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Peewee86
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# Posted: 14 Jul 2026 04:15pm
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At our cabin, we have living space both in the cabin and in a bumper tow RV. Last year I purchased a window air conditioner for the Cabin. It’s a Midea U shaped model that I bought at Costco. We have been thoroughly impressed with this unit. The inverter based air conditioners are so much better if you are running off solar. The model that I have is 12,000 BTU and it will draw over 1200 W when you first turn it on, but then once it gets running throttles back and usually is only running on about 600 W. Because the compressor is outside with the U-shaped design, it’s very quiet. I can’t comment on it long-term reliability, but for the past two summers, we’ve been very impressed.
Our positive experience with this unit got me thinking about the air conditioner for the camper. The one that came with it from the manufacturer was a 13,500 BTU Dometic. Several years back I had installed a soft starter that allowed us to run it off a 2200W Honda generator, but I’m all in on solar and I wanted to figure out a way to run the camper A/C off solar like we were doing with the cabin. Inverter based roof air conditioners are just starting to hit the market. They are very expensive. Ultimately, I purchased a portable air conditioner that ducted out the window. I was able to custom adapt piece of plywood as a window insert. The unit for the camper is smaller only 8000 BTU, but it seems to hold its own. I’m in Minnesota. Maybe it wouldn’t keep up if I was down in Arizona. The portable A/C does take up a little bit of floor space in the camper but it’s a trade-off that I was willing to accept. Like my experience with the window unit this thing is very quiet. Much quieter than the factory air-conditioning.
Over the long Fourth of July weekend earlier this month I was able to give the camper air conditioning it’s first full test and I am very pleased with its results. Once it’s up and running, it’s humming along at about only 500W. For reference our camper is a 12v system, the inverter and solar components, for both systems are all Victron. It has 1050W of solar and 628 amps of battery. The portable AC was also purchased from Costco. I think each unit was on sale in the $350 range. I can’t remember the pricing exactly but the ability to control heat when it’s 90° out is priceless for the rest of the family.
Maybe the people that are deep into solar are aware of this, but I thought it was worthwhile information to know how much more efficient the inverter based compressors on newer air-conditioning units can be.
Our Cabin also uses an inverter based compressor for its refrigerator. That thing uses less than 60 W when it’s running. Perhaps I should start a separate thread topic about that one.
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gcrank1
Member
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# Posted: 14 Jul 2026 07:12pm
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Good real-world use info!
Pls do a new topic on the fridge, I need to know more
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philpom
Member
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# Posted: 14 Jul 2026 08:53pm
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This is an interesting topic, while we use 2 5500 BTU units to cool our cabin in the summer I can easily run one of then with a 2200 watt inverter generator, never tried 2. The ones we have are just $99 Walmart specials. They'll cool it down to 70 when it's in the mid 90s outside. I need to get a watt Guage to see what they actually pull.
I'm working up plans for a hybrid solar, battery, generator, and finally grid system. 2000 watts solar, 600ah battery, auto generator for huge loads, and finally grid power as a fail safe. I know that last part sounds oxy moronic. I've also thought about tossing in 500 watts of wind. Cool air is important to my family.
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gcrank1
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# Posted: 14 Jul 2026 11:13pm
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Ive yet to see anything in small scale wind that is worth the time, trouble and expense....
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