By this estimate we ll need about 2 500 watts of solar panels just to break even on the ac unit s consumption.
Running ac on solar panels.
Unfortunately this means to run our a c regularly it requires roughly double the wattage of solar panels so 1500 watts and at least double the amp hour.
Clearly this kind of setup can get pricey pretty quickly.
How much you use the air conditioner.
This is also assuming of course you have a lot of battery power too.
You will need at least 1 800 watts of solar panels to run your rv air conditioner.
So if you have a powerful air conditioner you ll need to make sure your solar panel system can handle it.
This allows me to run the ac full blast to keep my house nice and cool.
Even with the air conditioner on high my solar panel system still makes enough power to add 2 000 watts into the batteries.
So we ll assume these to give you an idea.
The advantage of solar powered air conditioning.
When it comes to solar power the bigger the better.
We ll need about twelve 200 amp hour solar panels and one 100 amp hour panel to run the ac.
A solar panel can run an air conditioner but it ll use a large portion of your panel s capacity.
Video information update our 13 500 btu rv air conditioner actually pulls about 150 amps instead of 73 amps while running from a 12 volt source.
This doesn t include the solar power needed to run anything else in the rv.
Air conditioners typically use between 1 2kw 2 5kw of power and a typical solar panel system has an energy output of 2kw 4kw.
In a word yes.
How many solar panels to run the air conditioner.
The short answer is the number of solar panels depends on which solar panels and air conditioner you have.
Most boondockers have between 200 to 400 amp hour battery banks.
A few factors determine how many solar panels you will require to run an air conditioner.
When it s hottest and the sun is shining the brightest i can make lots of power.
We suggest a battery bank of 800 amp hours.
To run the 15 000btu air conditioner continuously from solar you would need a battery bank large enough to serve as an energy buffer from peak production hours through the night roughly 3000ah and a 14 400w solar array.
This is assuming you are considering using 12 volt rv grade panels.
In the video i did not allow the a c to run long enough for the compressor to kick on.
The solar array would take up 936 square feet.
Can you use solar panels to run air conditioner units.