Nimrod5
New Member
The long term goal is to have an off grid homestead. I have made the following progress so far; I paid cash for an off grid 40 in north central MN, I hammered in a sandpoint and power it with a genny, I put in a propane fired hot water heater so I have hot showers, I built a barn, and I have a camper. I spend a lot of time there in the summer. I would spend more time there if I had an air conditioned room in the barn to get out of those 100 degree 70 dew point days and nights. I am still paying off part of the barn so money is very tight.
I was recently gifted six 265 watt solar panels and a Midnight Solar Kid charge controller. It's brand new equipment that's been stored for the last 8 years. I know that 1590 watts of solar is a small system by today's standards but I would like to see if it can run a 5000 BTU window AC. I plan to follow the system in the Kid's instructions, 2 strings of 3 panels wired in series and the strings wired in parallel. I need to buy a 48 volt battery bank, some wire, breakers, and an inverter. The batteries will be lead acid because I'm broke and because they will get to -40 during the winter while I'm not there.
Are the inverters from companies with names composed of random letters (are they government alphabet agencies?) any good? Will a 4000 watt cheap pure sine wave inverter handle the start up surge from the AC? It normally uses 450 watts.
Does the following sound right to you? The battery bank will be 48 volts and 100 amp hours of lead acid. It only gets really hot on sunny days so The AC will be on when the panels are putting out the max wattage until dusk when the batteries have to take over. If the batteries get fully charged during the morning then they will have 2400 watt hours for after dark so the batteries only drain 50%. This is enough to run the AC for 5 hours and by that time the evening will have cooled down. It looks like this will work.
I was recently gifted six 265 watt solar panels and a Midnight Solar Kid charge controller. It's brand new equipment that's been stored for the last 8 years. I know that 1590 watts of solar is a small system by today's standards but I would like to see if it can run a 5000 BTU window AC. I plan to follow the system in the Kid's instructions, 2 strings of 3 panels wired in series and the strings wired in parallel. I need to buy a 48 volt battery bank, some wire, breakers, and an inverter. The batteries will be lead acid because I'm broke and because they will get to -40 during the winter while I'm not there.
Are the inverters from companies with names composed of random letters (are they government alphabet agencies?) any good? Will a 4000 watt cheap pure sine wave inverter handle the start up surge from the AC? It normally uses 450 watts.
Does the following sound right to you? The battery bank will be 48 volts and 100 amp hours of lead acid. It only gets really hot on sunny days so The AC will be on when the panels are putting out the max wattage until dusk when the batteries have to take over. If the batteries get fully charged during the morning then they will have 2400 watt hours for after dark so the batteries only drain 50%. This is enough to run the AC for 5 hours and by that time the evening will have cooled down. It looks like this will work.