Well, we've gotten into the "dog days" of summer here. No wind, hazy semi-overcast conditions and very hot (yes, water vapor in the air is even more of a potent "greenhouse" gas than CO2).
So we're running our A/C around the clock to keep the house nice and comfy. We ran the A/C yesterday on solar and wind power alone and didn't start the prime generator last night. That was a mistake:
The system started the big genset between 1:00-2:00AM and ran it for about 2.5 hours. The system starts the standby generator when the battery gets to 35% SOC and shuts it off when the battery gets to 50% SOC. When we woke up this morning in our nice cool and de-humidified house the batteries were at 42% SOC.
So I started the prime generator at about 7:50AM this morning and leaving it run all day. Our normal loads in the house, plus the A/C going 24/7 means we are using 70-80 kWh/day with no utility power here. Our loads are running 3-4 kW continuous. The little prime generator takes enough load off the RE system so it can charge batteries, and they been charging at 100-120 amps all day so they're up to 70% SOC as I write this.
It takes a LOT of power to run A/C. As long as you don't have some sort of religious beliefs that prevent you from running a generator, you CAN power an A/C system off-grid. But that generator is the only way I've found that it can be economically (or practically) done.
I threw this out because not too long ago there was a thread where somebody asked about this, but can't find that thread right now. And I've seen it from many other folks too - live in a hot climate, want to move off-grid and the big question is, "how can power that A/C?" Solar panels can't do it. The sun only shines part of the day and that means the rest of the day you're on batteries. Batteries can't do it because even a big bank gets killed by Peukert Effect in short order. Generators can do it.
So we're running our A/C around the clock to keep the house nice and comfy. We ran the A/C yesterday on solar and wind power alone and didn't start the prime generator last night. That was a mistake:
The system started the big genset between 1:00-2:00AM and ran it for about 2.5 hours. The system starts the standby generator when the battery gets to 35% SOC and shuts it off when the battery gets to 50% SOC. When we woke up this morning in our nice cool and de-humidified house the batteries were at 42% SOC.
So I started the prime generator at about 7:50AM this morning and leaving it run all day. Our normal loads in the house, plus the A/C going 24/7 means we are using 70-80 kWh/day with no utility power here. Our loads are running 3-4 kW continuous. The little prime generator takes enough load off the RE system so it can charge batteries, and they been charging at 100-120 amps all day so they're up to 70% SOC as I write this.
It takes a LOT of power to run A/C. As long as you don't have some sort of religious beliefs that prevent you from running a generator, you CAN power an A/C system off-grid. But that generator is the only way I've found that it can be economically (or practically) done.
I threw this out because not too long ago there was a thread where somebody asked about this, but can't find that thread right now. And I've seen it from many other folks too - live in a hot climate, want to move off-grid and the big question is, "how can power that A/C?" Solar panels can't do it. The sun only shines part of the day and that means the rest of the day you're on batteries. Batteries can't do it because even a big bank gets killed by Peukert Effect in short order. Generators can do it.
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