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Of course, you can juice this a bit by doing two things: 1) using concentrating photovoltaics with multifunction solar cells to achieve ~30-40% efficiency. (This requires active cooling.) 2) use 2 axis tracking. 3) solar cells on the back of your array. (Bifacial solar arrays do this in an integrated manner but aren’t concentrating.)

These three together give you on the order of a factor of 3 greater total energy. (Note: concentrating buys you about 20% greater raw efficiency BUT means capturing diffuse light basically doesn’t happen. Might be better off with a non-concentrating bifacial multijunction panel that is still two axis tracked. Concentrators can still help financially because multijunction solar panels are EXPENSIVE.)

Also, if your laptop already has a beefy battery, you don’t need a separate battery. You’ll need a custom MPPT with the right output voltage, but you could hook it straight into your laptop. That saves money (potentially) and a lot of inefficiency.




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