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BassinDmax's avatar
BassinDmax
Explorer
Dec 31, 2013

Solar Air Conditioner

Okay for all boondockers needing to run air conditioning, gotta love ingenuity! :B

Solar Air Conditioner

31 Replies

  • Sure it wil work. It did back in the 1800's when the President was shot, and they cooled a bedroom in the White House with tons of ice.

    By the way, a "Ton" of cooling is the amount of cooling offered by melting 1 ton of ice over 24 hours or 288,000 Btus' per day or 12,000 per hour. So if your container has 12 pounds of ice in it, then it can cool by changing that ice from a solid into a liquid at the rate of 144 Btu's per pound, or about 1,700 Btu's per 12 pounds of ice.

    THe going rate for a 12 pound bag of ice in my area is $1.29. While running a 13,500 Btu air conditioner for 1 hour might consume $0.14 worth of electricity.

    If I was living off the grid, and wanted to cool a especially small area, such as the people around the dining room table, it might work OK, if I was willing to spend the money on ice. However it would be just as easy to spend $1,000 on a solar system, $400 on 4 batteries, $1,200 on a good pure sine wave inverter, and be able to run the rooftop air conditioner all day long.

    Fred.

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