Air conditioning (A/C) for your nomad life is very expensive, but many consider it an essential expense, especially in hot and humid regions. Air conditioners require a significant amount of electricity, which means you'll need either a very large investment ($x,xxx) in solar panels (plus enough roof space to hold them all), high-capacity batteries, and other components, or a generator, or regular access to shore power. Before committing to air conditioning, see if other options for keeping cool will be sufficient for you.
Power demands
Even the most efficient 12v A/C units draw upwards of 60 amps at full blast; that's over 700w, continuous. That will drain even the biggest battery banks extremely quickly. Using a household air conditioner system through an inverter will increase that power draw even more, due to inverter losses. Air conditioners draw significantly more power when starting up; some units have a "soft start" function, using capacitors to help the compressor start while smoothing out the massive spike in current draw.
Smaller vehicles
With current solar panel technology, smaller vehicles like cars, SUVs and minivans do not have sufficient roof space for the solar panel area you'll need to run air conditioning. Portable panels exist, but you'll need a lot of them and they'll also take up a lot of room in your vehicle when not in use.
Hybrid vehicles (Toyota Prius, etc.) can run the air conditioner from the battery since the engine will start up when needed, and they are designed for this use. This is effectively using your hybrid vehicle as a generator. Note that idling your vehicle for electricity is a bad idea except in emergencies.
Shore powered A/C
Running your A/C from shore power (grid or mains power) is very practical, and it's how RVs have been doing it for many years. Standard household air conditioning window units or "portable air conditioners" will work on shore power. See this article for a good overview on what may be needed. Note that residential A/C units are not designed for constant travel, so they may break more often than usual, especially if you do offroad travel. All RV parks have electric hookups designed with air conditioner loads in mind.
Parking in a friend's driveway (moochdocking) and running an air conditioner with an extension cord is okay if you use a cord rated for the electrical load. Be sure the cord is not wrapped up, and does not create other hazards.
Generator powered A/C
Conventional fuel-burning generators (not solar generators) of sufficient rating will have no problem running an air conditioner. But generators are noisy, require fuel, are subject to theft, and are not allowed in many campgrounds during certain hours.
Solar powered A/C
Be warned: solar-powered air conditioning is very expensive. More expensive than the air conditioner itself is everything you'll need to power it. Air conditioning takes a huge amount of electricity; to operate successfully off grid you'll want at least 8-12Kwh of LiFePO4 batteries, 800-1200 watts of solar panels, and the required massive solar charge controllers to manage it all. If you want to run the A/C overnight, be prepared to double that battery bank size. If you're trying to power this from a solar generator, you will be disappointed.
Keep in mind that when you need air conditioning the most, you'll really want to park in the shade to keep your vehicle cooler, but parking in the shade will reduce your solar harvest. Also, solar panel harvest is counterintuitively reduced when it is hot: a nominal "100w" panel may be reduced to 75 watts output even at noon near the Equator. See solar panel output to learn more about panel derating. You'll also lose some power to wiring losses and the charge controller. Portable panels exist and can help with the shade problem (since you can place panels in the sun and your van in the shade), but you'll need a lot of them, they are vulnerable to theft, and they take up a lot of room in your vehicle when not in use.
In order to generate 700w of power to run an average system from solar (without draining batteries), you'll need at least 1200w worth of panels. And that's just to run the A/C unit itself. That's not giving you any overhead to charge your batteries or do anything else. Consider how much roof space those panels will require. Then add in the cost of the panels, charge controllers, thick copper cabling to connect it all together, and so on. If you want to run your system after the Sun drops closer to or below the horizon, you'll need a pretty massive battery bank and enough solar capacity to charge your batteries and keep you cool at the same time. Better insulation will help a lot, since your system won't have to work as hard to keep your living space cool.
If you have a large vehicle (box truck, skoolie, step van, etc.), you may be able to fit enough solar panels to run the A/C purely on solar power within an hour or two of solar noon if skies are clear, and possibly even charging your batteries a bit at the same time. On a standard cargo van, the entire roof would need to be paneled, with no room for roof vents or other equipment.
Don't expect great results for your system, especially if your van is not well insulated. Getting your van down to "warm" is a lot easier than keeping it at "room temperature" that you might expect for a sticks-and-bricks residence.
But I saw someone on TikTok doing it!
The things you see on social media are often:
- Rich people with extremely expensive vans that they paid professionals to build
- "Influencers" who spend a weekend or two in the van every month and only post pictures or stories from the most ideal situations
- Completely faked and just being shared around to generate views
- All of the above.
Successfully installed A/C systems, able to be used off-grid for extended periods of time, are rare. They are people with an in-depth understanding of the issues and the money and space to make it happen. There is a reason that most people snowbird and use roof vents to control humidity and temperature.
I still want to try it!
Don't say we didn't warn you, but here are links to people who have done it successfully:
- 20kw of Battery, 1,100w of solar - Van Gogh
- minisplit
- Undermount AC install on a Transit
- Pleasedontmindme247
- WorkingOnExploring -- exceptional walk-through of the power and equipment needed to run A/C in a highly-insulated truck camper.
- jimindenver (youtube)
- iTripper
- CheapRVLiving.com posts
- IGBT
- BradKW
- SolarInTheCity
Air conditioner options
When choosing an air conditioner, your first choice is AC (alternating current) or DC (direct current). Residential air conditioners are always AC.
AC (Alternating Current) systems (110/120/200v) =
These units are vastly more common, and much cheaper, but will require a large inverter. These are usually roof-mounted units, smaller ones can be had for as little as $500 and are very common in the RV world. If you have a big enough inverter anyway it can be cheaper to go that route. It also gives you the option of easily powering the unit from shore power or a generator when available (see below).
DC (Direct Current) systems (12/24/48v)
Units that can operate directly on DC current off of your house batteries give some efficiency gains as you don't need to run them through an inverter, but they are very expensive.
All-in-one roof units offer a much simpler installation and are usually around $2,500; Dometic has their RTX 2000 unit as a good start for most vans. The relative ease of install comes at the expense of taking up quite a bit of roof space (and consequently reducing your available space for solar panels).
Split units separate the evaporator/condenser/compressor into separate parts which have to be plumbed together. This can offer a lot more flexibility in terms of where to mount stuff, but also makes the installation much more complex. Cruis-n-comfort and UnderMountAC are the two most common split options, and will generally run $4,000 for the units themselves.
Beginning around 2023, cheap Chinese 12v mini-split systems have started to come down to almost acceptable prices ($1k in the USA, or as little as $500 if you can wait the 1-2 months for shipping from China). Reports on them have been mixed; similar to the Chinese knock-off diesel heaters they come with almost no instructions and often missing a few minor parts (most users report some fittings or couplings being missing, or needing to crimp their own lines). Warranty and installation support is non-existent, but if you can fiddle your way through the pseudo-DIY installation, some people have reported positive results.
Some or all of the content on this page was originally sourced from this page on RVWiki
Resources
| Resource | Description | |
|---|---|---|
| Cooling and Air Conditioning | Considerations for air conditioning, evaporative cooling, mini-splits, and more. | |
| Search forums and groups | Search van life discussion groups for "air conditioning" | |
| Search related sites | Search van life sites for "air conditioning" | |
| Search NomadLife.wiki | Search other pages on this wiki for "air conditioning" |