Zero Breeze
I've been trying to figure out a good way to take the edge off the Texas summer heat at night in a long term grid down situation. Initially I was looking to build up enough solar charged battery power to run a small 5000BTU window unit. With this zero breeze unit you'd probably need to set up a tent or something indoors to keep the sqft cooling area down but it may be more efficient. I would think you could get away with running something like 4x 6volt golf cart batteries to get 24volts. That way you could avoid using an inverter. I'm fairly new to the solar game, someone tell me why this wouldn't work.

$100 for a dryer hose extension!

They have a very high opinion of themselves!

You would be better off buying a 5K BTU Window Air Conditioner and a small inverter generator.   My son picked up a Champion 2KW Inverter Genset for 260.00.   Add a 5K BTU A/C for 200.00 and then you can buy a lot of gasoline and use the genset for more than just the A/C if you want to.

Cyblade:  Neat video.   They do a pretty good job of using science to explain the device limitations.

2400 BTU isn't much.

It would need to run roughly twice as much as your garden-variety window unit in order to cool the same area to the same temperature - so the energy savings isn't going to be all that impressive.

anyone still use swamp coolers in Texas, or at least west Texas?... I was at Goodfellow AFB in San Angelo (1970) and the large swamp coolers worked pretty well in the low humidity... and for you Texans, I was treated very well, thank you

^ Yes, they start becoming commonplace west of Uvalde.

(AFAIK, the Uvalde Walmart is the farthest place east that regularly stocks swamp cooler replacement parts. )

They're generally more energy-stingy than conventional refrigerant-based systems, although the advent of ridiculously efficient mini-split systems (30+ SEER) has diminished that edge considerably.

They also tend to make a room feel warmer than refrigerated AC, since they add humidity rather than remove it.

What you want is an inverter mini-split system.
Get a small 5000-8000 bru 120 volt  high efficiency system. It will require far less power than any window unit.
It will cost far more than a window unit, but you will be able to run it off of solar/batteries.

The solar breeze unit does not list it's capacity in btu but uses 650 watts.
There are inverter mini-spits that use that power or less and put out real 5000 btu and are not any more expensive.

So he referenced the 2.0 version in the article but all the testing and reviews appeared to be of the 1.0 model which is about half the BTU's. Not to say it's not garbage too but it does seem as though there's been quite a bit of improvement.

Didn't see where they listed it at 650 watts. I did see it listed at 200-300 depending on environmental conditions.

Swamp coolers for low humidity times work well.

Look at some of the people fulltiming in vans and stuff for solar and window ac unit running on batteries.  Generally they get it running in the evening to cool things off for sleeping and shut it down.

There is a monster thread on the 2 cycle tiny 900 watt generator harbor freight or someone had.  Ways to make it run better, just a better spark plug helps.  People got that thing to run a window ac unit.  I have a 1k watt honda generator from before the days of invertor generators.  It sips the gas compared to the larger generators.  There are a lot of tricks to getting the thing running, lot of times you want to get the fan running before kicking in the compressor and some folks get into capacitors for handling the surge I think.  Been a while since I read up on it.

Was interesting watching people figure out what would and would not run on stuff.  Window ac with manual controls and being able to just run fan only worked best and we are talking 5k btu window units from what I recall.

Never messed with or read up on mini splits.  Used to be the generator was less than 100 bucks and walmart had cheap window unit for 100 bucks and then 20 bucks for spark plug and testing and playing with generator would have you in good shape.

Keep an eye out over the next month at the hug box stores and you can probably score a window unit on clearance.  I got mine from Target right before Irma came through for 50 or 70% off, don't remember which.  Damn glad we had it for the 2 days without power

Just ran across Hotspot Energy. They have some very interesting long term solutions. Pricey but their efficiency seems to be on point.

Engineer775 Solar AC

Man that looks perfect! Except OOS until October :-/
The world will be over by then!

I went for about a month without AC in the humid southeast summer and will never do that again if I can help it.  It runs basically constantly in my house...

A while back I did some back of the envelope calculations as to how much it would cost to put together an off the grid solar and battery system to run a modest sized window AC with the guidelines being: I can run it anytime I want, for up to 24 hours at a stretch if I had to.

It was humbling... and I stuck to a generator.

I did the same type of evaluation when I was working on my teardrop trailer.   I wanted to be able to run an A/C for a couple of hours but the battery array and solar power panels would have cost more and weighed more than the whole entire rest of the trailer.   I ended up with a Honda EU2000I and although it isn't "stealth" it works pretty darn well.  

Just spent six days here in Louisiana without AC due to Hurricane Laura. Had portable generator power but no AC.
I would suggest a generator with a 5-8000 BTU window unit.

That would have been rough.    I wouldn't have gotten any real sleep at all if I couldn't get out of the heat.   But you have power and A/C back now?  

I run a 5000 btu ac on a Sportsman 900 watt generator.  I have 630 watts of solar with a LOT of shade, but I can still run the ac off batteries for about 3-4 hours without it touching my batteries.  When the sun starts getting low, I switch to the generator as needed.

We have a 22Kw whole house standby generator (fuel is nat. gas) and it runs everything in our home including our 3 ton central a/c.  We might be using it real soon re: Hurricane Sally.