saying that being more green is bad - just your reasons to do it.
And I'll quote the famous wise guy Kermit.
It isn't easy being green.
Watch out (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are running linux, the stuff in /proc/acpi/battery/*/* will probably give you the battery voltage in Volts and current draw in Amperes, and you multiply them together to get Watts. You need about twice that to operate and charge at the same time. Charging might be 60% efficient.
Re:solarcells in the netboot/laptop lid (Score:3, Insightful)
So you want to leave your laptop out in the searing sun for hours straight, just to charge the battery for a tiny amount (not a lot of solar panel space) ?
Re:solarcells in the netboot/laptop lid (Score:3, Insightful)
You're not the first to think of it by any means, though you may be the first to think it's practical. Given the surface area of a netbook (not much), I don't think that even a 100% efficient panel covering the entire lid would provide enough power, let alone the 20-25% that most panels provide these days. Combined with the fact that netbooks are (usually) designed to be cheap... it's a ways off.
How often is your laptop lid exposed to sunlight anyways? I think my MBP has for twenty minutes or so over the last couple years when I left it by a window by accident, but if it's not in the house then it's in a carrying bag. While I don't get out as much as I should, I doubt my usage patterns are too atypical as far as location goes.
We would probably be better off trying to build a tiny steam-powered generator into the heatsink area and try to reclaim some of that wasted energy.
Re:Solar and handcranked are the way to go (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey, wait a minute. I found myself in that exact same situation last year. Did you read my article in "outdoor geek's playhouse"?
Well, if you did, you would have realized that the answer was using the candy wrappers to fashion a sail on the cranks with your tongue then role over and fart while moving your ass from side to side to turn the crank. It helps if you ate microwave burritos before the hike. You then think about using the force when you use your tongue to dial 911 and wait for the ranger to show up talking about putting on his robe and wizard hat.
This isn't "green" (Score:4, Insightful)
The CO2 produced by making those things is more than you'll ever get back from using them.
Make one car journey less (eg. the one needed to go and buy the solar charger) and you'll probably achieve more green credit.
Re:How many watts does it produce? (Score:5, Insightful)
One link said 30W for 490 UKP. Another had a 60W product for 600UKP. So I shall use this.
Assuming domestic electricity in the UK is about 16p/kwh ( http://www.britishgas.co.uk/pdf/Elec%20Price%20guarantee%202008.pdf [britishgas.co.uk] )
600UKP = 3750kwh worth of electricity.
Assuming very generously you get that 60w for 8 hours of sunlight (laugh if you're using it in the British Isles), this means 480wH a day = 0.480kwH a day.
3750/0.48 = 7800 days = 21 years for that panel to make 600UKP of electricity.
It does not appear to me to be a "Green" _alternative_ to mains power.
BUT if you were intending to be temporarily in the middle of nowhere, that 600UKP for 60W weighing 2.6 pounds may start to look like a bargain. It will cost a lot more in time, resources, and environmental damage to pull power cables to your ever changing remote location.
So is it a good option for _portable_ power?
I don't know - it might still be worth considering other sources of power dynamo, generators, etc.
2.6 pounds = 1.2kg. 1.2kg of vegetable oil contains 31MJ or 8.6kwH. It takes 143 hours of 60w to produce 8.6kwH - that's 18 days of 8 hour sunlight.
Yes there are inefficiencies in converting cooking oil to electricity, or diesel to electricty.
So do more thorough estimations/calculations to see which makes more sense for your scenarios.
If you're only spending a short time from mains power, it probably makes more sense to carry enough rechargeable batteries to last the whole time.
Re:This isn't "green" (Score:5, Insightful)
The CO2 produced by making those things is more than you'll ever get back from using them.
Make one car journey less (eg. the one needed to go and buy the solar charger) and you'll probably achieve more green credit.
Probably right at the moment - but buying into this technology now will help drive development which hopefully will bring far greater long term benefits.
Re:"Green Revolution" (Score:3, Insightful)
If you are _really_ concerned about going green, the biggest (and likely simplest) impact you can have is to never have children, especially in the developed world where per-capita energy consumption is highest.
A well reasoned and thoughtful post, but the above bit borders on the absurd.
That child, given all the benefits that the "developed world" offers is more likely to grow up and discover the solution to our energy problems than someone living in a tribe somewhere in a rainforest living on roots and bananas. Or, if that child doesn't pursue the sciences, may grow up to be a leader or otherwise play a role that takes us in that direction. You don't need to look any farther than the current election cycle in the US for evidence of those possibilities.
I take it you don't have children. Those who don't are fairly quick with these kind of divorced-from-reality suggestions. Two of my favourites:
1. If the poor in the undeveloped countries had fewer children, they would be better off. Happily ignores the reality that the poor tend to need their children to do work to just get by, and society as a whole needs and benefits from their collective efforts.
2. If the rich in developed countries had fewer children, they'd be better off and we'd all pay less taxes. That one is especially pernicious in that it smells like the anti-immigrant arguments bandied about. I guess it's too much to ask someone to entertain the fact that we really do need a growing population to support the "everyone else", like those aging baby boomers, as a ferinstance.
And now, it's "Having kids will destroy the environment and lead to global warming!"
I guess the question you (or anyone who subscribes to such notions) need to answer is this: are you willing to the trade the possibilities of a better future in favour of of what could be fairly characterised a rush to the bottom? If you are, I'd suggest we're all that much poorer for it.
Re:Plants (Score:3, Insightful)
And if you use ethanol in your car, you are using solar power. But as for solar cells for your laptop? It creates MORE pollution, from the manufacturing process of creating the cells, then simply using a few pennies from your local coal electric plant. You make the air pollution worse, not better.
The only time solar cells will reduce pollution is if you use them for mega-kilowatt devices, like heating units or air conditioners for your whole house. Only then do you overcome the pollution contribution from manufacturing the solar device.
Re:Solar and handcranked are the way to go (Score:2, Insightful)
wait for the ranger to show up talking about putting on his robe and wizard hat.
Pfft, you almost had me, but then you blew it. What self-respecting ranger is going to take levels in wizard?
Re:It wouldn't work (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe I should get my calculator out before continuing?
That might help, but moreso - doing some research into real-world applications will teach you more than anything else...
Solar panels may produce electricity from non-direct light, but it isn't much. With a panel that small, I would be surprised if it would produce even millivolts, without direct lighting. I managed to wear down the 200+aH house battery bank on my boat over the course of 7-10 days primarily just by using the radio, when my relatively large 80W solar panel was set obliquely to the sun. That is the reason many cruising sailors use devices like the James Baldwin's Solar Tracker [atomvoyages.com]. You NEED to keep the panel face approx 90* to the suns rays in order to consistently produce usable amounts of electricity.
So many people living 'on the grid' tout solar as the new energy source that will solve all our problems, but when you've lived with it for a few years, you will begin to understand and appreciate some of the inherent limitations. That is the reason that most cruising sailors (people with experience living OFF the grid, completely, for months or even years at a time) use a combination of energy-producing methods instead of just one. Solar and wind (via small windmill-type generators) are the most common methods.
Re:This isn't "green" (Score:5, Insightful)
Not rubbish at all. There are plenty of small photovoltaic panels that can power/recharge almost any powered gadget and there is little point in replacing those as often as the gadget. It all comes down to connectors. We have all this beautiful technology and we can't agree on their interfaces.
Re:This isn't "green" (Score:5, Insightful)
We have all this beautiful technology and we can't agree on their interfaces.
The interfaces are intentionally designed not to match... Blame the greedy Manufactures that want to sell a new car charger with every cell phone...
Re:This isn't "green" (Score:4, Insightful)
Gadget-scale, very few (an ancient Palm, an few graphing calculators, a watch, a GPSr... Not much more).
On the appliance scale, however (which better matches the concept of alternative energy sources)... Fridge, washer, dryer, water heater, furnace, two TVs, my car (almost), stove, microwave, a handful of fans (from ceiling to box)... I could probably come up with a few more.
The things we take for granted around the house, that we just expect to work when we press the button, tend to have real lifespans over ten years.
For the type of portable devices in TFA, the chances of them being still in use in 10 years is minimal.
What does the device itself have to do with anything? TFA talks about powering those devices, the devices themselves don't particularly matter. For an analogous situation, I have rechargeable AA batteries older than some of my current gadgets - Does that make rechargeable AAs not a viable source of portable power?