How much battery/solar to run the AC without engine?

[WA_R23]

Hi. I'm looking at doing a large upgrade to my solar and switching to lithium to run my ac on battery. How big of a system do I need? Is 600w of panels and 600amps of battery enough?
Thanks!

 

[JMarshallR25]

Are you asking whether that amount of panels would run the a/c indefinitely without shore power? Then it's a "no." If you are planning to design a system you'll need to provide more information about your anticipated use case. The factory luxury edition with 600 ah of lithium batteries and an appropriately sized inverter can run the a/c for a number of hours.

 

[croakz]

Good starter video:

 

[freedomvango]

Oh this is a great discussion!
Theres a few caveats with this whole thing.

How long do you want to run the AC before you recharge?
How much solar do you want to add to do that?
Do you have an onboard generator to replenish?


You can absolutely run the AC as long as you want with a large battery bank. I have 630AH and can consistently get around 7 hours with the fridge also running. I've gotten it up to 8 hours because of better insulating window covers as well.

The real issue is recharging. I have 1200W of solar, and in the best case, it provides enough to run the AC unit completely.
but you have to look at recharging the system. If you are going dock to dock, you just gotta run it long enough to get to the next stop, so that's your factor. If you are on the hook, you are gonna have to look at a generator or something to replenish, but that will take about 5 hours to charge a 650ah system with some solar and a 3000w inverter charging at 120amps.

 

[WA_R23]

Oh this is a great discussion!
Theres a few caveats with this whole thing.

How long do you want to run the AC before you recharge?
How much solar do you want to add to do that?
Do you have an onboard generator to replenish?


You can absolutely run the AC as long as you want with a large battery bank. I have 630AH and can consistently get around 7 hours with the fridge also running. I've gotten it up to 8 hours because of better insulating window covers as well.

The real issue is recharging. I have 1200W of solar, and in the best case, it provides enough to run the AC unit completely.
but you have to look at recharging the system. If you are going dock to dock, you just gotta run it long enough to get to the next stop, so that's your factor. If you are on the hook, you are gonna have to look at a generator or something to replenish, but that will take about 5 hours to charge a 650ah system with some solar and a 3000w inverter charging at 120amps.

Thank you! That's exactly what I was trying to figure out. So aiming for 1200 of solar and 600 of battery is the rough scale I need to think about - recognizing that there may be some periods when I can't run it. I'll have to go bigger if I want to run it longer. That makes sense!

 

[WA_R23]

Good starter video:

This is really helpful!

 

[freedomvango]

Thank you! That's exactly what I was trying to figure out. So aiming for 1200 of solar and 600 of battery is the rough scale I need to think about - recognizing that there may be some periods when I can't run it. I'll have to go bigger if I want to run it longer. That makes sense!

we actually make a 1200w solar hardtop conversion 🙂
DJI_0092 by Grant Wilson, on Flickr
DSCF3230 by Grant Wilson, on Flickr

 

[mlanger]

we actually make a 1200w solar hardtop conversion

Wow! That's a neat thing!