Earlier in the day I was cutting the hedge with this powerpack, about 30 minutes of run time. Then I left the laptop plugged into it for 3 hours playing terrestrial antenna HDTV (pretty cpu intensive work), and it was pretty awesome to note how long it had lasted. Mine you, it draws watts out of the house and takes about 18hrs to fully charge.
Which got me thinking about solar panels. Canadian Tire offers a direct plug-in solar panel made to charge this battery pack:
So right now I'm trying to do the math. This solar panel gives 15W of power per hour. The Eliminator 800 for a full charge requires 800W of power. That means it takes just under 54hrs for a full charge. We can guestimate the equivalent of 6hrs of full sun during the day, which means it will take 9 days for this battery pack to fully charge.
The solar panel costs $100, and I use the battery pack maybe once a week. Its a simple solution because the solar panel is made to be portable and hardy. If I want to lock it down, there are a number of solar panel resellers in Ontario that sell 40W for 200$. Which means it takes 20hrs instead of 54hrs to fully charge the unit, which is just over 3 days. That's pretty optimal, since it takes the battery 18hrs to charge, the fastest you can really charge it is 3 days x 6hrs.
;)
The cheapest solution I considered was to make a 20W solar panel using broken solar cell pieces:
For the electronic hobbyist, this can be a lot of fun. You need a bunch of solar cells, preferably the same type of cell and good energy yield still - you have to shop around as most people sell mixed. You'll need:
- flux resin (?) which apparently allows you to link solar cells together
- solder and copper wiring
- a plexiglass casing and roof bindings
- and a lot of time.
I saw some solar cell distributors selling the broken cells for around 15$ a set - which averaged 7-10W in working solar cells, and there is no real limit to your creativity at this price.
So what the heck does 800W of power look like? That was my initial question, what could I comfortably run with this Eliminator / Solar setup on a regular basis? Get a power meter:
These things are pretty awesome. It will give you statistical readouts of the amount of energy a plugged in appliance is using. I also see no reason you can't plug a powerbar in with multiple appliances if you're running something in a set: lamps, internet setup, computer setup, home entertainment system. I found it interesting that if you were on your laptop playing a video game vs using a word processor, you can see a significant difference in the amount of power drawn.
One person even reduced the amount of video games he played to lower his electricity bill, now that's thinking :)
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( 3 / 273 )Just a little note about a little fridge meant to make a big difference:
http://www.gizmag.com/solar-powered-fri ... ins/10990/
;)
The teenaged inventor:
http://www.emilycummins.co.uk/
A little bit more info.
http://www.freeenergy.ca/news/120/ARTIC ... 01-26.html
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( 3 / 51 )40 years after landing on the moon, NASA prepares to return:
As the world observes the 40th anniversary of the historic moon landing on July 20, 1969, the U.S. agency that accomplished that feat is working on plans for a return to the moon and an even more ambitious plan to use the moon as a base for missions to Mars. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is gearing up for its biggest challenge yet at a time when funding may be harder to come by.
http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-07-17-voa3.cfm
I was looking at google news and there is a lot of NASA news lately, from auctioning:
A navigational chart used by Apollo 11 astronauts has become the unexpected star of an auction in New York City marking the 40th anniversary of man's first lunar landing.
Bonhams New York said that the lunar surface star chart sold Thursday for an astronomical $218,000. The tool, with a 9-inch (23-centimeter) diameter, had been expected to bring in $70,000 to $90,000.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31952662/ns ... HJJ79E7myw
Spacesuit revisions for sustainable life on the moon, the are starting to look more and more like Space Odyssey 2001/2010:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31951009/ns ... syOJGzps-w
The first man to pee on the moon, uhh don't pass up the Buzz Aldin rap it's pretty hype:
Buzz Aldrin may not have been the first man on the moon, but he's got another historic first under his belt, so to speak: first person to pee on the moon.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... n-pee.html
Erasing the first moon landing tapes ... uh:
NASA admitted in 2006 that no one could find the original video recordings of the July 20, 1969, landing.
Since then, Richard Nafzger, an engineer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, who oversaw television processing at the ground-tracking sites during the Apollo 11 mission, has been looking for them.
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/ ... MK20090716
To Hollywood level restoration of moon walk tapes:
ith the help of Hollywood, those historic, grainy images of the first men on the moon never looked better. NASA unveiled refurbished video Thursday of the July 20, 1969, moonwalk restored by the same company that sharpened up the movie "Casablanca." NASA lost its original moon landing videotapes and after a three-year search, officials have concluded they were probably erased. That original live video was ghostlike and grainy.
NASA and a Hollywood film restoration company took television video copies of what Apollo 11 beamed to Earth 40 years ago and made the pictures look sharper.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/art ... gD99FNTT00
and http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/hd/apollo11.html (direct link to videos)
And the latest launch issues:
Video and images taken during Endeavour's 8.5-minute ride into orbit showed several pieces of foam and/or ice breaking off the shuttle's external fuel tank and striking Endeavour's heat shield. Program managers said they believe white streaks seen on some of the shuttle's heat-resistant black belly tiles are nothing more than a coating loss and likely would not be an issue for the return trip back to Earth.
The heat shield protects the shuttle during its fiery, supersonic descent through the atmosphere prior to landing, a friction-filled flight that can generate temperatures as high as about 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,650 Centigrade) -- about one-third as hot as the surface of the sun.
Shuttle Columbia broke apart during its re-entry into the atmosphere on Feb. 1, 2003, due to a hole in one of its wing panels caused by a debris impact during launch. All seven crewmembers aboard died.
http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCr ... SN16424852
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