Charging laptop, camera, monitor etc. W/O an inverter?

[john61ct]

Yes, some Dell, HP and Apple laptops have been rigged to demand their proprietary converters.

Good reason to avoid those brands IMO.

But I believe very rare now.

The "it depends" case for efficiency is as I said irrelevant for many.

But where it is critical, avoiding inverters as much as possible is a good principle to follow.

PS AH not amps.

As in "my IT usage living on the hook used to consumes 65% of the AH my panels produce on average, and now it's under 45%"

[Yowieboy]

Originally Posted by john61ct

Yes, some Dell, HP and Apple laptops have been rigged to demand their proprietary converters.
Good reason to avoid those brands IMO.
But I believe very rare now.
[snip]
But where it is critical, avoiding inverters as much as possible is a good principle to follow.

Somewhat late response here:
Don't know about HP and Apple, but at least for my Dell there is a workaround to this problem (but it requires that the battery of the laptop still has some capacity left). Simply booting on the battery (with the external DC power supply disconnected) and only plugging in the DC power after startup is complete will allow the laptop to operate indefinitely on a non-Dell power source (including a 12/19V converter). It will _not_ charge the battery though.
I am doing this on my boat with my Dell Precision M6300 laptop (an older model with a very good screen) but I suspect it would work for other models too.

[john61ct]

Better to just avoid Dell IMO.

What do you do when you need to charge the battery, start up the genset?

[ohgary]

What you need to be carefull about in using boost or buck converts is only use the minimal number. If you have 10 devices that need charging then find a converter that will support most of of those from a single device.. 12v in USB 5v charger out for 5 devices. Not 12/5 for each device. Also make sure your switching those converters OFF when not using them since they will draw power even if not charging.

[john61ct]

Actually that last point is more critical.

Just like inverters. If you only need to use such a device occasionally, having a bunch of little ones right at the point of use, sized to be efficient for that one device, helps it get turned on and off as needed.

Is much more energy conservative than a single large converter that is oversized for most load devices it services and tends to be left running more minutes per day.

And the distributed approach has inherent redundancy, and can often be much cheaper in purchase cost as well.

[Yowieboy]

Originally Posted by john61ct

Better to just avoid Dell IMO.

Well yes, that's an option if you're buying new, but I am using a laptop that I already had (for many years, I might add, and that has given me great service and is still going strong).

Originally Posted by john61ct

What do you do when you need to charge the battery, start up the genset?

No genset on my 25-footer, and it's certainly not needed. It is easy to just use a small inverter along with the original Dell power adapter if needing to charge the battery. When the battery has juice again, I can go back to the more efficient 12/19V converter. I also sometimes take the laptop home and can charge it there.

And the converter of course is on a circuit with a switch, so it's ON only when required.

[john61ct]

sounds good, redundancy too

[Suijin]

I’d be surprised if you could not find a 3rd party DC charger for a Dell on Amazon. I found one for my old MacBook with MagSafe connector which was great. New MacBook uses USB-C which makes it easy.

I installed a number of combo USB/cigarette adapter receptacles throughout the boat which has been a godsend. Make sure you size the wire and fuses appropriately for whatever load you expect to put on them.

I don’t plug anything into the inverter that I can find/make a DC solution for.

[john61ct]

Yes for all three makers, only certain models require(d) a proprietary charger.

And there are workarounds, heard of wiring a resistor for example.

Easy enough to research or even test before you buy if the issue is important to you, bring a pocket jumpstarter powerpak with a 19V outlet shopping with you, get the sales clerk to only show you models that charge off it.

BTW they make a good generic converter, work off shore power or 12V charging, add lots of battery capacity as well, and some are big enough to crank up a large diesel engine.