Energy Mods... Bring Da Power

Hi guys. I am currently thinking of ways to increase battery life in my laptop... I bought a second battery so with both batteries combined I get 8 hours. But that's not enough!

I was thinking, why hasn't anyone made a mod yet with solar panels on the palm rest or lid or something that powers the laptop? It doesn't necessarily need to power it completely, but just extend it's battery life... Ya know?

Anyone know some cool energy mods or think a solar panel is possible on a palmrest?

 

i don't think the small solar panel will provide enough energy for a laptop. but you can look into a solar panel backpack, but i still doubt it will provide you enough power.

Voltaic Solar Charging Backpack Silver Panels by Office Depot

 

I have done enough research on this to say you essentially need to either get a laptop with better battery life or do mods like replacing the lcd with an LED backlit display, switch to a lowrpm hdd or ssd, undervolt the cpu, switch to the highest capacity battery, remove any leds you can do without if you absolutely want to push it. Thats about it.

 

Completely unreasonable to mount a 3x4" at best solar panel on the palmrest (that your hands cover up anyways???) to provide any significant amount of power to increase the battery life of your laptop.

Dim the screena s far as you can handle and follow some of the above suggestions for more.

 

solar panels do not provide nearly enough juice to make a difference.

You can prob buy bigger batteries, but it'll give your computer a bigger "butt"

 

I reckon a solar panel on the back lid of a netbook could work because a netbook doesnt draw too much power and it would be useful to be able to leave the netbook out whilst its off and the battery would be able to charge a bit and there would be some extra charge when you come back to it.

There are already solar chargers for things such as phones and MP3 players which only have small solar panels yet are quite effective so i think a solar panel on the lid of a netbook could genuinely work. although on a larger system which uses more power it might not work so well.

Edit: just noticed you have a DM3z which doesnt draw too much power. By no means could a solar pnale run it alone but it could provide some extra charge.

Also have you trien things such as undervolting your CPU and maybe switching to a 5400rpm HDD.

 

For something that's as easy to pick up and walk off with as a netbook, I'd be wary of modding the netbook to include a expensive solar option. Maybe a separable solar powered charger that you can lock up in the car, charge, and hook up to the netbook as necessary, but certainly not affixed to the netbook itself.

 

Not going to work. The solar radiation as measured by the weather station at my university for current conditions (sunny day, Canada, middle of the summer, crystal clear air) is about 500W/m^2. Let's say you put a panel that's 10cm by 20cm on a notebook (0.02 m^2), you get 10W of captured radiation. Most solar panels have efficiencies of maybe 10-15%, which gives you 1 to 1.5W of power. That's enough to power your hard drive. On idle.

I also forget to mention that this will only happen if the sun's right in the middle of the sky, and your notebook lid's normal is somehow pointing right at the sky (ie. closed?). Otherwise, multiply that 1 to 1.5W by a fraction less than 1. Go figure out the angle.

 

To increase battery life try to use less energy (it's better to use less energy than to have more capacity).
You can do this by underclock/undervolt, buy a SSD, use only 1 ship of RAM, lower bright, disable wifi and so on.
This little things like this you can get more than 30% more battery life.

 

I didnt mean to run the whole netbook off it. I meant so that it could add abit of charge while the system was switched off and im sure 1.5w of energy could be used to add a small amount of charge to a battery.

 

Some laptops idles at 6W. If you're using asus ul30 as an example, saving 1.5W of energy will extend the battery run time by 3 hours.

 

On that note im buying a NP 5125, I plan on switching over to SSD but ive heard that you cant undervolt the Intel I series becaues of the built in throttlign makes it hard? is there a way to undervolt this cpu(i5 540m)? And for the ram its less energy with less ram or with only 1 dimm of ram? ie 1 stick 4gb ram vs 2 sticks of 2gb ram. And how do i disable the optical drive when not in use?

also i'm planning on building a solar charger for my laptop. I was thinking a larger panel connected to a disected car charger at 12V so i can jsut plug a standard inverter in.And interesting thought i read abotu was wiring a small capacity battery in parallel so that while it provides some extra juice when sunny it can charge battery as well, and then when dimming battery will provide some juice

 

What I have done is..
Remove the dvd drive (my notebook has a program to power it down).
Disconnect the webcam (I just disable in device manager, but removing it will do more).
Disable as much in Device manager as you can (modem, hardwired network, flashdrives, etc..).

Adding to what Bbuccola said, adding more ram can help or hurt you, it depends on your load level and how you do it. More sticks increase draw, however, under load, they decrease processing time and thereby lowering battery draw. Less sticks with more memory is the best way to go, but may be expensive.

Check the specs on your hard disk, it may not be as efficient as others. Even with SSD's, some are better than others in terms of power draw. Choose wisely.

As with drives, not all wireless cards are created equal either. Some need more power than others. I'm pretty sure my 5300 uses less power than the stock card, and gets a better signal as well.


While this may seem like it does little, just disabling these give me about 1/3 more battery life. Lowering screen brightness to the lowest I can handle also adds another 1/3rd. When most struggle to get 2-3 hours with a similar notebook, I'm getting 5-6 hours. With just casual browsing wirelessly, and leaving bluetooth on I can get 5 hours.