Date: Sat, 5 Jan 2008 09:43:59 -0800
Reply-To: Michael Elliott <camping.elliott@GMAIL.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Michael Elliott <camping.elliott@GMAIL.COM>
Subject: New electric power option?
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For those of us who like our electrical gadgets and refuse to camp in
places with hookups (meaning cheek-by-jowl RV campgrounds out here in the
SW USA), the options for keeping our auxiliary batteries charged up have
pretty much been limited to solar (needs full sun, not a lot of amp-hours,
dead silent, and non-polluting, expensive to wire up and a pain to deploy)
or generators powered by internal-combustion engines (runs any time,
plenty of power, loud enough to be annoying to anyone within 150 meters in
a quiet campground, and not non-polluting, messy fuel to deal with).
But it looks like a third option may shortly be available: the HydroPak
Fuel Cell is debuting at the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
Dead quiet, decent power (400W), 14-hour run time on one cartridge, fuel
cell technology (runs on water which is catalyzed into hydrogen which
powers a fuel cell). 115VAC and 5VDC (USB) outputs, no emissions.
$20 per cartridge, $400 for the unit.
http://gizmodo.com/340275/hydropak-fuel-cell-to-debut-at-ces-2008
BTW, I am not associated with this company or know anyone who is.
The press release is light on tech specs. It's unclear how many watt-hours
one can pull from a single cartridge. The 400W spec may refer to peak
capacity. Or it may refer to total energy available per cartridge. One
clue is in the statement that one cartridge can recharge an "average
notebook computer 8 to 10 times." According to some sources, a typical
notebook battery has anywhere between 20 to 60 watt-hours of capacity.
This gives anywhere between 160 watt-hours to 600 watt-hours of energy in
one cartridge.
If their marketing dept took "400 watt-hours" and mangled it into 400W, I
can make a guess about how useful this gadget would be to me. To convert
from watt-hours to 12-volt lead-acid amp-hours, divide by 12.6 (ish), so
400 watt-hours will roughly provide 32 (ish) amp-hours (inefficiencies not
included, calculating actual energy yield is left to the student).
This is high enough energy density to keep me watching this product
because during summer Mrs Squirrel and I use about 35 amp-hours per
24-hour period to keep the lighting and refrigerator running, watch a DVD
(softly, no loud bangs to alarm the neighbors), listen to soft music, etc.
Our solar rig* does a fine job of keeping the battery topped up, but if we
don't get sun, we're toast. A backup source of silent, clean energy like
this gadget sounds mighty interesting. It appears to be a real product.
==============
* http://camping.elliott.googlepages.com/aboutoursolarpowerrig
--
Mike "Rocket J Squirrel" Elliott
71 Type 2: the Wonderbus
84 Westfalia: Mellow Yellow ("The Electrical Banana")
74 Utility Trailer. Ladybug Trailer, Inc., San Juan Capistrano
KG6RCR
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