DIVE2XS wrote:
Thank you for your responses.
I forgot to mention a system that would also support one of the 3 air conditioners.
My actual figures for running a 13500 btu roof unit are between 1200 and 1900 watts. It starts out at the 1200 and the wattage increases as the heat and run time.
Let's pick 10 hours of run time at the minimum 1200 watts.
That means the solar would have to generate 12000 watt-hours.
12000/5 = 2400 watts of panels. To do that requires some sort of "wings" on all but the very largest of RV's.
In addition the batteries need to be recharged--because before 10 am and after 4 pm, not much energy will be harvested from the panels.
So that's another 4800 watt-hours.
4800/5 = 960 watts of panels.
Now the total panel wattage needs to get to 3360 watts.
At $1 per watt for the panels that's $3,360.00
four SiO2 would store the energy needed to run for the four poor solar hours. Currently they are about $600 each. That's $2400.00
3360 + 2400 = $5760.00
So while it is *possible* to do one air conditioner from solar, it is not economic to do so.
I've deliberately taken the low side of the estimate of power needed.
In 2009 I could run my roof air for about 3 hours. Then my (large by the day) 9100 watt-hour battery bank require recharging.
Regards, Don
My ride is a 28 foot Class C, 256 watts solar, 556 amp-hours of Telcom jars, 3000 watt Magnum hybrid inverter, Sola Basic Autoformer, Microair Easy Start.