Under My Umbrella

It's a neat idea. But you need to drill down into the concept a bit for the killer ap. Everything you describe is off-the-shelf except for one VERY important part. The charge controller/inverter. If you want to be a multi-gazillionaire build a small, simple, robust charge controller/inverter.

Standard plug for panels. Standard plug for batteries. Standard plug for line voltage (output). Autosenses/autoconfigures everything. Small, hardy, and as idiot proof as possible. So simple that any new waiter in a sidewalk cafe can figure it out in 5 minutes. So robust that it can stand being outside 6-12 months of the year. And so cheap that it doesn't double the cost of the table.

Think LEGO.

Once you have that, then anything you can think of involving solar panels, batteries, and line power is possible. But right now, without it, everything is a hassle.

I want a trickle charging station for my iPod, cel, PDA, etc. I buy a couple of flexi-panels, a small battery, and a ChargeBlock (TM). Plug it all in, away I go. Want to charge faster? I just plug in another Flexi-Panel.

It should come in cool colours too.

Glen's comment is insightful. Something patentable and value adding has to be incorporated and the volt/amp matching issues seem daunting. But think its worthwhile to first look at it from a marketing standpoint. My dialog skipped the seating drill. So lets revisit the cafe scene.

Waiter: "I see you have your notebook PC sir. Would you like to be seated at the Dell- or at the Apple table"?

Ponder for a minute, if you will, the power of this branding approach to bridge us to the ultimate tech solution. What a great way to profile products as compatable with a more sustainable future. The idea is to encourage corporate electronics designers to match the voltage supply options rather than the other way around.

Back to tech stuff. My ancient Compaq "transportable" PC with twin floppy drives was famous for having built in voltage adaptors for international power standards. The entire electronics industry specifies external "power blocks" traansformers for transportable devices; and leaving them plugged in all the time at home parasitises upwards of 12% of domestic power in the 'wired' household. Evryone has to have the "stuff of power management at hand. If you lug your gear around, you end up with so much "stuff" that you have to have a backpack,half the weight of which is associated with power managment.

The idea is to turn it around. Put folks in a social setting and empower (bad pun again) them to arrive lighter. Brand loyalty will soar iPOD-like if they do.

My closing thought is about notebook PC's in particular. Now that big screens are common, battery placement is on the user-facing edge of the base, as is needed to balance the big screen when it is tipped back a bit. For designers, big screens rationalize heavy batteries. I say lets get out of this box. Give the users an option to leave the battery, wires, and power block behind, and either put some ability for power conditioning back inside the PC or give the power management board the ability to safely handle a wider range of volts and milli-amps. This might be as simple as getting out of the mindset that batteries and their circuits have to be designed for a "fast charge", which would not be as important if you could do without them when hurried. Lithium batteries are treacherous if they overheat from too much current; and I recognize that is another reason why the input specs are tight. But I'm just saying it may not be impossible.

Addressing the battery-removed imbalance issue, a simple pull out device from the back would handle it easily.

THe result, I would hope, is a PC that is roughly 1/3 less mass overall, and a lot more fun to take to lunch.

Regarding standard plugs, the automotive 12V "cigarette lighter" socket is about as common globally as it gets.

I agree with John about some of the problems with laptops and batteries, but the 2 main reasons for those annoying little power bricks that all laptops have are heat and space. Both are at a severe premium inside a laptop case. It seems to me that years and years ago I had a portable that offered the ability to swap the battery for an internal brick...

I disagree strongly though with the concept of branding the tables. It would probably be disasterous for our fictional cafe. What if all the Apple tables are full? Do you turn away Apple users? What if you have no Dell tables? The #@$% Toshiba tables are on the fritz again! Somebody stole the Compaq cable! The barrier to entry for any customer must be as close to nil as possible. Every table must support everything. And that means 100% standard connectors. Thanks Andrew, the nice ubiquitous 12V auto jack will be perfect, but better have a few 110V plugs too.

I'm betting John, that if these cafes and their power jacks become popular enough you'll see manufacturers designing their machines to plug into a 12V jack out-of-the-box.

Agreed: 12V "jack" would be a good starting point. HOwever, that does not fully address my points. Example: my laptop's "brick" puts out 19Volts /2.93 amps. TO matach my voltage, that would require two sets of 2 12V batteries, with 2 hooked in series, two more hooked in series, and the two series sets hooked in parallel, to the "female" jack outlet (sorry about the term, that's how electricians describe it). On the way the voltage would have to be knocked down to 19 so as not to fry my board.

Newer PC's probably accept a lower voltage, but you'd have to be able to handle the older designs too.

Hence the need for 110V plugs, and carrying your d*mn power brick everywhere you go. There just isn't any easy solution when none of the laptop manufacturers can agree on any standards.

I think Andrew's point about the 12V auto plug lay in its ubiquity. Many many aftermarket suppliers have 12V auto adapters for all kinds of electronic devices (I have adapters for my iPod & cel).

If the fictional cafe can offer the two most ubiquitous power plugs currently available then the battle will be half won. There will be more clutter on the table than any of us would like, but if this kind of thing gets prevalent enough I really do think you'd see some manufacturers accepting 12V directly. Admittedly things fall apart a bit in Europe, but I'm sure the Europeans must be more used to carting plug adapters around than we are in NA. Our handy ChargeBlock(TM) would just supply 220V to the table top.

The source of power (that it's solar) will only be of interest to a minority of cafe users. They will only be concerned that the power is there, sort of like free wi-fi; who cares who supplies it as long as it is available and free. But it will be a big bonus to the cafe. They can offer a valuable service, but it won't increase their power bill, they don't have to run cables, risk people tripping over said cables (then suing), and they can advertise that they are solar, to draw in those who care. They also won't have to worry about dragging those cables in at night (so people don't steal their juice.

But for all that to work somebody needs to invent my fictional ChargeBlock(TM). Somebody? Anybody? Please?