Quote:
Originally Posted by MEMPHIS91
Yes without the grid it would be really hard to afford the system needed. And would probably just be best to install a huge solar system with huge battery banks. BUT so far my grid tie has pumped out 92 kWh of power. Helping keep my daily usage to below 30 kWh a day with over 100F weather.
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Not necessarily. The main goal of an A/C system is to remove heat. It doesn't really matter when it removes the heat, just that it does. By using thermal storage you can massively reduce the size of the battery bank needed. The down side to that is you will likely cycle your batteries more often. If you get your energy usage down you can reduce the amount of thermal storage you need as well. Even in warm climates the best houses are down to around the 1 ton per 2000 sqft mark of peak load.
Lets say you need in total 10 times that amount (that would be your 1 ton A/C running 10 hours a day) for a full day you would need enough thermal storage to remove 120,000 BTUs from your house during a peak day. If you use a cubic meter of water for your storage, and chill that water down to frozen solid then you have about 317,000 BTUs of thermal storage (actually a bit more than that) that is basically 2 2/3rds days of storage.
Ice Bear uses this to offset power usage, typically their system uses night time power in areas with Time of Use rates, allowing system owners to power their Air Conditioners with cheaper night time power. The same Idea can be used with a solar system, just running when the sun is out instead of at night.