$180 Portable Solar Power for Your Laptop, MP3 Player
by Justin Thomas, Virginia on 01.21.07

Pat from Will Blog For Experience writes about his experience using a home-made, portable solar kit to power his MacBook. He says: "This kit weighs about 2 lbs, costs $180, and will power my Macbook for 1.75 hours (1.83ghz, browsing the web and checking email via Airport Extreme, bluetooth off, screen brightness about 70%) with a little more than 5 hours of good sun." The folding solar panel he uses is available from the Alt Energy Store. See a picture of the entire kit after the link.






















The timing of your article is uncanny. I live in Australia and the lack of people harnessing the sun's power is shocking.
Wanting to do exactly what you have achieved - I did a trip over the weekend visiting some electrical supply stores but with my limited knowledge of electronics, I didn't achieve very much.
Your great post is a well timed find and has certainly put me on the right track for building my own. Many thanks!
This is a great idea, we have a free resource of power (The Sun) and we all need to use it more in many ways.
So this would power the MacbookPro 2.33 dual-core for about 15 minutes under normal use. Great, useless.....
So this would power the MacbookPro 2.33 dual-core for about 15 minutes under normal use. Great, useless.....