Kenny P said:
I have a few big purchases coming up... a gaming laptop, and a solar system for my van.
I hear these laptops can use a lot of energy. Is there anyone on here who successfully keeps your gaming laptop charged? If so, what kind of solar set-up do you have? And how taxing is the laptop on your system?
Kenny, this is a pretty general question you are asking. You do not mention how long each day you plan to game, which would play a large roll in my answer.
Still, personally I do a fair share of gaming and recently purchased an
ASUS K501UW. I bought it specifically because of it's solid state hard drive over an old school spinning drive, to save some power. It also has the I7 processor and a Nvidia GTX video card, pretty much mandatory for modern games with any decent graphics level turned on.
While playing a heavy game, my laptop will consume anywhere between 6 to 10 amps of power through the inverter, depending on my laptop battery charge state. That is effectively somewhere in the 80 to 120 watts of power, so not only would you need enough solar panels to bring that in, you need more to account for the real-world conditions. One and a half times more solar panels then what you are looking for is going to be realistic in the real world... so 120 watts of panel as a bare minimum and 200 watts as a realistic number. As reference: I have 300 watts on my van, and it keeps up with me playing (a couple hours a day) and working on my laptop (another 4-6 hours a day), as well as Kerri working on her laptop (8 hours), and the fridge. Before Kerri, I survived just fine on 200 watts with the laptop and fridge, but I rarely played games. 250-300 watts will give you some headroom for some play time... sometimes.
Now on to other problems that you have yet to foresee... A lead acid battery wont allow you to do this very often. I currently have a Lithium house battery which has one large advantage over a standard lead-acid battery - it will bulk charge pretty much up to 99% battery capacity. That means, during the middle of the day when the sun is high in the sky and I am gaming at 10 amps power use... I can regenerate that power pretty much on the spot, straight from the incoming solar. A Lead Acid battery will not! The charge controller will trickle charge it at only a fraction of what the panels are bringing in, until you go below roughly 80% battery. Only then does it go into bulk charging mode again, releasing the full potential of the solar panels. Once it goes up to 80-85% it drops back into trickle charge mode, and you bring in only a fraction of power again, and you will be using more then you are bringing in.
Basically, as long as you are gaming, you will never get back to 100% battery no matter how many panels you have and you will always be starting the next day at a huge deficit on power if you do not stop gaming and let the batteries recharge properly each day. Not to mention it will hurt your batteries over time. Remember, going below 50% battery for a lead acid is causing damage to it, so you would only ever have a small window (between 50 and 80% battery) to game.
Basically, even with a 300 watt solar array, and a good lead acid battery to store that power, you are realistically looking at 2-3 hours of gaming each day... tops... if that to be honest. Is that amount of gaming worth all the cost to you? Is it possible to game on a solar setup? Yes. It is realistic? Not really... at least not without spending $2000+ on a Lithium battery and 200-300 watts of panels, on top of your laptop cost.
My suggestion would be to pickup the laptop that you want, but save your gaming time for when you are plugged in. Coffee shops, libraries, and RV parks were the only times I gamed prior to the Lithium setup. You may want to think of limiting the bulk of your gaming to those times as well. Just being realistic.
