When it s hottest and the sun is shining the brightest i can make lots of power.
How many solar panels to run my air conditioner.
If you live off grid and have no method of backup power your solar battery system will need to be quite large.
To generate the stored electricity needed to run our rv air conditioner all day you d need over 340 square feet of solar panels ish plus 3600 amp hours of battery capacity and guaranteed perfect sunshine.
So will any solar generator be able to run your air conditioner.
Can you use solar panels to run air conditioner units.
Installing air conditioning after a solar installation.
A few factors determine how many solar panels you will require to run an air conditioner.
If we leave its torque requirement aside your ac easily be run on 3 solar panels of 330 watts.
This is assuming you are considering using 12 volt rv grade panels.
So we ll assume these to give you an idea.
The region that you live in and amount of sun light also plays a major factor into how efficient your solar energy storage will be which can change the amount of required solar panels that are required to power an air conditioned.
An ac unit requires a lot of electricity.
Many homes already do this.
A 3kw solar system requires 9 solar panels of 330 watt each.
For example a portable ac like the honeywell 10000 btu only requires 880 watts.
You will need at least 1 800 watts of solar panels to run your rv air conditioner.
So smaller portable air conditioners or window units would be able to run on the yeti power station we looked at above.
How many solar panels to run the air conditioner.
Solar panels to recharge what you use at this rate are large.
This is also assuming of course you have a lot of battery power too.
The advantage of solar powered air conditioning.
The short answer is the number of solar panels depends on which solar panels and air conditioner you have.
How much you use the air conditioner.
Even with the air conditioner on high my solar panel system still makes enough power to add 2 000 watts into the batteries.
To follow the example above let s say you re looking to generate an additional 3 333 w to run your air conditioner in massachusetts.
Now a typical 3kw solar panel system produces 20 30 units of electricity.
How many watts an air conditioner uses depends not only on the btu but what kind of ac it is.
In a word yes.
If you re installing 300 w panels you should plan to install an additional 11 to 12 panels 3 333 w 300 11 11 panels.
However in another word.
It depends on the air conditioner and how much power it needs.
We suggest a battery bank of 800 amp hours.
If you prefer higher efficiency 350 w panels the number would be reduced to 9 to 10 panels.
This allows me to run the ac full blast to keep my house nice and cool.
If your home is connected to the grid and your solar installation is net metered it is possible to use solar energy to cool your house.
And assuming that your ac works for 10 hours a day it would need 15000 watt energy per hour which is 15 units of electricity.