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How much deep cell batteries will take to power a Mini AC unit?

I would like to run a mini ac unit with deep cell batteries. How many 12v batteries would i need? The AC unit would not have to be big, 5,000 btu or less if there is one available. I would like to run it maybe 5 hrs on a charge.
Here’s an ac unit i came across search: Frigidaire FAX052P7A – 5,000 BTU Mini Room Air Conditioner

I am guessing a 5000btu unit will draw some where in the range of 800 to 1000 watts or so.

Now, you say you want to run this AC unit for maybe 5 hours on battery power. Even though you are talking deep cycle batteries, I am telling you that you do not want to drain these batteries… so lets assume that you will run the batteries down to no less than half of their capacity.

So that would mean that you need to be able to store 1000 watts x 5 hours x 2 ~ 10,000 watt hours

Now let’s look at the characteristics of some typical deep cycle batteries. http://www.solar-electric.com/12voba.html

Lets assume you are using the 130 amp hour battery on the far right of this page. That 130 amp hour is probably based upon some longer period low amp draw like 10 or 20 hours, however, I am going to ignore that for the sake of simplicity.

So in general, a 130 amp hr battery can supply 130 amps x 12 volts = 1560 watts for 1 hour and I since I know this is wildly optimistic, I am just going to reduce this to say… 1000 watts hrs per battery and we have already said you need a capacity of 10,000 watt hrs so that means you will need 10 of these batteries.

On top of that, you will need an inverter and a charge controller, in addition to the Solar Panels or the wind system to charge all these batteries.

So I hope you are catching on to why people only undertake such an investment in very specific circumstances. It is expensive.

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