I’m currently working on a small scale solar home project, with the intention to provide autonomous power supply for phone and occasional laptop charging. The system is based on a 12V Lead-acid battery, and the easiest way to add chargers is to use car cigarette lighter accessories. The issue with those accessories though is that provided specs are often very limited. What interests me the most is standby current and efficiency, but I have never seen these provided in documentation for any cigarette lighter accessory. Standby current and efficiency are important in estimating how fast battery is going to be drained. Standby current shows consumption of charger itself, when nothing is charging from it. Efficiency shows how much energy is lost during charging. I got Satechi 72W USB-C and Anker Power Drive 2, and I have, of course, made some measurements.The Satechi charger has one USB-C and one USB-A port. The USB-C port supports 60W Power Delivery, and the USB-A port provides up to 2.4A. The Anker charger has two USB-A ports, with each providing 2.4 A. To measure the efficiency I have used my Pixel 3 XL phone and XPS 9570 laptop as a load. The CPU-Z utility was …
Can solar panel on a balcony power your laptop?
Real time data About one year ago I got an idea of designing solar power manager device. The device would contain an MPPT battery charger, 19V and 12V regulated outputs for powering single board computer, and couple of USB-A and USB-C outputs for powering Raspbery Pi etc. I have purchased a solar panel, lead-acid battery, some hobbyist charge controller, power meters and Rasbpberry Pi 4 with the intention to determine the features needed for my own power manager. Eventually, I decided to pause/stop designing time consuming hardware projects, and focus more on software instead. However, the components were still here, and I got another idea on how to utilize them. I decided to build a charging station for smartphones (see my wireless phone charger holder project here) and laptops at my home. Key components Satechi 72W Type-C PD Car Charger (ST-TCPDCCS)Car charger with one USB-C PD 60W and one USB-A 12W outputs. Anker PowerDrive 2Car charger with two USB-A 2x12W outputs. Clas Ohlson Car Lighter Socket Splitter (36-3902)Splits car lighter socket in two sockets. The plug is cut off, and only sockets are used in the project. How it all works in hardware The interconnections in the system are not …