Run An Ac With Solar Panels

How much you use the air conditioner.

Run an ac with solar panels.

A solar panel can run an air conditioner but it ll use a large portion of your panel s capacity. You generally have two options for this an ac pump with inverter or a dc powered well pump designed for use in an off grid systems. The short answer is the number of solar panels depends on which solar panels and air conditioner you have. This is also assuming of course you have a lot of battery power too.

The advantage of solar powered air conditioning. 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. Air conditioners typically use between 1 2kw 2 5kw of power and a typical solar panel system has an energy output of 2kw 4kw. A good rule of thumb is 4 hours.

Since a well pump could easily be the biggest electrical load in your off grid system it is worth taking the time to consider your options. This allows me to run the ac full blast to keep my house nice and cool. A few factors determine how many solar panels you will require to run an air conditioner. This number will be the number of solar panels necessary to cover your air conditioning needs.

You will need at least 1 800 watts of solar panels to run your rv air conditioner. This is assuming you are considering using 12 volt rv grade panels. The size of the air conditioner and solar panels. So we ll assume these to give you an idea.

We suggest a battery bank of 800 amp hours. When it s hottest and the sun is shining the brightest i can make lots of power. Example rv ac daily amperage draw 150 amps hr x 5 hrs day 750 ah day. Even with the air conditioner on high my solar panel system still makes enough power to add 2 000 watts into the batteries.

300 times 4 is 1200 watts. You multiply the combined wattage of the solar panels by the number of hours sunlight they will receive per day. To run an ac off solar power for an extended amount of time the ac will essentially need its own solar setup. Using solar panels to run air conditioner units ac units use a lot of electricity but they re really no match for a well sized solar installation.

As an example let s consider the amperage draw of our rv ac and how many hours per day we plan to run the unit. If you re connected to the grid and you ve got the roof space installing enough solar panels to cover your entire electricity usage including ac is a very doable task and one that many homeowners have done before. Number of panels additional watts needed watts per panel.