[ausev] Air Conditioner for EV

[Brian Lasseter]

On Thu, Nov 20, 2008 at 12:28 PM, loopcat <loopcat at yahoo.com> wrote:
> With the cooler months ahead of us, this may not be the right time for this topic! But, I'm looking for a cost effective way to cool the EV cabin.
> Check out this personal ac unit..
> http://www.naturalsolutions1.com/amcor2000e.htm

That actually sounds like a bad idea.   Mostly because of the
following line on the web page:  "The APC2000E provides you a cool
breeze but it WILL NOT cool the ambient temperature of a room. It
should ONLY be used for a direct cooling breeze. If the temperature is
above 95°F in the area where the air conditioner is do not expect
cooling."

How often is it above 95°F in San Antonio?  That thing is merely a
dehumidifier, and not and air conditioner per say.  I'll get into BTUs
later...



> It's 1000 btu, 250w/3amps. which is pretty small. Doing the math, (not my strong subject) 12v x 55amps = 660watts. My 12v system is a Iota-45 and a 55amp aux battery.

Since the Air conditioner would be a sustained load... you'd need to
figure up any other 12V draws in the car (like the 200W for your
headlights?), and see what you have left over.  Also, your max draw
would be 12v*45A or 600W since your aux battery isn't going to last
long.  I have a 400W power steering pump hanging off of my Iota-45...
and it dims my headlights significantly when I turn it on.

Also, you would have to take into account the conversion losses from
inverting your 12V DC up to 115VAC.


> The idea is to mount the unit on the roof and cut holes for the vents and controls. My first concern is efficiency. What kinda drain will this put on the 12v system? The second concern is mounting. Will the ac compressor work laying on its side? I could all ways dismantle the AC unit and reorganize things.

That seems like an awful lot of work... where you could just buy a
Masterflux DC scroll compressor and use the car's original air
conditioning system.  http://www.masterflux.com/products/sierra/  The
Masterflux SIERRA06-0982Y3 can put out 15,000 BTU... That's 15x the
cooling power for 5x the price.  Aaron over at
http://www.revoltcustomelectric.com/ will sell you one for around
$1300 I think.

Also... with roof mounting, you are talking about putting something
heavy (27 pounds) on your roof, and putting controls somewhere.
Honestly... if you wanted to pull apart a home A/C unit, I am pretty
sure you can get something stronger and cheaper from any Big Box home
improvement store.  While the MasterFlux unit is more expensive in
terms of parts... I think you'll save a lot of time (which is money of
course) in setting it up, and getting some useful cooling power.

I have one of the Masterflux units in my car, and it seems to cool
just as well as stock... Chris measured it, and we compared the temps
to the Factory Service manual for a Saturn.  (I've been using it since
September.)

Another way to think about it is that I have the 15,000 BTU Masterflux
unit in my car, and it cools as well as stock A/C.  The unit you are
talking about cools 15x worse than the stock A/C of my Saturn...
imagine something that cools 15x worse than the stock A/C of a regular
car.  That's not much cooling.


-- 
TTFN,
Brian "Lasso" Lasseter

"No Sane man will dance."   -Cicero (106-43 B.C.)