DC Air Conditioning

[hellosailor]

"Got a link to a site that claims DC air cooling is practical? "
If Tesla can do it, anyone else can too. Just start by buying a Tesla, throw out all the highway parts, and keep the AC system.

[a64pilot]

Toyota Prius would be a lot cheaper, it's air conditioner is electric too, not sure if it's DC though, there may be an inverter in there to convert the 300 or so VDC to AC?

[a64pilot]

I think you may find a lot of DC things actually convert DC to AC to operate. I would not be surprised if you found a DC air conditioner, that it had an inverter and was actually an AC machine

[StuM]

Originally Posted by hellosailor

"Got a link to a site that claims DC air cooling is practical? "
If Tesla can do it, anyone else can too. Just start by buying a Tesla, throw out all the highway parts, and keep the AC system.

If you can live in the volume of a Tesla

[newhaul]

Originally Posted by StuM

If you can live in the volume of a Tesla

Or my islander

[sailjumanji]

I have a Dometic Turbo 8K unit with a March LC3-CP water circulation pump. The Honda 2000 powers it just fine, and runs about 10 hrs on 0.9 gal of gas. We cool only the port sleeping-quarters hull, and it can handle that in the Texas sun just fine. At anchor, if we run it, usually start up the generator and A/C around 8-9 pm - right after stepping out of a hot shower - so the gen runs out of gas around 6 am. Only issue is that it needs to be off eco-mode the first time the A/C kicks in (which I think could be fixed with a hard start switch, but not a big deal). After that I can switch to eco-mode and it doesn't care what is happening anymore. Can even turn on the battery charger at that point and it will power both (although it really speeds up!).

I looked at the DC possibility for running A/C, and the solars can handle if you have enough panels. But problem is that we want the A/C at night, which is not a solar panel draw but a pure battery drawdown. At the same time lights and refrigeration are doing the same.

[newhaul]

Originally Posted by a64pilot

Toyota Prius would be a lot cheaper, it's air conditioner is electric too, not sure if it's DC though, there may be an inverter in there to convert the 300 or so VDC to AC?

The Prius air conditioning is electric however it runs off of the 200 plus volt ( depends on year model up to 273 volt) DC main battery. Just a bit much for the average cruiser however they do make 48 volt DC units for the telecom industry for off grid locations.