Tuesday it was very hot out. It was almost 90 degrees outside and in the RV it was not much better. It was time to get out the air conditioner for my solar powered RV.
I measured the AC unit and found that it just perfectly fits in the window of the RV living room like it was made for the spot. I had to remove the side accordion style flaps in order to get the AC unit into the frame though.
I used a piece of pink foam insulation from my old camper to fit under the AC in the window frame. This takes some of the stress off both he AC unit and the window frame because the window frame is curved at the bottom side.
I also used another piece of foam insulation cut to fit the top of the window frame and to hold the air conditioner in place. This keeps the AC from falling out the window and seals off the window nicely.
I plugged the air conditioner into my pure sine wave inverter and turned it on. It started right up with no trouble on my solar power.
Soon after though the sun went behind the trees and I did not want to badly drain my battery bank so I fired up my DC generator that sits outside the RV. This little DC generator has about a half gallon gas tank and runs for about 5 hours on a tank of gas. This is pretty good efficiency.
I only used the AC to get it cool inside the RV and then shut it down though. In the evenings it is still dropping down in temperature so I did not need the air conditioner for very long.
I think that with some high quality batteries, I would be able to run the AC all night with no problem and without the generator running at all. I believe that my golf cart batteries are a bit lower quality and they do not hold their rated Amp Hours.
I have 1,600 Watts of solar panels so there is not problem at all running my 500 watt air conditioner unit. And the AC only cycles on and off about 30 – 50 % of the time so it is not running full time.
In full sunlight it is no problem even with my poor batteries.
I will soon find out all the capabilities of my solar power system because we are probably in for a long hot summer.
I had my neighbor Chris repair my garden tractor for me and then took him out to lunch and shopping for his help. Now I have my work horse running again and a using it daily for hauling stuff around the property. It is amazing how often I need to use such a machine.
I worked a little bit on the garden again. Every day I am picking at it trying to get my garden fully planted. I hope to be completely self sufficient by the end of next year.
Follow my daily progress on the path to self sufficiency on my off grid solar homestead.
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Post time: Jan-09-2017