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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?
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

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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