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I want to get my PC off the grids power; any decent solutions for an apartment that has access to a roof? (lemdit.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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As title says. I think my PC is using like a max of 500w when it's juicing but idles for less. I was thinking of using an ecoflow high grade setup for this. Anyone have experience doing something similar?

I might switch to a small micro tower setup by Dell or Lenovo that uses like 120w max. The new Mac minis seem to cap out at 39w though which is crazy.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Newer laptops often charge through USB-C I believe, so that should presumably work the same way as charging a phone. Whether one of those solar phone chargers could generate enough to charge a laptop I have no idea, but if anyone wants to try it I'd be interested to hear the results lol

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

You don't directly charge a laptop from a solar panel. You charge a power bank and use the power bank to charge your laptop. I think that works fine, but you're going to want a bigger solar panel setup than you'd use to keep a cell phone or tablet running, since laptops use a lot more power, power banks designed for laptops are correspondingly bigger, and you don't want to take days to charge your power bank.

And I'll take this opportunity to plug one of my favorite articles, on the details of running a server completely off of solar power:

https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2020/01/how-sustainable-is-a-solar-powered-website/