If you have a 5-amp window air conditioner, you will need 55 amps of DC power to run the unit continuously. 0. Currently, you take kinetic energy from the engine, and transfer it to kinetic energy at the compressor. This works out to about 3000 to 6000 watts! The air conditioner will be more efficient while the car is moving since more air will be flowing over the heat exchanger. I also have a 5000 btu air conditioner which attracts 530 watts. A 3 way refrigerator comes with propane and DC battery … There is NO free lunch, you will need many batteries and a much better alternator. Disconnect the battery. Say the air conditioner draws an average of 1200W per hour. If your car’s air conditioner isn’t blowing cold air, the first thing you should look for are signs of leaking … Determining Cycles Per Hour . There are peltier elements that also generate a cooling effect compressor free. October 1, 2016 - If your car's air-conditioning system blows only warm air on hot days, it's probably because it is low on refrigerant. Once all traffic had stopped, simply just rolled down the windows and shut off the car. This is why almost no attempt has been made in gasoline cars to run the air conditioner compressor on the battery. The AC runs by changing the state and pressure of a liquid, and compressing the liquid is a big part of that cycle. Either that or a water cooling loop. http://www.amazon.com/TEC1-12706-Thermoelectric-Peltier-Cooler-Volt/dp/B002UQQ3Q2. The LifeSmart cooler is a great option for you if you think you might be near electric hookup for some of your camping trip. by: Dave Pollard. No free lunch. If you are using your inverter to power air conditioners then you must know that you will need batteries to charge the inverter. That test was done at full power and trying to cool a hot 86 degree F RV down to about 66 degrees F. When the weather's not too hot, you can run the compressor intermittently without the passengers noticing anything, so they run the compressor when you're slowing down and switch it off when you're accelerating. An inverter changes the battery's DC output into AC power to run your AC appliances (including your air conditioning unit). The blower motor does not take 20 amps to run it only takes a few amps tops unless it has something wrong with it. Click here to upload your image I asked on another forum and was told to expect only 15% battery use. Just easier when it's designed for it. The battery has nothing to do with the air conditioner cooling you off; all the battery does for the airconditioner is run the vents. Then you will have to connect those wire bundles to even thicker wires and so on. Running an RV air conditioner with batteries is very possible but it takes a lot of battery power. Not hard to do, there's one in every residential AC unit there is. I just want a general guess on the time. I have a stock 2006 Ford focus sedan. Other companies use similar strategies, BMW is just the first I could find that offered some explanation of why they switched to electric AC. I can't give you numbers or calculations without some work, but I can tell you than energy is never free. Larger ones exist. An electric AC is unnoticable. Also beef up the electrical system enough to be able to run said motor. If the car is not running, the battery will go dead if you run the air conditioning since now the battery is running the vents without being recharged by the alternator. My van has a/c and can be turned on with engine running, but when stationary the a/c hose gets so hot that the ends melt. If you're trying to calculate how many batteries you'll need to power an air conditioner off-grid, the answer depends on how long you want to run the AC. So, to remove the load of your AC from the engine, either direct or indirect, needs a separate power source - you could consider a bank of batteries that you charge at home and give sufficient power for your trip, but the weight will not improve the fuel consumption and you need to have the space available. I have seen vehicles with multiple alternators, such as BASS competitions. When put to hot, the air does heat. Solution, turn the ac off before I turn off the car, to let the battery get back to 12 volts so I can crank my engine over the next day. Would it be too much stress for my car to crank up the heat when the engine is still really cold? I would sacrifice 50 to 75 pounds no problem for ice cold ac in Phoenix. What you shouldn’t expect is a fan blowing cold air. The good news is all of this can be done with 12v-15v. Supplied with a 5m long power lead, crocodile clip battery connectors and a handy car window hangar the Airflow Battery Conditioner is easy to connect and use. If you can find the amp/hour rating for your battery, you can do the math. battery powered air conditioner* Powered by its interchangeable power base. Disconnect the battery conditioner, and you’re on your way. 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. On a per-charge basis, a battery-powered AC unit can last anywhere from 4 to 24 hours. Preventing power loss during important times such as overtaking and climbing on slopes. An electric car does things differently because there is no engine, and so delivering power to the AC and just about everything else is determined by the amount of stored battery energy. This means the alternator would have to work harder to make up for those losses and take more power from the engine. A modern car can deal with idling all day all night long. The air conditioner, when it’s really cranking in the desert, pulls about 12 amps at 120 volts. So although I don’t see how the air conditioner could drain the battery, other electrical accessories can, in specific circumstances. And they only have the electrical compressor, not both. Running the compressor while the engine is off is another matter. . the blower motor takes about 20 amps to run. I did not witness it, so I am unsure if anything else may have been disconnected. To check how much is the consumption, one activity you can do is to put off all the devices that run on battery and keep only fridge ON. Interestingly, my power bills tend to be significantly higher in the winter (when I'm running the electric heaters) than in the summer (when I'm running the AC). Either way you would need to transfer the resulting heat outside of the cabin. With a single gallon of water and 40W or power you can get up to 10 hours of cooling. I have no idea how many you would need, but give these are 1.5 inches many would be needed. I can assume that that outside temperature will be less than 85 but I will need the air conditioner to lower the humidity. Let’s do the math. Extrapolate: a car needs 5 kW of aircon to cool it down, Peltier is 1/100 as efficient as AC, you need hundreds of KW of Peltier elements to keep your car cool. 1 Like. Peltier elements are really inefficient. http://www.amazon.com/TEC1-12706-Thermoelectric-Peltier-Cooler-Volt/dp/B002UQQ3Q2. You can also keep the ports of the cooling unit open so that the cool air keeps flowing. An A/C compressor actually takes a huge amount of energy to operate. Another reason that I could think of is for those people who might want to take a short nap and want to use AC without the car running. The design of this solar fan is to circulate the air rather than chill. An optional cigar lighter connector is available for use on vehicles with a permanently live cigar lighter or auxiliary 12V socket. The bad news is even 1 peltier element requires 7 amps at 12v. There are many reasons to get your air conditioning recharged besides the most obvious one being to keep you and your passengers cool on journeys in hot weather (though we might add that leaving a box of lollies in a non-air conditioned car for too long can be very upsetting for kids and grown-ups alike). Ever tried running a 500 kW generator? Here's what's in the new stimulus package. An compress driven by an electric motor only takes the power it needs. In order to get 8 hours of running an air conditioner on battery power, you will need a lot of batteries. This might be a silly question but I was wondering if a car AC unit be run off entirely on battery or alternator? From that, I would expect an absolute max of … How would you handle the air flow/circulation? Also a thermal paste will increase conductivity and heat/cold transference. A 12V compressor would be unnecessarily large, https://mechanics.stackexchange.com/questions/28741/can-a-car-ac-unit-be-run-on-just-the-car-battery/28787#28787. If you use the vehicle battery then the charge come from the alternator and therefore the engine - btw the alternator can take approx 10bhp or more if producing full charge. In the case of Tesla EVs, for example, the AC compressor is located at the front of the car and draws power from the Energy … With a good portable AC you can better control the temperature in the vehicle and create a much more comfortable environment and enjoy driving even in extremely hot conditions. 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. So using an electric motor on a conventional car might give you a few more HP briefly, but the alternator has to eventually make up the deficit, and a bit more for its own inefficiencies. An electric car does things differently because there is no engine, and so delivering power to the AC and just about everything else is determined by the amount of stored battery energy. 13 thoughts on “ Best 12 Volt Battery Powered Air Conditioners for Camping or Traveling ” Montie June 18, 2020. In a 12V system , that is 100 Amps. I want a mini a/c unit that I can use in the back of my van. Easy peasy. This means that a battery has a 100 A.H. capacity if it is discharged over 20 hours, or at about 5 Amps-per-hour (100 A.H. / 20 hours = 5 Amps DC). I did not witness it, so I am unsure if anything else may have been disconnected. battery ac. 2 105 amp alternators, big high amp inverter, custom capacitor setup for the surges? The compressor draws several kW. Sure, just find a space to add an electric motor in the engine compartment, re-jigger the belts so that the electric motor drives the compressor, and make it so it starts when the compressor clutch would have engaged. It is possible to run your air conditioner for extended periods of time while you free camp - purely from your 12v Battery. You could always do it with a window air conditioner and a huge inverter, but the efficiency would be pretty bad I bet. Standard (without smart battery) Plus (including smart battery) For the life expectancy of the units, they can last for years. I can hook up 2 alternators to my car but have seen 10 to 15 alternators hooked up to the subwoofer competition trucks. If my memory serves correctly.. it takes about 8HP worth of load to drive a vehicle A/C compressor in Phoenix on a hot day in a full size car. Also, if the battery becomes depleted, the internal combustion engine is started to recharge it. Comments . If you are using a 15,000 BTU producing air conditioner that requires about 1500 watts to run it, then the two lithium batteries can keep the air conditioner running for 90 minutes before needing recharging. However, the battery pack will not be able to sustain that operation for very long since the drain is substantial. Electric heat can use 100A all by itself - more than everything else combined. I also hope to sleep with the heat on when the weather is cold. I would like to travel in my car but because of health issues I would need to be able to sleep in my car also, or at least rest for long periods. Portable air conditioners like a BLACK+DECKER BPACT08WT can run on a solar generator, but I would suggest a solar generator with at least a 1500W inverter, something like the Goal Zero Yeti 1000 or larger. Then the heat would get exhausted that way. Now that being said the air conditioner will not work without the car running, the blower will blow air but it will not be cold, the compressor has to be turning to give you cold air, and to have it turning the engine has to be running. An A/C compressor spins at a dizzying rate, and the more you use the cool side of your thermostat, the more likely it is to eventually fail or leak. 54 sections 18650 lithium battery composition Normal use for about 5 hours, 3.5 hours at full load. 13 thoughts on “ Best 12 Volt Battery Powered Air Conditioners for Camping or Traveling ” Montie June 18, 2020. I don't know how feasible it is to retrofit an existing AC system to electric. I just want a general guess on the time. To keep your cabin cool and conditioned, a colorless (and relatively odorless) refrigerant circulates through the A/C system. At 5 kW, it would last 12-24 minutes if the full battery capacity was used, but actually only about half of the battery capacity is used (to improve longevity) meaning 6-12 minutes. Efficient Cooling for Long Hours. If you don't mind an inferno in your trunk, behind the back seat. 0. If you don't have enough cooling you will break your peltier element. We put six to the test . I want a mini a/c unit that I can use in the back of my van. https://mechanics.stackexchange.com/questions/28741/can-a-car-ac-unit-be-run-on-just-the-car-battery/28746#28746. Call it 11,000 Watt Hours. I have a stock 2006 Ford focus sedan. The peltiers are less than 4mm in many cases so you will need something thin to keep them apart, depending on the total size of your device. As they're designed for it, I would bet that they have an electric compressor designed for this. Continue Reading. Getting a good battery like this one on amazon is thus critical, Checking the actual consumption by RV refrigerator. Dramsey. As @JPhi1618 noted, the compressor is mechanically driven. Keep it in a … To run it from an electric motor, you would need to do kinetic at the engine, to electric at the alternator, then back to kinetic at the motor for the compressor. The possibility of a second battery with a split charge system still requires the energy to come from the alternator and engine. Car air conditioner compressor clutch not engaging Published on October 22, 2015 October 22, 2015 • 85 Likes • 13 Comments Air-Conditioning can be considered as a “dirty” load due to continual switching causing voltage and current spikes and surges. Let’s take a look at AC energy requirements and typical solar production to see if solar panels can really run air conditioners in each setup. There are many reasons to get your air conditioning recharged besides the most obvious one being to keep you and your passengers cool on journeys in hot weather (though we might add that leaving a box of lollies in a non-air conditioned car for too long can be very upsetting for kids and grown-ups alike). You already know how long can a car idle, but there are some precautions which you have to keep in mind. That might allow you to use a smaller engine for the same performance (passing especially) with a simple software change. That said, I don't have any idea how MUCH … Save cars. Simply put, it's this change in pressure that cools the air coming into your cabin. Install a second radiator under the hood and 12v pump and fan. Find out how long should an air conditioner run and find out what to do if your system seems to be running more than you would like. 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