Running AC in a Caravan - Off-Grid/Free Camping | Accelerate Auto Electrics & Air Conditioning

Everybody wants to know what they need to get their air-con running off-grid and how long it'll run for.

We continually get asked how long will my air conditioning run?
How big a system do I need?

Okay, so I've put together an experiment today. I'll give you some precursors. I've made this as simple as I can. My intention with this video is not to baffle everybody with acronyms and all the confusing terms. It's to put together a really simple video, running air conditioning off some AGM batteries and showing you how long a run time you'll get out of it, and the differences between it.

The reason why no one will answer that question is that it totally depends on your expectations and you monitoring the system yourself, and this experiments gonna explain why if you monitor it yourself, you can actually get your air-con running on quite a budget system with some smaller things.

So to put this video together, I have disconnected the solar, so that we've got nothing running in. I've also just dropped this system down. We're only running off three 120amp AGMs. So we got 360 amp hours of AGM batteries. We're running through an Enerdrive E-Pro 2000 watt charger inverter, but it's not on charger mode.
So basically, the simplicity of this system is three batteries, an inverter, and a Dometic Harrier.

[georgetheodoropoulos]

*This unit works like a charm. Keeps my rv 21 x 41 very **Fastly.Cool** . I recommend to anyone that wants to keep a rv cold without having to turn on the main a/c.*

[hil]

Thanks for the episode. My partner & I are on the road & have been travelling the past 13mths around the country with a similar system, same inverter ibis 3 ac unit. Main difference is we are running 3x 110ah lithium’s 330ah total. From experience your scenario may not be real world, my reasoning behind this is.
You would want to run the ac on warm days typically 32deg and above and as your run time on batteries is limited this would only be late afternoon at the earliest. The problem is heat soak, the entire van structure is hot. Yes it can take only 15mins on full to feel the air temp Change but the second you turn the ac down any the heat soaked van will begin to increase in temp so by the time you go to bed the batteries are drained and the van is hot & will have an uncomfortable sleep. You can also not run the ac the follow day as you will need all the solar to recharge.
This is the reason we put up with the heat during the day and only turn the ac on when we go to bed, put the ac to run on a 90min timer which drops our lithium’s to around 40% dod and the van to around 20deg. Obviously as soon as the ac shuts off the heat soaked van rapidly increases in temp but we have gone to sleep comfortably well before . The only time it makes sense to run the ac during the day to take advantage of solar input is if it cools of at night or you are on the coast with a good breeze over night to warrant opening the windows to cool off. We had AGM’s but they were just not up to running the inverter for any period of time. Granted our solar system is 480w and struggled to get the AGM’s over 80% slow charge stage, but the system charges at similar 20-27amp & has no issues getting the lithium’s from 40% dod to 100% No one we have met on the road has a 1kw system due to packaging I could only fit one more panel if I wanted to on our 20ft jayco but would be surplus to requirements.

[cottonscrimes]

fricken awesome video, just really well explained. Not drawn out at all.

[alexmills]

Great video. Was looking to install a Dometic Freshjet 1700 on our coaster. We will have 1Kw of solar and are in the Middle East 😊… so this has now convinced me it will be possible to run this unit for most of the day! And a good chunk of time at night!

[wheelsbytheocean]

This is the best explanation mate. Really appreciate it. Everyone else is all about spending huge dollars. Im trying to stay to a budget for now. Just want to be able to pop the a/c on for about an hour to cool the van after a hot day and this really makes sense.

Thank you

[europeanrventhusiast]

Extremely impressive video, well done! My question is, would a CTEK 140 off road DC to DC charging system successfully replace the 1000W solar system on the roof? I’m thinking of a situation when I would start the vehicle every time the AGM batteries run out of juice. Thanks

[TheDarrellma]

Great vid with lots of good information.

[FRERABRETZ]

I spent the money on 2x200ah Enerdrive lithium’s, I hope I can get good run time just cooling the little 13 footer to a decent temp, this is a great video thanks for posting it 😊

[darrenallie]

thats's awesome. Appreciate all your videos

[CyrusEightyOne]

Great video guys. Exactly what I was looking for

[garylee]

Great clip, filled in plenty of gaps for me thanks.

[jonathanneethling]

This was very helpful. Would a “soft start” be any beneficial to the initial draw of AMPS?

[tonydart]

Hi, I have a 2018 Jayco Outback that has a J35B BMS and looking at fitting an inverter. In your very informative video I see you were using the JHub so curious if this was running through a J35? Reading the BMPro site they do not recommend fitting an inverter to the J35. ‘The J35 is limited to a total of 20A (J35A) or 35A (J35B, C and D). When an inverter powers an appliance, the current draw from the inverter is typically much larger than the current supplied by the J35. It also states to fit an inverter directly to the battery to ensure that the J35 and battery monitor sees the current drawn by the inverter and need to install BMPRO’s BC300 External Shunt + CommLink to the battery.’

It is logical to hook the inverter directly to the battery as the J35 is a 12v management system.

I can see there is “AC Connected” on the Panel when 240v is plugged in so the 240 obviously goes through the J35 for the battery charging and that would be the same if an inverter is plugged in. To run the Air conditioner that is hard wired (we have a Truma Aventa) the inverter would be plugged into the van.

I have a couple of questions that I hope you could help with. Wouldn’t the inverter plugged into the van be running through the J35 and be stuck in a cycle of drawing from the batteries and powering the battery charger in the J35? Or does the BC300 and comlink stop that from happening? Thanks

[waynehobbs]

Thanks for the video. We have 400AH LiFePO4 batteries and a 2500w inverter. Am going to put in a shunt so we can accurately measure amps in, amps out. We have 2 x 300W 12v pv in series going through a 40A MPPT and 2 x 100W 12v pv parallel through its own 20A MPPT. Do you think we are robust enough for our roof air a few hours a day used like you recommend?
I would appreciate your thoughts. If you are wondering why the different pvs, the van came with the 2 x 100s but the LiFePO4 and 2x300W pv + inverter are my additions.

[accelerateoffgridtouring]

Due to an issue with our Google Brand Account we recently lost all of our responses to viewer comments (all responses prior to July 19, 2020).

[Vitorrnogueira]

thanks for the video! At the moment, what is the most efficiency air condiccioner?

[wazheamadman]

Hey mate would love to see a video on setting up a 4wd and caravan system like I’d like to have a basic system in the 4wd running a large fridge freeze constantly with some solar on roof, but while driving what do you recommend to charge the 4wd aux batteries as well as the vans

[kentwillis]

Great video... very informative, thanks

[rudolfvenema]

Is the Harrier the most efficient air-conditioner to running of an inverter or are there better units?

[madison_brown]

We will be running a similar system (2x120amh lithium batteries, 2000w inverter), and we wanted to know how is it possible to run this 2400w (cooling mode) air conditioner on a 2000w inverter?