I first booted up Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

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Throughout this journey, my PlayStation 4 and TV were never once plugged into the grid. Instead, I’ve relied solely on the power of the sun.

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Before this adventure, I never thought about gaming with solar power. But when my wife and I decided to leave our jobs, pack up our belongings, and travel North America in a camper for a year, I needed a solution to keep gaming on the road.

“ Video games are a significantly smaller power draw than I expected.

It turns out that video games are a significantly smaller power draw than I expected. According to the the US Energy Information Administration, the average US household uses 911 kilwatt-hours (kWh) per month in 2014. My 48 hours and change of Metal Gear only used somewhere in the ballpark of 10 kWh, or just over 1% of the average energy a household expends in a month.

Even so, I still had to find a way to generate and store this energy – with no electrical training apart from high school physics and zero knowledge of how solar actually works. I had my work cut out for me.

First, I calculated the power needs of my TV and PS4. In addition to my launch PS4, I installed a 24” PlayStation 3D Display that fit perfectly in my bunk. The PS4 can pull up to 150W. The TV pulls up to an additional 60W, so I needed to account for 210W total. Measuring watts per hour, I started planning for a 210 Wh load.

“ I still had to figure out how to actually harness the sun’s energy...

Power needs? Check. Storage? Check. But I still had to figure out how to actually harness the sun’s energy to get a charge.

Solar panels are significantly cheaper and more efficient than I expected. With only two 100W panels wired in series on the camper roof I could charge my batteries at nearly 10 Amps per hour in full sun. In practice that meant that I’d be able to get roughly one hour of gaming for every two hours of charge.