Re: I Wish HP Higher End Calcs Were Solar-Powered! Message #4 Posted by Eric Smith on 31 Jan 2012, 3:51 a.m., in response to message #1 by Jeff
Why they aren't is that photovoltaics not only don't supply enough current to run the calculator, but also don't supply enough to charge a rechargeable pack in any reasonable interval. They barely supply more than the self-discharge of NiCd and NiMH (except the low-self-discharge NiMH). The amount of power you can get from 10-15 cm^2 of photovoltaics even in bright sunlight is negligible.
Photovoltaics only are sensible on calculators with *extremely* limited processing power, which means not beyond low-end scientific or business calcs. You might notice that on solar-powered scientific calculators, the transcendental functions are often very slow. Such calculators use ultra-low-power masked-ROM microcontrollers which have very little memory and run at amazingly slow clock rates. For obvious reasons that is unsuitable for high-end calculators.
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