I have a cabin that is way out in the middle of no where, it would cost 1000's of dollars to get power to it.
If I have a 8,000 BTU air conditioner that runs on 125 volts and 15 amps (or 1875 watts)
How many solar panels will I need to run this during the day, plus charge the batteries to run it all night?
How many batteries would I need
assume we are using 150 watt panels with 5 hours of full sun a day.
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It would just be cheaper to run the power lines back to the house but what ever you do DONT take electricity from the drop above the meter for free at night. That would be wrong! Lol & sticking it to the man!
Anonymous
You would need 6 300 watt solar panels, US price around $300 per, And a minimum of 4 batteries. You are going to have major problems only having 5 hours of sun though.I am not sure you could get it to work with only that much sunlight. Along with an inverter and some other controller units. If you live in an area that has some wind, a wind generator would knock it down to where you would only need 2 solar panels and a small 500 watt wind generator. The problem you are going to have is trying to run it all the time. I had an AC that size in my camping van, it took about 20 minute to run two batteries down so low that the inverter started to sound the low battery alert. If I left it running it did ok, and I had an over-sized alternator for it. I had a 150 amp heavy truck alternator. A swamp cooler would be a lot less energy, you could easily recycle about 95% of the water. I know this is the 21st century and this may sound a little nuts, but with only 5 hours of daylight, if you have some trees you could use for burning you could build an outdoor steam engine cheaper and it would charge a lot more batteries in a lot less time. Plus you could run off the steam engines generator for as long as you had a fire day or night. Even a small 55 gallon water tank would give you plenty of head for the steam. You could easily run a 6000 watt generator off of it and have plenty of electricity while it was running. Just a thought, I had to resort to some extreme measures when I bought some Montana land in 2000, it was 6 miles to the nearest utility pole.
Anonymous
Unless you have a good charge controller, the battery will never charge, as a lead acid battery requires 15 volts to charge. Ans you don't tell us the capacity of the battery? Is the solar cell only 15 watts? That is 1 amp if it develops 15 volts. Assuming the solar panel is good for 15 watts and 15 volts, that is only 1 amp. so you are charging the battery with 1 amp and discharging it with 15 amps, so how long you can do that depends on the size of the battery. But it will discharge in at most 5 hours with a large battery, and the solar panel will take several days to charge it up again at 1 amp. The best you will be able to do with that 15 amp load is perhaps 1 hour a day, which is 12 watt-hours. The solar panel will be able put back 1 amp for 12 hours at 15 volts, which is 15 watt-hours, which will give you perhaps 12 watt-hours in the battery. .
Anonymous
You are probably going to need about 60 panles and 60 batteries....you will also need a very good power inverter. Also consider the power it takes to invert 12 volt DC battery power in to 120 volts AC power required for an air conditioner. You might consider also trying to find a 12 or a 24 volt unit cooler.
You would be better off buying a generator. Solar panels and batteries are not going to run an air conditioner for long if at all.....it might be cheaper to have the power company run the power.
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120 Volt Solar Panel