Solar Shed: Running a Cheap Air Conditioner

so this week I added an air-conditioner to the solar chef and it doesn't look that well done but it's super strong all I did was cut out a hole and slap it in there I put two two by fours on the bottom and I screwed these into the studs on both sides so it's really secure but it's not that pretty and previously I was gonna connect it to my MPP solar inverters but these have a standby consumption of 96 watts that is unacceptable for a load that you want to power 24 hours a day and here in Las Vegas it's going to get crazy hot even at night so I want to make sure that this system actually works so what I did instead is I added this iandale pure sine wave inverter and this uses only six watts of consumption for standby so I can run this comfortably all day long without any issue and when this isn't standby mode it only uses one watt a lot of my viewers wanted me to use a mini-split but they cost 600 to 900 dollars and for cooling a 150 square-foot shed that is pretty pointless and this is really efficient as it is I couldn't stand those portable ones those are not efficient at all there's also gonna be mini split window air conditioners but again those are like $400 and for what I'm doing I really don't need that if I really need more power and to deal with the inefficiency lost with this I'll just add another solar panel to my array so it's not a big deal for me and it full load this only uses 440 watts of consumption so that means that with a 14 kilowatt hour battery pack over here I can run it for a very very long time and this solar shake can produce four point eight kilo watt hours a day of power so powering this little tiny air conditioner is fine if I want to power this 24 hours a day in full blast such as the summer here in Las Vegas um I can add some more solar panels and do that what I need to do next is actually insulate this shed a lot and add a mini attic because once it's insulated the amount of power to run this will be very minimal and the air conditioner is actually connected to a blue Eddy and this has 2.4 kilowatt hours on top of our 14 kilowatt hours so we have 16.4 available and the reason I did this is because this charge is so slowly that I will only get to point one kilowatt hours a day so that means I can keep this inverter on 24 hours a day charging this blue Eddie and I know that I will not have an over discharge situation because this scandale unlike the MPP inverters does not have a low voltage cutoff and I'd have to use some form of timer circuit to turn on and off the switch so the workaround what I'm gonna do in the summer is I'm going to connect the air conditioner directly to the Gihon Dale but I'm going to use a Wi-Fi switch so that I will turn the air conditioner on for like 10 or 14 hours a day and I will calculate the consumption and I'll compare that to my four point eight kilowatt hours a day that I'll have available and I want to be able to run the air conditioner for the perfect amount of time for the amount of power that the solar shed will produce and I will still have two or three days of backup power anyways so this is a pretty good system and I'll be able to run this as much as I want really soon and if I can't if I need more power I'll just add some more solar panels I also have a kilowatt watt meter between the air conditioner and the blue Eddie and I'm gonna figure out on hot days how much power is required to keep this shed cool and I think the biggest factor to consider is how insulated the shed is and a lot of people want to see if you can run an air conditioner off of a blue Eddie and you absolutely can it just depends on the size of the air conditioner so for a 6,000 BTU only using 440 watts is totally fine so let's turn it on and I'll show you now the air conditioner is on I'm gonna check the consumption and it's using only 360 watt but it's a very very efficient little air conditioner it only uses one watt for standby so I think this is probably the best fit for this little tiny shed and we have a really big thermometer so I can check on the temperature with this but some of these webcams have a temperature sensor in them and I can get notified on my phone when it reaches a certain threshold because all I want is this to be a storage space for my large battery bank of lithium iron phosphate also this has a timer circuit mode so instead of using a Wi-Fi switch I could just set the timer but I'm not sure how that works exactly I need to read the manual steel also the Gihon Dale inverters these ones down here with the loge standby consumption they're my favorite cheap inverter on the market there's a lot of trash out there and I have destroyed inverters and had black smoke come out for absolutely no reason at all so you don't want to buy cheap inverters but ghee and ales are the only ones that I actually like if I was not using the Gihon Dale and I wanted low standby consumption I would spend about $1,500 on the victor on multi plus two and I'd get a 24-volt version and that would be perfect for this application but if not this little 300 dollar inverter actually works really well it's only six watts of standby consumption when these are connected in parallel for split phase operation you need both of them in standby even if you're using only one leg of the output so you cannot just have one of these on when it's in split phase mode both of them have to be on that's why the standby consumption is so high because individually these only use like 45 watts of standby and most large inverters of this size at this price that's not you all listed are going to use like 35 to 45 watts so the Gihon bill stands apart from the other ones because it has such a low standby consumption I should also add that these have a power saving mode and if it senses anything under five watts these will shut down but the air conditioner only uses one watt so when this is in standby mode and the fans turn off these will turn off as well and there will be no way for it to turn back on again so that's the big problem with using these for that air conditioner in particular now the next step is figuring out if I can power this air conditioner off of four point eight kilowatt hours if I need more power after my energy audits on the first initial hot days then I will change my array accordingly and then I will tell you guys how much power is required but as long as this is insulated more I don't think it will be that much power this thing can cool down this shed in a few minutes this is a very small shed but when we have like 110 to 120 degree days it might be a little bit more difficult so we're to find out soon enough anyway it's just a quick update on my little air-conditioner I like it look how fancy it is and that's pretty much it thank you so much for watching and I will talk to you guys later fight

Channel: DIY Solar Power with Will Prowse

Views: 477,037

Keywords: off grid solar, will prowse, diy solar, rv solar

Id: 2Qh14pX3IxA

Length: 6min 50sec (410 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 13 2020