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Josias

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Mar 10, 2006
1,908
1
Hi y'all
My dad is dreaming of a little place in the woods, where he can sit and write with his laptop (my old wincrap thingy, 2.4 GHz Celeron D, 256 MB DDR PC-2300 RAM, 30 GB 4.200 rpm. HDD, 16 MB Intel GMA/852 and a 14" screen). If he got a 12 V truck/car battery, how long could he sit in the woods and write, running nothing but Word. Don't worry about rain or stuff, just tell me how far he could go on it. I know the computer has a maximum voltage consumption of 19.1 V. That's all I know.:confused: :D
 

Josias

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Mar 10, 2006
1,908
1
Now I found out the AC adapters output ia 19 V/3.42 A. I really need to know this. Please help me!:D ;)
 

Timepass

macrumors 65816
Jan 4, 2005
1,051
1
if I had to guess I would say a few days or so of power could be taken from the bat. Laptops are not going to draw that much power off of it so he could more than likely go more than 24 hours off of it running it. So he could just go recharge it after a while.

The rating on car batteries is based on how many mins it can run a car drawing I want to say 100 amps. Dont really rememeber the exact amount of power they base it on. But seeing as most batteries say 70-100 mins on about an average car. it a safe bat that it could power a laptop for a few days.
 

Josias

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Mar 10, 2006
1,908
1
Timepass said:
if I had to guess I would say a few days or so of power could be taken from the bat. Laptops are not going to draw that much power off of it so he could more than likely go more than 24 hours off of it running it. So he could just go recharge it after a while.

The rating on car batteries is based on how many mins it can run a car drawing I want to say 100 amps. Dont really rememeber the exact amount of power they base it on. But seeing as most batteries say 70-100 mins on about an average car. it a safe bat that it could power a laptop for a few days.

Ok, spankyou very much. We have a charger for the battery, but we just need to know how long it can run, before we buy a battery.:D
 

TheMonarch

macrumors 65816
May 6, 2005
1,467
1
Bay Area
Timepass said:
if I had to guess I would say a few days or so of power could be taken from the bat. Laptops are not going to draw that much power off of it so he could more than likely go more than 24 hours off of it running it. So he could just go recharge it after a while.

The rating on car batteries is based on how many mins it can run a car drawing I want to say 100 amps. Dont really rememeber the exact amount of power they base it on. But seeing as most batteries say 70-100 mins on about an average car. it a safe bat that it could power a laptop for a few days.

100 amps?! No way!

Try 1/4th that, and now we're talking.

BTW, Mac+Lead Acid battery, sounds like a bad idea...
 

j26

macrumors 68000
Mar 30, 2005
1,754
726
Paddyland
Slap a solar panel with it an it could last forever (or at least until you have to reinstall Windows;) )

Heres a sample - I'm sure you could find cheaper if you hunt about.
 

Fisheke

macrumors member
May 16, 2006
49
0
Antwerp, Belgium
19V * 3,24A = 65W. So you'll consume (at max) 65Watts.

An average lead-acid car bttery has a capacity of about 70Ah's, at 12V. So a car battery has a capacity of 840WattHours. It'll be able to power your 65Watt laptop for about 13hours.

This being ofcourse with max power consumption from the laptop (it won't even get near that when you're using word), and you'll have to account for losses in the transformer (12VDC->220VAC). Say you'll get about, a rough guess, 16hours of fun with the battery.
 

Timepass

macrumors 65816
Jan 4, 2005
1,051
1
blaskillet4 said:
100 amps?! No way!

Try 1/4th that, and now we're talking.

BTW, Mac+Lead Acid battery, sounds like a bad idea...


Just have to make sure he runs it though an DC/AC power converter. those will be just fine after running it. Power my laptop that way for a long time.
 

Moe

macrumors regular
Apr 27, 2003
138
0
First, you want a deep-cycle battery, not a car starting battery. The latter is designed to deliver high-current for short periods of time and not be discharged very deeply at all. If you do, it'll have a very short life.

A Group 27 size deep-cycle battery typically has a capacity of 100 amp-hours at a 5A (20 hour) discharge rate. However, if you want reasonable life out of it, you won't discharge it below 50%.

An 85% efficient inverter (converts 12VDC to 120VAC) typically draws 10% of the appliance's 120VAC wattage as amps from the battery. So a 120VAC appliance that really uses 50 watts will cause the inverter to draw about 5 amps from the battery. In theory, that appliance will discharge a fully charged 100 amp-hour battery from 100% charge down to 50% charge in 50amp-hour/5amps=10hours.

On a notebook power supply, you have to consider whether the power rating is on the input or the output. If it's output, you need to multiply that by about 1.15 to find the wattage it inputs because the power supply is also less than 100% efficient. If you only know the output voltage and maximum output current, you can multiply those together and then by 1.15 to estimate the input wattage. In your case, that's 19 V x 3.42 A = 65 output watts x 1.15 = an estimated 75 input watts.

Keep in mind that the notebook power supply's rating is its maximum capacity, i.e. what it could deliver when operating the notebook while charging its battery if heavily discharged. If you're constantly operating the notebook off the deep-cycle battery, it's like being plugged into residential power all the time, so the notebook battery won't discharge, and the notebook power supply will never be drawing near it's maximum.

If we estimate the power supply to use 80 watts maximum, we might guess it uses 40 watts or less when the notebook battery is fully charged, causing the inveter to draw 4 amps from the deep cycle battery. In that case, 50 amp-hours divided by 4 amps will give just over 12 hours of use on 50% of the Group 27 battery's amp-hour capacity.
 

reh

macrumors 6502a
Oct 24, 2003
639
1
Arkansas
There's no sense going from DC to AC back to DC. Get a cigarette lighter power cable for the laptop and your battery will last a bit longer since there's no power loss from an inverter.
 

imacintel

macrumors 68000
Mar 12, 2006
1,581
0
reh said:
There's no sense going from DC to AC back to DC. Get a cigarette lighter power cable for the laptop and your battery will last a bit longer since there's no power loss from an inverter.

Yeah, that should work better. No power losss from inverters.:)
 

Josias

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Mar 10, 2006
1,908
1
Me daddy got his little chair to write in now, and he spoke to my mum's brother, who knows a lot of mechanics. He just dropped it and went for solarpanels, though it's not very stable in the dansih weather.:D :p
 
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