I was musing with a guy on site today about charging things in the van or car over plugging it to a mains socket.
I use a 4 gas detector on some sites and stick it on charge from the 12v socket in my van for the drive home and leave it on charge over night.
My question to the hive brain of UKC is this.
Is it more energy efficient to charge it from the mains at home or to charge it from my van battery.
I assume that electricity generated via the national grid is probably more efficient than my van engine burning a little extra fuel but how much extra fuel will the van use on the drive home to charge the detector and top up the battery in the morning.
Balancing that out though the mains charger is a transformer that runs very warm (waste heat) whilst the van charger stays flat cold.
I suspect the difference will be tiny but if anyone knows the answer it would be interesting to know.
Edited to add, the reason for the musing was because the guy I was working with has a work issued tough book and his van charger was broken so until his company replaces it he is in capable of working alone because every job has to be booked on to the system and he refuses to charge his tough book at home because they won't reimburse the electric costs.
Post edited at 19:35