If you were to power your laptop alone with solar power, you are going to need about 150W of solar panels. This will adequately charge the battery while the sun is putting out it's ideal power and cover efficiency loss. The panels plus their charge controllers alone will run you hundreds. (eBay is borked right now so I'll add better price estimate later) You need a deep cycle battery of decent size for this. Do NOT get a car or starter battery. You will ruin those in a short amount of time. Amp hours are your friend here and cranking amps aren't needed for this. The battery + inverter will be another $100. I got a 400W inverter off Newegg on a sale for $20. Expect $10 per 100W normally though. Pure sine wave is an added cost, but you don't need it for what you are doing.
Making your own power is cool and all, but you have to realize that when it comes to solar panels, there is no such thing as low cost. If you are trying to save money, look somewhere else. You will end up paying more for these parts to produce the electricity than you will in electricity from the utility. I pay $2.00 a day for my rigs, but am making $15 a day. My electricity rate is $0.101 per kwh. What's your's?
Also, please, use proper grammar and spell check when writing large blocks of text. People will be kinder.
in part of Uk i'm in,electricity rate is about $0.23 (equivalent £0.14 in UK,this has now risen to £0.20 now).Solar panels are cheap where I am but deep cycle batteries are pricey plus inverter and charge regulator.
A solar system typically has solar panels,deep cycle battery,charge regulator and of course and inverter (not needed if running off 12V.Runnng a MBP from airline/car adaptor means you run from 12V and can skip on the inverter)
Also a MBP uses no more than 85W at a time from mains when under full load and charging the battery at the same time. When my MBP is only charging the battery but idling,it uses 66W for fast charging (in 2hrs)
When battery is full,but GPU is under load my MBP uses 50-55W (60W if monitor is on as well) whereas CPU uses more power and gives less performance than GPU mining with it. I got these watt figures by using a watt meter.Also running from mains adaptor and through an invertor means losing some of the energy to conversion so it's best to just run a MBP (MacBook Pro) with it's airline/car adaptor I think as its straight from 12V supply.
In response to the poster who asked me to double check my grammar and spell check it,well can you please be more constructive and show me where the spell check tool is on this forum, and I will take your tip more positively in the future,thank you.Problem is I'm always busy with everything else,I type fast and I have wireless keyboard, so sometimes, certain keys won't fire if you can understand what I mean (say If I type this sentee and the c key doesn't fire sometimes or it gets jumbled up between reciever and keyboard,it happens sometimes,like this 'im tstng my keybrd' this shows that several keys are not 'firing' when they should be sometimes. or 'hte','teh') I guess this forum requires a higher standard of spelling and grammar whereas all other sites I go to don't care as long as I'm vaguely understandable,that's all and I've also come to expect this to be universal (of course this isn't the case).I'm stuck with current Keyboard until next upgrade cycle in 2014.(each upgrade cycle is 4 to 6 years due to budget cuts and is generally more cost effective for me than it is to maintain an aging system).Thank you for your understanding about the issues.
On a lighter note however,My new PC case has arrived and all neccessary parts will be upgraded when it all arrives like Case,new fans (as cases supplied ones are crap for cooling as its the Coolermaster Silencio 550 case as i expect quiet and cool computing for good price) and Radeon HD 6950 (old stock on sale that may have unlocking feature for it's shaders).
