Estonia RV installs solar air conditioner

For RV owners, installing a solar panel on your RV roof is a great way to reduce your energy costs and increase your ability to live off-the-grid. But can solar power really generate enough wattage to power large appliances like your RV air conditioner? So can you power an RV air conditioner with solar?

The average RV air conditioner is rated at 13500 or 15000 BTUs and consumes 1 to 1.5 kWh of energy per hour of run time. To offset this amount of energy consumption, you would need 200 to 300 Watts of solar power, and that's just to run the AC for 1 hour.

At minimum, you have the solar panels themselves and a collection of batteries (often known as a 'battery bank') that provides power directly to all of your RV's 12-volt DC electronics. In order to power any 120-volt AC electronics, like your air conditioner, you'll need to install an inverter as well.

Although air conditioners consume A LOT of energy, you can still run them on solar. However, to make this as inexpensive as possible, some optimization will be required.

For off-grid RV living, however, a solar panel installation can help you avoid burning through gallons of fuel running your generator all night or finding your batteries completely depleted when you finally decide to “re-enter” civilization.

There are many case studies that prove the superior efficiency of inverter mini-splits. So if you're in the habit of using your RV AC for more than a couple of hours a day, switching to an inverter mini-split can save you hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars in solar panel and battery costs.