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Green gadget challenge

Posted on 15 Jul 2008 at 16:17

Powering the MacBook

I had been telling anyone in the office who would listen about my success running handheld devices: now I was forced to ramp up my efforts. It was time to turn my attention to the most energy-hungry of all my gadgets, my MacBook.

Solar power seemed the most practical option, but to power a laptop with renewable energy I would need to bring out the big guns. The 25W E-Sun folding panel from Sunlinq was the largest I could find that didn't require permanent mounting to a building's roof (a project I imagined that both my editor and landlady would be reluctant to sign off). The picnic blanket-sized panel requires a similarly powerful regulator and battery to clean up and store energy, which came in the form of the Powering PowerPack 135 (costing around £100 exc VAT). This is an extremely weighty piece of kit that's chunkier than the laptop itself, but it can store enough power to run a laptop for several hours, and conveniently offers a standard three-pin plug socket for a power adapter. Admittedly, it was designed for in-car use rather than the office, and at no point during the test did I find a use for the built-in air compressor.

The first problem I encountered was where to put the solar panel - at 104 x 54cm it isn't the sort of thing you could leave basking in the sun on your windowsill, unlike the Powermonkey or HYmini. A makeshift solution came in the form of a handful of cable ties and my washing line - it may not have been pretty, but it worked. I drained the battery ready for my first test and left it charging for one whole, unusually sunny, day. In the end it managed only a 50% charge, which nonetheless was enough to give me just under two hours' use from my MacBook - not enough for a day's work perhaps, but an encouraging start.

Over the next few days this temporary setup continued to give me around two hours of use a day, which would mean that at least four such devices would be required to cover the average day in the office. Considering that I was already deeply worried about leaving one £319 panel unattended while charging, this was a prospect I didn't relish.

However, had the panel been on my roof, lying flat to get the most of the day's sun, and high above the shadow of fences and shrubs, then I feel confident that its power output could have been extended significantly. Even the cheapest of permanent solar panels would hold an advantage here.

Challenge won (sort of)

So, my hunch was right; you can run devices on sustainable power, and green gadgets are far from gimmickry. To be honest, though, as much as it pains me to admit it, my colleagues were right on one point - not all sustainable power sources are reliable or advanced enough to be practical.

Hand-cranked devices, for example, are almost always chocolate teapots. Even if they're efficient enough to be usable, which many aren't, sustainable power will never reach the mainstream if people have to stop what they're doing every half an hour to get sweaty winding up their laptop, phone or media player. We all want to be environmentally friendly, but there are limits.

Solar power, on the other hand, is much easier, and produces great results. So why isn't everyone doing it? The simple reason is that free power doesn't come cheap. The E-Sun panel costs a rather steep £319, and the battery pack is another £100. Add to this the fact that there's still a certain amount of inconvenience involved, and you've already lost the interest of the vast majority of people.