The other air conditioning system in your RV is the rooftop air conditioner, which runs off of electricity. If we then run the 12 volts from your battery through an inverter it’s changed to 120 volts, but the actual power (watts) doesn’t increase at all. As you can see in the video, we beat that considerably, Air Conditioner Settings: Though in the video you can see that the AC was set to a chilly 58 degrees when we turned it on, we didn’t leave it there. This Enerdrive 12v Lithium Battery Setup will allow you to run your air conditioner and other heavy amp drawing 240v appliances without the need for a generator or mains power - making caravanning a lot more comfortable. Many RVs come with generators, and the air conditioner is the item that demands it be a high power generator. Get your minds out of the gutter though, we’re talking solar. An RV battery monitor can tell you exactly where you stand, measuring the energy that’s flowing into and out of your battery as well as its state of charge or discharge. If you have an older RV, then you … These AC units generally require about 3,500 watts of power just to start up, and then about 1,500 watts just to keep running. The size of your solar array, battery bank, and inverter determine whether or not you can regularly run an RV air conditioner with solar. You have two different air conditioning systems in your RV. Image via Amazon There are many different kinds of RV battery monitors on the market, most of which can be installed aftermarket into your RV battery system. In fact, ignoring the 5% or so of efficiency loss in the inverter electronics, you’ll have the same 120 watts of power on the 120-volt side. One is the dash air, which is just like the AC in your car. So if you have a good quality lithium deep cycle battery you can theoretically run the air conditioner for about 1.5 hours before you need to recharge your batteries. Therefore, if you run out in the middle of the night you can switch the tank over on the regulator and get propane in the morning. As long as the battery or batteries are charged you can use everything in the RV except the microwave, roof air conditioner, the refrigerator in the electric mode and the electrical outlets. So we set the air conditioner for 75 degrees. It also has to be big enough to handle the surge that the AC motor takes when the AC starts up. The Generator needs to be big enough to run the AC, and in theory let you do other things like microwave when you run it. Say the air conditioner draws an average of 1200W per hour. If you pull from both tanks, when you run out you will not have any reserve propane to keep you heated until you can refill. Mel likes things quite a bit warmer than Stef and I do. An Easy Start can be used to run an Air Conditioner (or other compressor or pump) off a small generator (like the Honda 2000), low quality (or low amperage) shore power, or through an inverter for off grid solutions (like tiny homes, RVs and boats). That is the big factor that most people miss. Compare that to a battery voltage reading with the power back on and the power converter operating. This surge is huge, and will often overload a If you know how to use a voltage meter you can check the house battery voltage with your RV disconnected from the AC electrical source. If you want to run your RV air conditioner on solar and battery, remember that a typical RV air conditioning unit outputs 15,000 BTUs of cooling power. It is possible to run your air conditioner for extended periods of time while you free camp - purely from your 12v Battery. To size these solar components for regular air conditioning I determined how many amps my 13,500 BTU RV air conditioner drew during operation. 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