One of the problems of powering laptops and tablets by solar is that you need a buffer between the module and the device in order to protect the device against wild voltage variations. Often that’s a lithium ion battery pack. In many cases the battery pack doesn’t take full advantage of low-current situations at the start and end of the suns  journey across the sky. Diamond Creek is a module in development at Intels labs that solves this problem.

Diamond Creek is designed to be added to a laptop or tablet power input stage and will provide support for wide ranges of voltages up to about 19V and will allow a lithium-ion battery pack to be trickle charged. It means you don’t need buffer batteries which can introduce huge energy losses across their input and output stages. I spoke briefly to the team developing this at Intel and shot this video…

The team at Intel plan to have the device available for inclusion in products in Q1 2014.