Quick Solar Update: Air Conditioning. Wow

I always assumed I wasn’t going to be able to run our central air conditioning system off the solar power system. I based that assumption on multiple reports from people on Youtube and other places that have systems similar to mine that showed their EG4 inverters going into overload and shutting down when they tried to start up their aircon systems.

I decided to try it myself. I was not optimistic. This is a big house, 2,400 sq feet, it’s about 90 degrees outside, and that’s a huge compressor sitting out there. Still, what’s the worst that could happen? (Don’t answer that.) I decided to try it.

I shut down the air conditioning system, switched the house over to the EG4 inverters. Once everything was switched over, I held my breath and switched on the air conditioning and…

It worked? Yeah, it just worked. No muss, no fuss, no alarms, nothing. The lights didn’t even flicker. The cooling fans in the EG4s didn’t even speed up.

Apparently this air conditioning system is way, way more efficient than I thought. It’s only pulling about 1.8 KW maximum after the initial startup surge. How is that even possible? This is like a 4 ton air conditioner. Those generally average about 3 KW to 4KW, and this one is using half that? Wow… I just ran some rough numbers and it seems I could run the entire house, including the air con, off just the batteries and the EG4s for about 12 hours. Wow… Yeah, I know I said wow before, but still, wow…

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Author: grouchyfarmer

Yes, I'm a former farmer. Sort of. I'm also an amateur radio operator, amateur astronomer, gardener, maker of furniture, photographer.

5 thoughts on “Quick Solar Update: Air Conditioning. Wow”

  1. That’s neat, and also really good news. Thanks for the post. Could you share the name of the company whose engineers designed your A/C? And any info about the people who sold you your solar panels would also be appreciated. I remember it was a DIY project but if you don’t mind sharing your source….

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    1. The central air and furnace system are standard high efficiency home systems from Carrier sold and serviced by our local Carrier dealer. Standard home units, nothings special.

      The inverters are two, EG4 6500EX inverter/chargers running in 240V split phase, with EG4 LL 48V 5kWh batteries. All of the solar equipment was purchased from Signature Solar in Texas.

      Solar panels were bought off Amazon. I have 2 sets, 6, 220W panels from Newpowa and 8 100 watt panels from HQST. i only have about 2,100W of solar at the moment and badly need to add more but that’s going to have to wait until we can figure out exactly how we’re going to mount them. We were going to put about 5,000 watts of panels on the garage roof but my wife and i were talking about that just this morning and now we’re considering going to a ground mount system.

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      1. Thank you. Glad to hear Signature Solar had what you needed. Some of the arrays in this part of Virginia are ground mounts. We have one Whole Foods with art nouveau style pillars holding panels up over the parking lot. It’s so pretty! Glad to hear you can run your home AC with the solar!

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    1. Ha! I think I’ll avoid that. I do know it can run the dryer, though. It has no problem with that either, but wow, it’s a power hog! Draws about 6KW. That’s where a lot of my utility bill is coming from.

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