Cool or ridiculous: outdoor solar-powered laptop charging stations?

It gives the appearance of being progressive and ecologically green. If you have a bad battery and/or AC power is unavailable for some reason, such as during a major power failure, it is worth it. For normal use, wall current is the way to go. A 40 Watt laptop will run for 10 days at 24 hours per day on $1.20 worth of electricity. If you use the laptop 8 hours per day that extends to $1.20 per month. or $14.40 per year.
How much are they spending to buy, install and maintain the solar chargers? Do the math to get an engineering answer. (It is probably way more than 20x that.)
I will leave it up to you to decide the marketing value.

Yeah, I think it is more about making the campus appear cool than anything else. But I’m looking for people who might counter that view.

I mean, if you are going to directly show that the power is coming from solar, you don’t have a ton of options on where to put it… maybe are they installing it at like a cafe?? Or even maybe in a park it would be kinda cool.

All in all it’s honestly just a show off from the sounds of it “hey look how green we are.” Its not the worst thing in the world though, and I’m sure it could save some money on power bills.

It’s being installed at a major outdoor eating area. There are tables all around, and about seven different food vendors of various types. Like a food court. Only outside. People eat there when it’s sunny, even in winter (and there is snow around). It is a very popular area.

An installation in an outdoor, public, eating area? They also have to make it weather and theft proof. Are they free standing? If they are mounted on simple piers in concrete -even if they are simple piers – you are talking about $500 each, all in, for the installation alone.
If you put the money in a CD paying 3% the interest will pay for the electricity. But that will not look as cool and modern.

They are these tables that you can stand at, with a central column with 8 outlets on it. At the top of the column, there are arrays of solar panels—maybe six solar panel arrays. I think they are slightly taller than a tall person could reach. Here it is. And that’s the guy I was talking to about it. They go all over the country to install these things. The one he was installing was a standing station, not a sitting station.

I wonder what the etiquette is going to be at these things.

I think it’s a neat idea, but i have to question why anyone would want the standing one as opposed to the sitting one… lol

After seeing the picture you can forget what I said about $500. That is way too low.
He is selling free standing picnic tables with multiple solar cells. I estimate the table setup is $1200 to $1500 each. That could be much higher if special mountings are included to withstand wind load.
(I do not know the real price. Maybe someone can find out.)

Well if it’s solar powered then it’s bound to be outdoors.
I don’t think it’s either of the two, falls somewhere inbetween.

I can’t find a price, but I bet it is at least ten times as costly as your estimate. These guys drove more than a thousand miles to install them. They brought at least three guys. I know of two stations they are installing. Perhaps there will be others. I hope so. 3 guys for two stations—looks to me like it will take at least a half day to install them. We’ve got to be talking at least 10k per installation.

@ucme There is something in between. It is possible to have the panel outside, mounted on a roof with the outlets on the inside. The option showed is one of the most expensive ways to do it. They could easily run an underground connection from the nearest building at a small fraction of the cost.

While functional, this is mainly for show. When solar cells get to be 5x better and sell for 1/5 the current price we might see more widespread applications.

Now, if this were in the desert, far away from civilization, I’d be all in favor of it.

@wundayatta Does this mean they are being mounted to the ground too? Yikes.
And who will maintain them when (not if) a cell breaks or the inverter blows? I’ll bet the annual service contract is more expensive than the total electrical energy the unit provides in a year..
This is purely an engineering estimate since I do not know your location nor the active element but I will bet I am reasonably close. One installation will make about 1 kWH per day assuming average sun loading. At $0.12 per kWh That comes to $40 worth of electricity total output for a year. Let’s say I am off by a factor of 2. Make it 2.5 for easy math, so the unit, at best, will produce $100 worth of electricity if all outlets are used all the time and there is full sun every day. Good luck with that. How much is the service contract? More than $100 I’d guess.

@LuckyGuy Yeah, It’s got to be for show. That was my instinctual response. These things have seriously big batteries. Interesting your mention of the inverter. I own a hybrid vehicle and the inverter went about four years in. I wrote about it here a couple years back. So I know what you mean.

Where I work we are doing all this stuff to go green. Already, I saw people plugging their laptops in. We’re in Eastern Pennsylvania, so you get an idea of the weather. We’re on the rain/snow line many times during Nor’Easters. Those cells will get covered with snow when there is snow, and I wonder how sensitive they are to people trying to brush the snow off.

Most of the other installations have apparently been further South. The Northernmost that he mentioned was in Tennessee. The others were in Texas and Florida.

@wundayatta Eastern PA. Oh brother… That’s not exactly known as the sunshine capital of the world. I’ll bet those units get a lot of use from November to February when the temps are skirting near freezing most of the time. (Not.)
Yep. It’s for show. Either someone had some extra money in the Capital budget their bonus depended upon starting a green initiative.
Next thing you will see are motion-sensing, timed light switches in the bathrooms. They cost a fortune and save absolutely nothing since the waste heat goes into heating the building. OTOH it does prevent people from spending a lot of time sitting in the stalls reading the newspaper so that’s not a total loss.

Oh my god, you are prescient!!! Yep. They installed those two weeks ago. I was wondering how long you could sit in the stall before they would turn the lights off. Not just the bathroom, but every interior room in the building.

It’s sad, because they’ve have been cutting all kinds of essential things so they can spend money on this.

There you go. That activity is a total waste of stockholder funds. Don’t worry though. The guy in charge of Green got a good bonus for suggesting it. As did the installers and electrical contractors as well as the CEO’s brother in law who recently started his new energy consulting company.
Be on the lookout for a Bergey wind turbine. That is usually next.

Maybe I should suggest it, and then I could get the bonus?

No, sorry… you won’t get the cash bonus. The top administrator will claim that.
They might invite you out to dinner as a suggestion award gift. The dinner will be held at the Administrator’s house so he can write it off and further justify to the Board his ample housing allowance.