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I use an old car emergency power supply thingy from Jaycar. Big yellow thing you charge up, has ciggy sockets, an air compressor and car jumper leads too built in. On the back it has an inverter socket I plug my laptop power pack into. A year after I got mine Jaycard replaced it with a newer model with digital readouts instead of analogue needle meters, and they doubled the price for that useless change. Also has a work light. I'm not doing long nights with it running but the unit powers my setup and laptop nicely for my needs. I guess super cheap auto and battery world would have similar portable power units. Caravan and camping places too should, 12V DC is a standard so as long as it has the cigarette lighter sockets you're set. Some of these things also have 5V DC USB power sockets for charging your phones too. I've got a smaller similar unit that also has a red light (meant to be a hazard warning light if you're broken down on the side of the road but is good ground light at an astro session.).
When I use the inverter on mine a noisy fan powers up too, so I guess if you're set on building your own look for something that has good cooling. I would avoid anything from ebay or anything suspiciously cheap from china, any "soldering" in the unit may have been "spit on the wires and stick em together" . Fire hazard stuff and more than likely to fry any gear you connect to it too.
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