I have a work vehicle that I spend time in while doing paperwork on my laptop.
The power ports on the dash stay hot whether the vehicle is running or not.
Currently I have a laptop charger and one phone charger, that I leave connected some of the time when I’m parked.
I’ve never left them connected overnight, except for one night when I left the phone charger [but no phone] plugged into the port.
The laptop charger reads:
DC Adapter 90 Watt
Output: 20V, 4.5A, Continuous
The laptop itself is an i5-based tablet.
The phone charger is a generic USB phone charger, which I use to drive a hotspot, a Droid, or a Blackberry.
The vehicle is a Ford Econoline, base options.
So, any idea how long I should be able to leave the vehicle charging these devices without trouble while it is not running?
If you leave the charger plugged into the car, but not the phone or laptop, they will use very little power. You could go days without running down the car battery.
If you left the phone plugged in, you could probably go 2 or 3 days easy if the vehicle battery is in good shape.
The laptop might drain things faster. Is the laptop left on; turned off; or goes into sleep mode? If turned off or in sleep mode, it doesn’t draw much power at all. If left on, you still should be a night’s worth.
Of course anytime you drain a battery and recharge it, that wears out the battery some. You might be wearing out the vehicle’s battery a tiny amount faster over the long run.
So in a nutshell, overnight really shouldn’t be a problem. The bigger problem may be leaving these devices in your vehicle. That could be an invitation for a smashed window and the devices stolen.
The phone charger probably isn’t an issue unless your batter is on its last legs. But 90 watts is a fair bit of juice. There’s a lot of variance, but figure maybe that your battery has 1kw-hr of power, so it could power the tablet for about 11 hours, assuming that the tablet was in use and was drawing a full load.
So…I guess if you ran the tablet until it was empty, plugged it in to be charged, and walked away, then it might drain the battery enough to make starting tough on a cold day.
Concur with most of the above. Two factors that haven’t been mentioned are (1) the condition of your van’s battery and (2) the quality of the chargers.
If your battery is iffy, all of the problems will be multiplied. A healthy battery might tolerate more charging drain and still fire the engine right up on a cold day; a marginal one might leave you stranded on just a few hours of parasitic drain.
Chargers from OEM makers and name-brand suppliers are often better-designed, drawing just a trace of current when not actively charging the device. Cheap aftermarket chargers may have crap circuitry and draw significant power even when there’s no load - I have thrown away a couple of chargers that stayed warm/hot even when disconnected from the device.
It’s pretty simple to measure the actual current being drawn if you connect an ammeter between the battery and positive cable. You will want to use a meter than can tolerate 10A or so but read down into milliamps, and be DAMNED sure not to switch on any high-current loads like headlights, blower or starter. But you can switch in various combinations of charger and device and see exactly how much draw they pull from disconnected to discharged to charged.
I needed this post about 3 months ago. I’ve had my van in for service 3 times because the battery would inexplicably discharge so completely that the booster service had to use a direct connection to their vehicle AND wait several minutes before it would start. It wasn’t consistent and tests of the electrical system showed no problems but it just kept happening.
In September it happened again just as we were leaving for a trip to my BIL’s cottage and while on the way there I plugged my phone in and it immediately discharged and shut off. That was the clue I needed to unplug and throw away the charger and we have had no issues with the van since.
It’s the mods’ fault. They will not enable the retro-post feature despite widespread clamor for it. Something about unfair advantages in settling arguments about future events. Right.
The concern I would have would be to do with thieves, not the battery.
As in, sometimes thieves will walk along a row of cars - if they see an iphone, they break the window and snatch and grab. People have gotten better about not leaving those in plain view, so if the thief sees a charger, they may bust the window and go for the glove box.
This is more a problem with GPS devices, but I would still not leave the charger in because it’s not like I can tell a GPS charger from an Iphone charger at a glance.
The battery is the factory battery in a car that was manufactured in February.
None of the chargers are top-shelf.
That’s not a feature in this version of vBulletin anyway, and they’re not going to upgrade.
As long as you’re driving the van every single day and the laptop goes into sleep/hibernate mode, you should be fine. If something happens that you don’t drive the van for 4 or 5 days you might not have enough juice to start it.
Also, how far do you drive the van? If it’s 20 miles that should be plenty of time for the alternator to charge the battery back. If it’s 5 miles you might not ever fully charge the battery.