HOW MANY SOLAR PANELS ARE NEEDED TO RUN AN AIR CONDITIONER OR HEAT PUMP
Solar panels can be used to power just about any appliance in your home. From your oven and washing machine to your vacuum, there isn’t much that they can’t do. However, in the hot summer months, many of us would like to benefit from air conditioning in our homes, and the question of how many solar panels it would take to power one often comes to mind. Here is a little more information on solar panels and their ability to power air conditioning.
POWERING AIR CONDITIONING OR HEAT PUMPS
The main issue that comes with powering air conditioning or heat pump systems is the fact that they use up so much electricity. The average air conditioner uses 1.3kw of power, and the average solar panel system ranges from 2kw to 4kw. So, if you decide to power an air conditioner or try and break-even on a ASHP, it is going to use up the vast majority of your solar energy.
Some air conditioners will even use as much as 2.5kw, meaning that the minimum power of your solar panel system would need to be 3kw just to power the air conditioning. Putting this into a little more perspective, if you had a 1kw unit and were running the smallest air conditioner (1.3kw), the solar panel would provide you with 5-7 units of power for the day.
This would be consumed by the air conditioner in a mere four or five hours. They are high demand items that require a lot of energy to keep running. There are some low power models that only use 600w, but these are few and far between. If you are able to find one of these low power models, they only use three or four solar panels in your array to run.
If we are looking at conventional air conditioners, however, solar panels aren’t quite ready to be used to power these and your home. So, when the summer hits, you may have to make a choice if you want your air conditioning to be run via solar energy.
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