Hacker News Reader

Comment by Egregore | Hacker News Reader

I actually live off the grid using a system of solar panels inverters and batteries (lead AGM batteries), the batteries are the most expensive part of the system, in the summer there is a lot of sun - I can cook with electricity, in the winter I'm using a netbook instead of the notebook to save electricity.

View on HN

"I'm using a netbook instead of the notebook to save electricity." Why? A notebook uses less power than a lightbulb these days.

We don't use lightbulbs for lighting we use leds, so our lighting consumes less electricity than a notebook. In the evening I check how much electricity is left in accumulators and after using notebook in a cloudy day there is less electricity than after a netbook.

I didn't mean you had to use lightbulbs, I just wondered whether the difference between using a notebook and a netbook was actually significant. Do you by any chance know how much of a difference it makes (in energy)? I would be interested in knowing. :)

For Asus EePC it's about 20Wt for Toshiba Notebook it's about 40Wt.

Care to describe this in more detail?

I have:

two solar panels of about 70-100Wt (self made from ebay elements)

a bundle of two 200Ah 12V AGM accumulators

a cheap ($30) Chinese charge controller

a cheap Chinese invertor it writes on it 1500Wt but it sometimes stops on some 800Wt hardware (may be starting currents are too big)

I'm using the invertor for notebooks, water pump, blender, even when it doesn't have load it consumes about 0.4A/hour so we're turning it off, especially during winter. We're trying to use as much car chargers as possible also our led light is 12V linked directly to accumulators.

Do you manually repoint the panels based on season (for elevation)?

How far north are you?

No, they're positioned for winter position, because in the summer there is much more sun and accumulators are usually full.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com