PV Gap

Clarence Said:

Tree house solar power question?

We Answered:

Laptops draw around 50 to 70 watts of power. If you're listening to music on speakers, go by their wattage. Let's say you have 50 watt speakers. Now add two compact florescent lights at 16 watts each. So let's say 140 watts and then we'll throw on a bit extra in case you want to run anything else: 175 watts. Double that because the sun doesn't shine from 6 til 12pm and you'll need to charge a storage battery when it does shine: 350w.

Converting the DC power to AC power will incur you a bit of loss. Sooo, let's get a 360w kit because they make those. Some prices I'm finding are around $5400 for the panel and inverter. That's a little over budget.

I guess you could cut out the speakers and only listen to music on laptop headphones. You might also be able to cut out one light. So we'll cut the total demand down to 240w. That'll run you $2500. Still not looking good.

So yeah, solar is probably out. As for getting electricity out there... I guess you could run a generator (noisy and you need to lug gas), or maybe build a windmill (might not be much wind in the woods).