You will need at least 1 800 watts of solar panels to run your rv air conditioner.
How many solar panels needed to run ac.
I have to run a 1 ton air conditioner how many panels will i need.
The advantage of solar powered air conditioning.
Air conditioning doesn t have to be your motive for going solar.
We ll need about twelve 200 amp hour solar panels and one 100 amp hour panel to run the ac.
Every 1 ton of cooling power commonly known as heat removed by a 1 ton ac in one hour is also expressed as 3516 watts.
I m not saying it s impossible but it pushes the limits of practicality for a mobile installation.
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.
More is needed with more clouds.
Eer amount of heat removed in watt power consumed in watt.
So you are going to need a total wattage of 300 combined solar panels.
Installing air conditioning after a solar installation.
To get these numbers we used high and low panel production ratios to calculate how many solar panels are needed on average.
Lastly you will need the solar panels to keep the battery charged.
Even with the air conditioner on high my solar panel system still makes enough power to add 2 000 watts into the batteries.
How did i come up with 300.
These numbers only take into account the energy needed for air conditioning.
By this estimate we ll need about 2 500 watts of solar panels just to break even on the ac unit s consumption.
How many solar panels do i need to power my house.
This doesn t include the solar power needed to run anything else in the rv.
Clearly this kind of setup can get pricey pretty quickly.
In order to meet this need the solar panels would be required to generate 107 amps 7 hours every day this is if it is a clear sunny day.
So to power a 13 500 btu air conditioner 1 500 watts of solar panels is the minimum required.
This is also assuming of course you have a lot of battery power too.
This allows me to run the ac full blast to keep my house nice and cool.
Let s take a look at ac energy requirements and typical solar production to see if solar panels can really run air conditioners in each setup.
When it s hottest and the sun is shining the brightest i can make lots of power.
We suggest a battery bank of 800 amp hours.
It works the other way as well.
This is assuming you are considering using 12 volt rv grade panels.
If you prefer higher efficiency 350 w panels the number would be reduced to 9 to 10 panels.
The typical homeowner will need 28 34 solar panels to cover 100 of their energy usage dependent on location and roof size.