It’s recommended to charge for at least 12 hours non-stop for the first time, as it prolongs the lifespan of your battery.3. Charge more often. Do not discharge the laptop battery when in critical level (i.e. less than 10%), and do not plug the laptop if the battery is fully charged. Frequently charging and discharging can extend the life of the battery.
4. Lessen battery utilisation by always lowering/darkening the brightness on your laptop’s monitor. Brighter display consumes far more energy. Also, when operating on battery, avoid using heavy applications on the same time.5. Stay away from employing external gadgets like external hard disk, external DVD writer and iPod. These gadgets are going to utilise and quickly drain the battery.
A startup in Africa is testing a hypothesis. Can cheap solar panels and batteries do for electricity what mobile phones did for communication?
Today, mobile phone subscriptions are more common than grid connections in Sub-Saharan Africa. About 700 million people in the region have a mobile phone, while only 450 million have access to reliable electricity.That’s because wireless telecommunication companies allowed countries to skip over 19th-century architecture to 21st-century cellular towers and cheap handsets. Now energy startups like Bboxx, d.light and Niwa are betting they can do that for electricity.Mansoor Hamayun, one of three co-founders at Bboxx, said he started the company in 2010 because about 1.2 billion people around the world still lacked access to reliable electricity and plans to change that would take decades. Bboxx claims it will deliver electricity to 20 million people by 2020, and it’s only getting started. “Africa has a history of leapfrogging,” says Hamayun. “[Although] it will take longer to for everyone to get power than a phone, Africa absorbs innovation so quickly because it’s desperate for it.”
Bboxx is effectively an energy utility. In a world used to government-run or -regulated agencies that build out cables, wires, and power plants, a new distributed model is evolving. In rural areas with little or no infrastructure, Bboxx uses pay-as-you go mobile payments and cellular connections to install cheap batteries and solar panels on buildings without selling any equipment. Customers buy electrification packages.Only a few US dollars per month is enough to lease solar panels, batteries, and high-efficiency appliances. Local installers wire up the buildings.A remote cellular connection (2G or an SMS backup connectivity) turns the system on or off based on payments, not unlike a cellular package. Taxi drivers may pay daily, while farmers can pre-pay months ahead after a good harvest.
Bboxx’s advantage is that it is designed to work at almost any size. Utilities demand a minimum number of well-off customers to justify connecting individual settlements. With distributed, connected infrastructure, systems can be fitted to almost any customers’ needs and ability to pay.A cheap option may power a few light bulbs, a radio, and a flashlight, while a higher-end $80 per month package may energize a fridge, radio, TV, and laptop. Customers with high-demand appliances such as freezers or irons can still connect to the grid and use Bboxx for smaller loads.Because many customers may be getting electricity for the first time, Bboxx leases its own branded appliances that are five to 10 times more energy efficient than the standard, the company claims.
Collecting all of this potential data on customers has unlocked new financing from institutional investors who have never entered this space, as well as the UN (paywall) and crowdfunding platforms (Bboxx forecasts 5% returns over 36 months). Even telecom companies are positioning themselves to become purveyors of “essential services” like electricity. Orange Energie, for example, is selling solar kits across Africa.That’s convinced countries to shift their rural-electrification efforts from public to private infrastructure. The Democratic Republic of Congo struck a deal with Bbboxx this year to supply power to 2.5 million of its off-grid citizens by 2020, while Togo has contracted for as many as 300,000 solar home systems by 2022.The cost of the solar-plus-battery systems is only getting cheaper (component prices have fallen more than 70% since 2010). Once the cost drops below that of stringing new transmission lines, the old grid model may begin to fade.
Homes and businesses can generate and store much of their own power. Microgrids will share and store power among customers rather a hub-and-spoke model dispatching electricity from large power plants. The grid will repurpose itself to ensure reliability and aid transmission, as solar and battery account for most daily consumption (also known as partial-grid defection).A competitive market to generate one’s own electricity has never existed as a real alternative to the grid. Now it’s everywhere.In relatively affluent countries, companies like Sunrun and Sunova are installing home solar and storage systems from the US to Europe as falling prices have made them cost-competitive or cheaper than grid electricity while improving reliability. For the 1.1 billion poor still without electricity, Africa is leading the way.
The U.S. government is urging the world airline community to ban large, personal electronic devices like laptops from checked luggage because of the potential for a catastrophic fire.The Federal Aviation Administration said in a paper filed recently with a U.N. agency that its tests show that when a laptop's rechargeable lithium-ion battery overheats in close proximity to an aerosol spray can, it can cause an explosion capable of disabling an airliner's fire suppression system. The fire could then rage unchecked, leading to "the loss of the aircraft," the paper said.In one test, an 8-ounce aerosol can of dry shampoo —which is permitted in checked baggage — was strapped to the laptop. There was a fire almost immediately and it grew rapidly. The aerosol can exploded within 40 seconds.
The test showed that because of the rapid progression of the fire, Halon gas fire suppressant systems used in airline cargo compartments would be unable to put out the fire before there was an explosion, the FAA said. The explosion might not be strong enough to structurally damage the plane, but it could damage the cargo compartment and allow the Halon to escape, the agency said. Then there would be nothing to prevent the fire from spreading.U.S. considers expanding a laptop ban as lithium battery fires increase
Other tests of laptop batteries packed with potentially dangerous consumer goods that are permitted in checked baggage like nail polish remover, hand sanitizer and rubbing alcohol also resulted in large fires, although no explosions.
As a result, the paper recommends that passengers shouldn't be allowed to pack large electronic devices in baggage unless they have specific approval from the airline. The paper says the European Safety Agency, the FAA's counterpart in Europe; Airbus, one of the world's largest makers of passenger airliners; the International Federation of Airline Pilots' Association, and the International Coordinating Council of Aerospace Industries Association, which represents aircraft makers, concurred in the recommendation.The paper doesn't address whether the ban should extend to domestic flights, but points out the risk that baggage containing a large electronic device could be transferred from one flight to another without the knowledge of the airline. The FAA said it believes most devices larger than a smartphone are already being carried by passengers into the cabin, rather than put in checked bags.