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If the charger cannot supply the required current at the rated voltage, the result may be that the output voltage of the charger drops. This can cause the laptop to draw more current than it was designed to draw for a given power level, leading to the charge circuit in the laptop (or its battery) overheating. Hey guys, I bought an asus g53JS gaming laptop about a few month ago and suddenly the end of the charger wont fit into my laptop anymore. What can I do.
If you modify the OE unit to 16 Amps, wouldn't it then be unsafe (and/or impossible) to use when plugged into a common 15A outlet? It's nice to have a unit that can be used in an ordinary outlet so you can charge just about anywhere.And even if you don't need that capability, it is still an issue if you sell the car. A buyer will expect to receive an unmodified EVSE that works in an ordinary outlet.It should only pull 16A at 240V if it's configured properly. Regardless, plugging an unmodified OEM charger into a regular 15A outlet and pulling 12A can be questionable, as some outlets can't handle a constant 12A draw even if they're rated for higher. It boils down to a case-by-case basis. I wouldn't recommend trying to get the OEM charger to draw 16A in any situation because the internal wiring gauges are only designed for 12.
Another possibility if you don't mind adding a plug and an uglier EVSE is the GE DuraStation. It has a jumper inside for limiting current draw to 12, 16, 24, or 30 amps. On Home Depot, you can get one for $400.My Siemens VersiCharge does as well ($429 Amazon).
That's one reason I bought it. The other is up to 7.2 kW of power, something my 3.0 kW Volt can't use but my Bolt can (if and when I upgrade my wiring).It's still ticking after 5 years. My original Voltec L2 unit (made by Lear sold by Bosch) died 3 weeks after its 12 month warranty expired.
Rebuilt the Voltec using OpenEVSE.
Phone chargers cannot be used to charge a laptop battery for following reasons:. Phone chargers can't supply enough current to charge a big battery. Phone charges can't be connected directly to battery. A charging circuit is needed to charge the battery. Charge manager & circuit is built into the laptop but not in the battery. Battery only has the protection and telemetry circuits. Charging laptop battery using a non-standard charger may cause fire or explosion.To be safe, buy a used charger for your laptop model from local swapmeets, craigslist or ebay.
As @Matt said above, the short answer is no.Phone batteries tend to be single-cell with charging voltage of 4.1V or 4.2V. Cell phone charge will not provide a higher voltage.Laptop batteries tend to be multi-cell, so they need a charging voltage, which is a multiple of 4.1V or 4.2V.Then there are the safety precautions.Finally, if one had to charge a laptop battery to save the world, one could try to charge it with a cell phone charger one cell at a time. But such exercise is for the enlightened and brave.
Short: No, you can't:-).Longer:.Cellphones usually use a single Lithium Ion cell (battery) with a nominal voltage of 3.6V, max voltage during charging of about 4.2V and minimum (safe) voltage of about 3V.Some few phones MAY use 2 cells in series - just double th above voltages. Top enddigital cameras often use 2 LiIon cells in series and a very few uses 3.Most laptops use 3 or 4 LiIon cells in series and may use a number of series strings of cells in parallel. For charging voltage purposes parallel combinations of series strings may be considered to be a single series string of larger capacity.As a rough approximation a charger will input a voltage of about 5V per cell to give it a little 'headroom' compared to the battery packs 4.2V max per cell.So a 1 cell battery will input 5V to the charger, a 2 cell = 10V, a 3 cell 15V and a 4 cell 20V.Because switching regulators are essentially always used, if the highest voltage needed is used it can be downconverted to the correct level. 4 cells in series is the usual maximum so about 20V input will cover all likely cell arrangements. Industry standard is to use nominally 19V. For 4 cells that's 19/4 = 4.75V/cell available or a 'headroom' of 4.75-4.2 = 0.55V 'spare' per cell. If you use a 3 cell battery the switching regulator can downconvert to the required lower voltage.
Example: I have an HP netbook that has 4 cells in the basic battery and 6 in the extended battery. The 4 cells are arranged 4 x 1 = called 4s1p, and the 6 cells are arranged in 2 paralle strings of (3 cells in series) = 3s2p.In SOME cases you CAN input a lower voltage such as 12V DC and the laptop will still charge. In this case the power supply must be a 'boost converter' to give the 15 or 20 Volts required.
However, many laptops demand the full 19V and if you drop below about 18V they shut up shop until you give them what they want.It is POSSIBLE but very very unlikely that you will find a laptop that will boost from a 1 cell charging voltage of = 5V to =19V internally - BUT they may exist. It's technically possible but makes little sense to do so and I've never seen one that I'm aware of. The truly desperate could series connect the output of 4 cellphone chargers. This may work after a fashion - but they may fight each other. A telephone charger usually outputs about 5V, where the average laptop charger outputs 19V. Same goes for the battery packs in them: a phone battery will be rated at 4'ish volts where a laptop battery will usually be rated around approximately 18V.
There will simply be no current flowing into the battery pack. Probably even worse, if the battery pack is connected directly to the phone charger without a proper protection/charging circuit, the battery pack will try to 'charge' the charger.Therefore even trickle charging is not going to happen unless you use the McGyver method mentioned by Nick, which is really not advised if you want your battery pack to survive more than a handful of cycles.