Looking for a portable solar panel

[survient]

I'm looking for a semi-portable solar panel system(including solar panels and batteries) to power one of these or similar(same type of device) http://www.mini-box.com/s.nl/it.A/id.301/.f?sc=8&category=13, I looked up the specifications on the AC-DC adapters they had for it, and it looks like the range would be from 5A to 8.5A of power, at around 12V for a supply. What I'm looking for is the batteries required for this, and a matching solar panel that could trickle charge the batteries(not necessarily power the system), all of which would fit in a larger sized briefcase. I see a lot of batteries and a lot of panels, but I'm not sure how you would set them up to have the panels charge the batteries, while a device was running of the batteries at the same time. Thanks.

[wooferhound]

How many hours a day do you want to use your Solar Power ?

[gotwind2]

I've posted this idea many times before.

I love this simple idea of utilising a basic stacking (Stacker?) truck that lends itself perfectly to 'pitching' Panels into the solar rays manually with the heavy battery and possibly inverter at it's lowest center of gravity.

[survient]

Whenever possible, I need ones similar to these http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&viewitem=&item=270201167593, whatever I get I'm going to be forced to gut to fit inside of the briefcase. The idea here is to charge the batteries powering the unit, not for the unit to be solar powered directly. The power requirements, size restrictions for the panels, and the fact the unit will be primarily either powered by an AC supply or in a room with little to no sunlight makes powering this unit solely on solar power impractical. However, charging it by sunlight whenever possible I believe is a useful and efficient way to prolong battery life. I'm new to solar power, so I'm not sure how to go about all this.

[ghurd]

And we STILL have no idea what you are asking for...

How many hours a day the PC will be used.

How much power the laptop uses.

How much is the weight restrictions of the battery.

How much volume the briefcase can hold.

How much the battery can weigh.

How blue is my car if my wife buys new tires.

How much of that power needs to be solar.

You might consider actually doing at a solar worksheet.

Or maybe buy a MacBook(?).  The things make amazing use of the battery, even if I don't use one.

[ghurd]

Then get the old style vee-dub panels.  More power in less space.

Look for a solar sizing worksheet.

[TomW]

G-;

Careful, now. don't be too harsh.

Our job here is to spoon feed folks until they get an education in RE. I think.

I try to just not respond but when direct questions are ignored I tend to think the question was not exactly serious because if it was the person would answer the secondary questions. Especially on the type where they give absolutely no information.

We could have helped this user on IRC easily but he refuses to interact.

I try to just not respond but this kind of thing wastes everyones time that could be used to help someone building something not someone fishing with questions. This is supposedly a board for DIY builders not a free research facility for the lazy.

Ok this is drifting off topic.

Thats all. Its your time, however, to waste as you please.

Cheers.

TomW

[veewee77]

Solar sizing calculator (it's major, but would still apply)

http://dsjscrd.gotdns.com/calc

All you need to know is how many watts your device requires and how many hours you wish to use it, the voltage of the battery and a few other items. . .

Wait a minute. . . that is set up for major power, not a lappie, or small loads, but the math is the same. . .

Doug

[survient]

Sorry ghurd for not being more specific, I'm new to figuring out power requirements so this is somewhat hard for me to figure out.

TomW Sorry I haven't been more active I've been having issues with IRC actually, and I'll try again when I can.

As for hours of life the max would be 12 hours, however there will be long periods where the laptop will be docked and plugged into AC power. Basically I want the life of the battery to be as long as possible.

The power of the laptop as I can tell would be a maximum of 200 watts, including the monitor. I can probably whittle this down to around 120 watts, but I'd like to get as much power/battery life as I can out of the batteries. I'm looking as this for my power supply(this would power everything including the monitor)

http://store.ituner.com/ituner/pw1220atxmip1.html

weight wise for the battery I'd say it could be no more than 12-15 lbs depending on the other components I use.

the size of it I've been figuring, I'd say it wouldn't be bigger than 4 6 V batteries tied together(http://images.orgill.com/200x200/6749857.jpg).

Power that needs to be solar is 0. Why? because I'm only trying to charge the batteries via solar, not power the unit. I just am having trouble figuring out how you connect a solar panel to a battery to charge it. Another factor is how I'm going to hook an AC supply up to all of this. As I can figure, the AC/DC supply unit would be directly tapped to the power supply of the laptop, as well as hooked into the battery charging unit, the solar panel would also be tied to the battery charging unit, but not directly to the power supply of the laptop. Thus the laptop would only draw from either the batteries or the AC/DC power supply, whichever is available(AC supply coming first). Again, thanks for all the help.

[survient]

More on the power requirements, I checked the AC/DC supplies offered for the unit, the highest rated one I could find was 12v at 8.5 amps, a total of 102W, even though it would be a 200W power supply O_o.

http://www.mini-box.com/110w-12v-8-5A-AC-DC-Power-Adapter?sc=8&category=13

So I'm not sure if the max I'd use is 200W or 102W.

[survient]

I was looking around, and I found these two:

http://www.batterystuff.com/batteries/upc-telecom/PSH-12180FR.html

http://www.batterystuff.com/batteries/upc-telecom/PS12180.html

They are AGS, deep cycle, so they would work for the prolonged drain the laptop would give it, and it could handle the higher amperage. I might be out of my mind here, I understand that these aren't your lithium ion battery pack used in most laptops. I also found this:

http://www.sarrio.com/sarrio/12voltlaptop.html

the sarrio is thinner, however the AGS batteries dominate the sarrio's 11amphour battery life by throwing out 18 and 21 amp hours, almost double. Which is more feasible, probably the sarrio, however the cost is up there. Like I said before, I'm not as concerned with the weight. I'll put rollers on the briefcase if I have to, or have a mounted roller for the case. I may have 2 batteries even. And after looking around I'm beginning to get an idea of what to get. If I were to:

get this:

http://www.batterystuff.com/solar-chargers/BSP2012.html

or this:

http://www.batterystuff.com/solar-chargers/10Wframe.html

as a solar panel to mount in the briefcase and this:

http://www.batterystuff.com/solar-chargers/SS6.html

or something similar as the solar controller and then this:

http://www.batterystuff.com/battery-chargers/12-volt/5-10amps/Son1212SR.html

as the AC/DC charger. If I mux all this together I think I may be set, I just need an insanity check on it all to make sure I've put all the pieces together like I should.

Thanks for the help.

[survient]

I guess my biggest question is if I hook all of this up together as such:

Solar panel(s) - Solar controller - battery - PC Power supply

                                       |

                                      AC/DC power supply(unplugged)

would that fry anything? If not, would it fry anything if I plugged the AC/DC power supply in while the solar controller was still connected? If at any point this would cause issues, then how would I set this up to prevent this?

[survient]

the formatting didn't turn out right on that, the AC/DC supply is supposed to be shown connected directly to the battery.

[DamonHD]

You can comfortably run a modern powerful laptop on 30W or less most of the time.

Reduce your power requirements first else, IMHO, you don't stand a hope of a 'portable' solution.

Rgds

Damon

[survient]

To do what? Power the unit on solar power? or just on batteries? 200W would be my maximum, if that. Most likely it's going to require much less power than this, I just need to overcompensate just in case. The whole idea is to make a heavier and more powerful portable computing solution while still having adequate battery life. Solar power just helps for compensation. Stock laptops don't do what I want, and place importance on features I don't really care too much about. I appreciate the concern though.

[ghurd]

My laptop, this one, a Vista piece of crap, runs while charging the battery, with a max of 75W.

A 200W machine would kill the battery in this thing in under 20 minutes, if it had a full battery AND was being supplied with an 80W input.

My full blown Viao desktop doesn't use 200W, IIRC.

Anyway.  

Your numbers. 200W and 12 hours. (still nobody has any idea about what you actually want to do)

You need a pair of Trojan T-105s.

Now remember, discharging batteries past 50% screws them up, and this takes them to about 0%... so I would go with 2 pairs.  Maybe 3 pairs.

To recharge the batteries with a 100W panel will take about 35 hours of solar insolation.  About 8 days.

In 8 days, figure the batteries drop about a days worth of solar, so a tad more than 9 days to get them charged. Ball park.

Next.

Split the 2 pair : 3 pair to 5 batteries. That's over 300 pounds of battery.

A 100W PV is ~20 pounds?

That must be a BIG briefcase!

The ebay PV you linked is rated at 3.2W.  You need 32 of them with the numbers you listed, if they actuall put the rated power into a battery.  Really, it needs about 40.

About a 450 pound brief case?

Or look closer at what Damon said.

"prolong battery life" can be done with a VW panel and 3 pound battery.

"useful and efficient" depends on the device.

We still don't have a clue as to what it is.

G-

[survient]

This is why I don't like boards formatted this way. Have any of you seen my posts below? here:

Quote:

"More on the power requirements, I checked the AC/DC supplies offered for the unit, the highest rated one I could find was 12v at 8.5 amps, a total of 102W, even though it would be a 200W power supply O_o.

http://www.mini-box.com/110w-12v-8-5A-AC-DC-Power-Adapter?sc=8&category=13

So I'm not sure if the max I'd use is 200W or 102W.

I was looking around, and I found these two:

http://www.batterystuff.com/batteries/upc-telecom/PSH-12180FR.html

http://www.batterystuff.com/batteries/upc-telecom/PS12180.html

They are AGS, deep cycle, so they would work for the prolonged drain the laptop would give it, and it could handle the higher amperage. I might be out of my mind here, I understand that these aren't your lithium ion battery pack used in most laptops. I also found this:

http://www.sarrio.com/sarrio/12voltlaptop.html

the sarrio is thinner, however the AGS batteries dominate the sarrio's 11amphour battery life by throwing out 18 and 21 amp hours, almost double. Which is more feasible, probably the sarrio, however the cost is up there. Like I said before, I'm not as concerned with the weight. I'll put rollers on the briefcase if I have to, or have a mounted roller for the case. I may have 2 batteries even. And after looking around I'm beginning to get an idea of what to get. If I were to:

get this:

http://www.batterystuff.com/solar-chargers/BSP2012.html

or this:

http://www.batterystuff.com/solar-chargers/10Wframe.html

as a solar panel to mount in the briefcase and this:

http://www.batterystuff.com/solar-chargers/SS6.html

or something similar as the solar controller and then this:

http://www.batterystuff.com/battery-chargers/12-volt/5-10amps/Son1212SR.html

as the AC/DC charger. If I mux all this together I think I may be set, I just need an insanity check on it all to make sure I've put all the pieces together like I should.

Thanks for the help.

I guess my biggest question is if I hook all of this up together as such:

Solar panel(s) - Solar controller - battery - PC Power supply

(With the AC/DC supply directly connected to the battery terminals, unplugged)

would that fry anything? If not, would it fry anything if I plugged the AC/DC power supply in while the solar controller was still connected? If at any point this would cause issues, then how would I set this up to prevent this? I'm debating using a switching system, or setting up an autoswitch to have two AC/DC converters, one to charge the batteries, the other to power the unit while it's running, as I don't think the charger can power the unit and charge the batteries without causing problems."

/Quote

I apologize for the confusion, I'm new to this. However, despite my limited knowledge, and based upon other projects I've seen, I still believe this to be a viable project, especially if I keep the hardware in the unit's power consumption to a minimum. Part of the difficulty is finding out the consumption of each component, as websites generally don't list this in their specs as it can vary from unit to unit. I have to keep in mind the following components:

Motherboard(low energy rated)

CPU(also low energy rated)

Graphics processing unit(would be integrated with the motherboard)

hard drive(laptop 2.5 to save power)

LCD panel monitor with a DC power requirement(most LCDs have the AC/DC converter built in, this would have an external AC/DC adapter on it so I could bypass the converter. Also, this would be a lower power required unit, and I"d turn down the brightness on the unit while the battery was being used.)

peripherals(mouse,keyboard)

wifi adapter(disabled when not in use)

PSU(would use a small amount of power for itself, also resistance)

Speakers(low power/resistance, high efficiency)

Optical Drive(CD/DVD, low power required)

I'm just trying to get past the power configuration and making sure I've go everything. I know which components I need, I just don't know how to hook the panels, the batteries, and the AC/DC converter unit altogether.

[ghurd]

The controller is overkill for the panel.  Go with an SG4.  Unless you plan on over 4.5A of panels, then the SS6 is a great controller.

The battey charger isn't intended for SLA batteries, and the 14.4V will ruin them.  Plus 5A is too fast for batteries that small.  Look for a 1.5 or 2A charger (I like Battery Tender brand).

I'm not sure what you intend to do with the AC/DC converter.  It makes 12VDC from 110VAC.

You might be thinking it is an inverter, which makes 110VAC from 12VDC.

Download the PDF manuals for the SS6 and a Vector VEC051D (far too large, but a decent way to see the connections).  A 400W Vector inverter will do it.

They will show everything you are looking for.

G-

[survient]

The AC/DC adapter is to power the unit so it doesn't drain from the batteries when I'm near an outlet. The AC/DC charger would be a separate connection tied to the batteries to charge them while plugged in. So essentially I'd have 2 adapters, one for power, one for charging. Thanks ghurd, I'll look into those resources you gave me.