Well, over the past few weeks I've been trying to do a bit of research on Solar Power. I seem to be quite tight on money and would like to cut down on my electric bill but I need my computer 90% of the day. I was thinking about finding out how to make a small 'Solar Power Generator' to sit just inside my window (in apartment so gotta make due) and running a UPS off of that to further insure my computer's safety. But then I get to thinking, I use my computer to download overnight while I sleep, what if both of battery back-ups run out of juice? Well, I thought of industries and thought, 'hey, if they have equipment to say 'there's no power we need to switch to generators' it should be possible.' But now, I've been searching with no luck but I'm still in the planning stages. I was wondering if anybody else had any bits of advice or ideas to expand on this? or any information leading toward optimal performance of this would be much appreciated. kind of curious to see if I even get responses
The idea of a UPS is that when there is no power source it switches to battery and all your stuff would run from the battery. So if you had solar power and a battery the solar cell would charge a battery and also power to the UPS where your computer is plugged in. When it became dark out the remaining battery power would be given to the computer until it ran out then the UPS would switch on and you would have power to the PC until the UPS died. The problem though is that batteries aren't great at powering computers for a long time. A decent UPS might get you a couple of hours of computer time. Most large corporations use the UPS to power their servers for maybe 20 minutes which gives them enough time to get their diesel generator online.
Well, my thought of having the UPS was so that when the power from the Solar Generator ran out, the UPS would kick in long enough for the 'power source switch' to switch over to power from the wall so that it doesn't only run off the batteries.
In the evenings you could just pull the power plug on the ups off your solar generator and plug it into the wall. It wouldn't be automatic obviously but the UPS would keep your computer up while you are switching it over.
well. that is a good point. I'm just trying to see if there's a way that I could have it go automatically only because I'm that lazy. Plus a few other reasons. -sometimes I run out with my computer on and downloading and won't get back till later than I realized -sometimes I'll fall asleep with important things running and won't wake up till later. -sometimes I just have it on and don't feel like rebooting. I know it's possible. I guess its just a question of availability and such. Or something along those lines.
Well, what you have is a wonderful idea in principle but not at all practical with today's technology. You should start by computing the power consumption of your laptop, then figure out how much wall power costs vs. the cost of solar cells to generate that much electricity. I think that you will find that the cost of running your laptop from the wall is minimal compared to the start-up costs of a UPS and a solar cell. The "knock" against solar power is that (today) it takes more energy to build a solar cell than the amount of energy that solar cell will recoup in it's lifetime. Try again in 3-5 years.
well what im seeing here u have about two options. option 1: have 4-5 car batteries hooked in sequence (pos to pos neg to neg) hook up solar panel to charge batteries then hook up a power inverter (12 volt dc to 110 volt ac) can buy different wattages of inverters 300-400 watts should operate a laptop (it does mine) option 2: try a wind genrerator in the same sequence as above. i travel alot and use the inverter to operate my laptop in my vehicle
