i am looking to go entirely off of the grid, thinking about using solar to run my laptops to trade, and i have no experience with solar, am thinking about starting out with an inexpensive kit from harborfreight.com
i am on a very tight budget, so i have done a lot of reading about solar and deep cycle batteries, etc, and i was thinking that i might just try hooking up that solar kit to a 100 amp hour deep cycle battery from walmart, the walmart reviews looked ok concerning the batteries, and then i could toss a small inverter generator into the mix for when the solar panels could not keep the battery or batteries fully charged…
for those that have no experience with solar, what i understand so far is that the solar panels act like a 12volt source that charges car batteries, pretty much… more solar panels=faster charge times… more batteries=more reserve power at night… i can always add more solar panels and i can always add more batteries…
also, i have been looking at a couple of the external laptop batteries that are available…
on the bixnet link, above, it says that that battery is the equivalent of a 25 amp hour car battery, if that is correct then i dont want that external battery, instead i want at least a 100 amp hour deep cycle battery and i will get four times the battery power for a lot less money.
anyways, my work is so awesomely finished… i am looking forward to doing a bit of fishing while my trading bot does it’s thing.
slight modification to my delusions about going off grid…
not gonna quite go off grid, not entirely…
i have been trying to figure out how much time my new-ish lenovo laptop will run on a 100-amp-hour deep cycle battery…
it’s kinda hard to tell, if for nothing else except for the fact that published numbers are rarely accurate…
anyways, my laptop has a 4.0 amphour battery built into it and so i am guesstimating that a standard 100 amphour deep cycle battery will allow my computer to run 100/4.0=25 times the standard runtime of three to four hours, or 25*3=75 hours…
that cant be right. that would mean that if i just get a nice 200 amp hour battery that i could run for 200/4.0=50 times runtime or 50*3=150 hours of runtime?
anyways, gonna start up with a single 100 amp hour battery…
now, between my deep cycle battery and my cellular broadband internet connection i can trade from pretty much any location where i can make a cell phone call…
and then, on the weekend, just fire up a small generator to charge the battery or batteries.
also, i am having second thoughts about that inexpensive solar kit…
i want to get the cadillac of solar when i do get it, i just dont yet know what that is…
oh yes, my grail is finished… all trades are now closed.
yesterday, i purchased a model 29DC deep cycle battery(125amphour) and a 400 watt inverter and a battery charger from wallymart and so far i am very happy with how it all runs my laptop/s…
check this out, the battery is only $90.00, subtract nine bucks from that if you have an old core battery to turn in, which i did not… the battery has an 18 month replacement warranty, if the battery goes bad or has a bad cell or whatever in 18 months they will give me a new one.
i configured my system as a c.o.w. (computer on wheels).
so far, without even charging up the new battery, my primary trading laptop has been running for 18 hours and the voltage reading on the wallymart battery has dropped from 12.4 to 11.7, i want to let it run until it stops providing 110volts to my laptop and then i will put it on a full charge.
now all that i need to do to be able to trade from anywhere is to acquire a small generator that can provide 110volts to my battery charger for about ten hours every two or three days and i am rocking.
btw, you common people would probably not be able to comprehend how really really super duper cool my trading system is.
sounds good, we don’t have enough sunlight in London to pull this off, but the next generation of solar panels should be much better ! and thinner and cheaper !!