Bus nut's with older buses talk a lot about repowering our buses, this is about repowering my HP Laptop LOL!!!

While I was on my recent trip; I found myself powering up the inverter to then charge up the laptop and other devices. Which I thought was kind of a silly power tax to pay. The biggest goal is avoiding a 80-100 watt overhead to power a 40-75 watt load.

In case you haven't noticed practically everything USB related is in a state of transition to the USB C standard and a lot of devices are switching to USB-C PD (power delivery).

While I could and probably will buy a new laptop at some point in time that accepts USB-C power input directly.

It turns out that are adapter cords out there for some older laptops. Two such cords that I have tested with my HP laptop are:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

An adapter cord works because most laptops accept 19V as their charge voltage.

With the above adapter cords, I recently tested this unit on the 12V input in my bus:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

This device is also 24V compatible, so I expect no problem running it off of my house battery bank.

Note not all USB-C chargers are created equal!!! There are two basic specifications out there:


  • [li]PD 1.0 which supports 5V, 12V and 20V devices[/li]
    [li]PD 2.0/3.0 which supports 5V, 9V, 14V and 20V devices.[/li]


However not all devices support all voltages!!! I make extensive use of the following for my home automation system.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1


And it only supports up to 12V out, even when the input power is 24V. So be sure to read the fine print before you buy a USB-C PD power supply!!!