My big-bang-for-the-buck setup

Answering the question: Was hacking my Furnace with a solar powered portable AC worth it? NOPE! But for me, it was a great experiment to try, and glad I did.

We just had a few 100+ days here - super hot for us. My daughter's room gets BAKED by the sun. Check out this V. Midnight on the 10th, opens windows. 6 am, closes them - but leaves shades open, 9am, I close shades, and it levels out. No AC today. Basically her windows suck.


The previous day, you can see when I turned on the AC, and it kept her room from getting above 82. So, it helped keep her room 20 degs below ambient. I don't think the effort was worth it.

1 ton AC (1500-2000w), coupled with a slow furnace fan (I can't get it to kick into high ) doesn't get enough cold air to the 2nd floor. It just loses cold and it traverses the ductwork.

Here's what I would (and might) change:

1. Replace my 6 breaker transfer switch with a 10
2. Get an 8000 BTU Midea U for affected rooms, put all rooms on the transfer switch
3. During heat wave, take low-power breakers off the inverter (I only have 3k to play with - more in next post)
4. Use the Mideas to cool places as desired, and make them "solar powered" by flipping the transfer switches

Is THAT even worth it? ABSOLUTELY.

3 8k Midea U's are $700 on sale at Costco. Putting in a 3-5 ton AC is like $20k. Mini-splits are 2-5k. I can get away with running 2 simultaneously, and at steady state the use between 200-1000w. 2, yes, 3 is pushing it.

Other update: During the heat wave, I remotely turned on my DR AC, and the critical loads + 2 AC's went above my Bluetti AC300's peak. Almost immediately, the AC300 overloaded, and turned off all AC. I couldn't turn on the AC remotely, so that 0 gap is me crazy fast riding my bike from work to home to flip it on before my UPS's drained, freezer melted, fridge spoiled, and house got crazy hot from zero AC running. The AC300 performed like a champ, actually. Really happy with it so far, despite it being a consumer/portable AIO.

Along with the 10 breaker transfer switch, and more panels, I would swap the AC300 for an AC500.