The safety of this depends heavily on several things, without knowing
them it will be difficult or impossible for a researcher to answer
your question.
The biggest question mark is going to be about your inverter. If
yours reacts badly to variations on the input side, you are going to
have a problem. A rather typical situation that I can imagine would
be if the draw from the computer exceeds what the solar panel can put
out. Solar panels are essentially current sources, with a voltage
clamp. That means that if your load is less than or equal to what the
panel can put out for the given light they will behave quite nicely.
However, if the load tries to draw more, the voltage across the panel
will collapse and you will essentially get nothing.
When that happens, the inverter will shutdown - the question is, how
gracefully. Once it does so, the load on the panel will go to 0, and
the panel's voltage will recover. In all likelihood, the process will
repeat itself until the conditions change (more sunlight, or the
laptop battery is charged) or something breaks. It would be analogous
to you sitting there plugging in and unplugging your AC adapter into
the wall repeatedly several times a second. My guess is that either
the inverter or the power input board in the laptop would give out in
short order.
I'd suggest doing one of two things. One way would be to put a 12V
storage battery at the output of the solar panel and connect the
inverter to that. This essentially makes your solar panel into a
battery charge device, with the inverter running off the battery like
it was designed to do.
The other method is to get rid of the inverter and hook the solar
panel directly to the laptop. I doubt the panel's voltage is directly
compatible with the laptops, but I believe there are units sold
nowadays that have the proper voltage, along with protections (current
and voltage limiters) that take care of everything for you.
Hope that helps! |
