Mini Split Air Conditioner / Heat pump
Has anybody boondocking adopted this techno to there RV to have cold air in summer and heat in winter 24/7 while using solar?
Forum Discussion
- Some folks have successfully run tiny 5000 btu air conditioners from solar on RV's. But that is not much in the way of cooling.
If you have deep pockets and are willing to use a 48 volt battery bank based on LI technology, mated to 1600 to 2000 watts of panels, it may be possible to do serious cooling. But heating is in a way harder as current air based heat pumps don't work well below about 4 c (39 f) - I haven't tried it in an RV. I've built lots of solar systems in off grid cabins and none of them are large enough for such a thing, at least here in VA where it gets both really hot and humid in the summer and really cold in the winter.
HVAC simply uses a LOT of electricity. While a solar system can be built large enough to run one the economics of it seldom work out on a cabin or vacation home. Only the largest (most expensive) systems could make that work. In an RV, it's really not going to happen.
The nicest off grid system I put in was 5,000 watts of solar, an 8,000 watt inverter, and 27 kWh of battery storage. They don't have AC and they heat with propane.
