How Many Solar Panels To Run An Rv Air Conditioner

The size of the air conditioner and solar panels.

How many solar panels to run an rv air conditioner.

You will need at least 1 800 watts of solar panels to run your rv air conditioner. 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. We ll need about twelve 200 amp hour solar panels and one 100 amp hour panel to run the ac. We suggest a battery bank of 800 amp hours.

This is also assuming of course you have a lot of battery power too. For a 10 000 btu rv air conditioner 2 000 watts is required to start up and 700 once running. By this estimate we ll need about 2 500 watts of solar panels just to break even on the ac unit s consumption. For a 7 000 btu rv air conditioner 1 700 watts is required for start and 600 once running.

For a 15 000 btu rv air conditioner 3 500 watts is required for startup and 1 500 once running. A few factors determine how many solar panels you will require to run an air conditioner. The short answer is the number of solar panels depends on which solar panels and air conditioner you have. Ac for grid connected homes the fact that we are all able to access almost unlimited amounts of electricity 24 7 is a beautiful part of our modern electricity grid.

This doesn t include the solar power needed to run anything else in the rv. This is assuming you are considering using 12 volt rv grade panels. This 1500 w of solar panels is in addition to the wattage of solar panels required to power everything else in the rv. 12 panels may be required at two hundred and sixty five watts at each for an ac that runs on 3000w.

How much you use the air conditioner. So we ll assume these to give you an idea. Can you run your air conditioner off solar panels. With the details described above answering the question of running an ac unit is now possible.

The means the air conditioner itself can be operated by the number of solar panels. These two factors along with the size of the panels you install will dictate how many panels you need to effectively use solar power for rv air conditioner power supply. The ac would run for about 2 2 5 hours. Whether that s worth it or not is up to you and i can see myself using one just to cool down a room on a hot summer evening.

For example many rv air conditioning units require somewhere between 1 700 and 3 500 starting watts and 600 to 1 500 running watts. 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.