DC Air conditioner worth it?
I am toying around with putting in a DC AC unit. Anyone have any real time with them? I have an amped 28fs and will be mostly dry camping. I will have solar and 6 volt batteries . Any thoughts? Thank you
Forum Discussion
- It's not impossible, it's just that everyone has been told they can't so don't even consider it. ;)
With a bank like yours and 750w of solar I can run a 5000 BTU window A/C mid day while the batteries sit in float. Get serious and a 9000 BTU mini split uses 600w. I have run it while it's cloudy for four hours. We never need it over night.
The secret to doing a lot with solar is having a lot of solar to do it with. valhalla360 wrote:
If you run the specs, you will find that it's totally impractical.
Anyone who needs A/C also NEEDS a generator big enough to run it.- What valhalla360 said.
After a brief look at some specs, the smallest one I saw requires 11.5A at 48vdc. That would be equivalent to 46A at 12v. A single battery would run it about 1 hour before the battery was discharged to its 50% point.
The ones I saw were 48vdc. Not too sure how you would get 48vdc in an RV.
Doesn't seem practical to me. - If you run the specs, you will find that it's totally impractical.
You either get almost no cooling if a very small unit or run times are in the minutes before the battery dies. - I don't know how you would ever get enough amps to power it very long! If it was me and I was looking into something like that I would get the roof top swamp cooler. We always thought about it with our last trailer but just brought the genny
Chris
