Solar powered Laptop?

[Metaphant]

I just have one plain question: Is it possible to make a portable solarpanel to a laptop?

[12volt dan]

yes no problem but I would use a  battry with the panel to stabilize the voltage. This one was 15volt but it runs on 12 just fine

[TomW]

Metaphant;

Absolutely.

Takes a battery to do properly but very doable. I run several computers off 12 volt dc from batteries I charge with solar panels.

IBM Thinkpads, NEC and CompaQ laptops all run fine from 12 volts from my battery banks. They vary from 16 to 18 volts on their adapters but all run fine on a nominal 12 volt source [11.5 to 14.4 volts actual]. Most run less than an amp under normal type use but they are all low end 486 or early pentium class computers newer high speed laptops likely will require more power.

Cheers.

TomW

[Metaphant]

My Inspiron 8200 runs on 20V, 4.5A. Have you any ideas of solarpanels to buy? How heavy are your battery-pack? I was thinking of taking my laptop up the mountains. And my I8200 has some weight in it self.

[Metaphant]

My Dell Inspiron 8200 runs on 20V, 4.5A. Is there any way of making the input not overloading? You talk about batteries. But what kind of batteries would work for me? (I´m a little novice in these areas of electronics.)

[RobD]

On something like that I'd use a small inverter to drive the AC adapter that came with your computer and not try to set it up for 20 volts. You can't do it easily with a three terminal regulator because of the current and regulator losses. Charge a battery with the solar panel and run the inverter from the battery. The max load is probably 4.5 amps and less in the real world. Try to use as little power as possible and 'idle' your computer when you can.

20 x 4.5 = 90 watts. 90/12 = 7.5 amps so if you use a fully charged 15 amp hour battery you'll get two hours out of it and a lot more if your running the solar panel with the battery. Two 7 amp gel cells should do fine but they are heavy for lugging around in the woods.

RobD

[Ungrounded Lightning Rod]

My Dell Inspiron 8200 runs on 20V, 4.5A. Is there any way of making the input not overloading? You talk about batteries. But what kind of batteries would work for me?

I'd see if Dell sells a companion car adapter for the laptop.  If they do, I'd just get that.  It will be a switching regulator optimized for charging and running the laptop from a lead-acid system, with voltages running from 11.75 (max discharge) to 13.5 with big spikes (charging from a car alternator, with lots of crud like switching the air conditioner clutch).

Then I'd run it off a 12v deep-cycle battery or bank of them, charged by my solar/hydro/wind/whatever plant - or from a portable small-panel (plus a jell-cell or NiCad bank to limit and regulate the voltage, and prevent dips when a shadow falls on the panel).

This reduces the problem to a combination of two smaller problems, each of which has well-known heavily-debugged solutions.  And it won't void your warranty.

[windrules]

I think you should be able to buy a cigarette lighter adaptor for your particular laptop with which you can plug into any 12 volt battery.

regards,

Mos

[kurt]

http://www.homepower.com/files/laptoppv.pdf

[Metaphant]

Thanks! Even though this pdf is ten years old and the the design is for a Mac i find that this is what I was looking for. Now I have to look for parts that fit my laptops needs.

Do you know were to find small solarpanels, or solarpanel crystalchips?