Looking forward to hearing about this swap as I'm investigating this change as well, mostly because the Dometic that came with my Ember is obnoxiously loud.
I have heard good reports about the Furrion Chill Cube.
I am also interested in more reviews of the Turbro Greenland Inverter RV Air Conditioner w/heat Pump, and how that compares with the Furrion.
Do other major RV air conditioner manufacturers (such as Coleman/AirXcel, Dometic/Penguin) have any new inverter-based RV AC/heat pumps close to public release?
So far the only thing stopping me from doing this upgrade is that they do not currently offer a ducted model. Gree makes a 15K heat pump that runs on less than 11 amps, has built in softstart tech and is available in both Ducted and non-ducted versions
We have a Host Yukon truck camper with 950 watts of solar, 736 AH of lithium battery & a 3K watt inverter. We occasionally run our Houghton Belaire A3400 (13.5K) air conditioner on battery power for 2-3 hours on a really hot day while boondocking. I have run it as long as 5 hours. I also have a 50 amp DC to DC charger. Because we travel most days, just a few hours of travel completely recharges our battery bank. If we have run the A/C for a few hours the day before, it might take 2-3 days of moderate travel to completely recharge the battery bank. But, overall, with our setup, we never have to worry about running out of electricity. Trying to manage a marginal system can be stressful, so it's always better to build a system with more capacity than you think you'll need. We're now on our way to Alaska for the summer & rarely stay in campgrounds. Our set up gives us the ability to be completely flexible in our travels & make decisions on the spur of the moment.
We installed two of these and are very pleased. Power usage is half of old units when compressor is running and about three amps for the rest of the time. They run continually.
Mike, I just had ABC Upfitters install a system (460 A/hr battery, added 800 W of panels to my Brinkley's 740 W), 3500 W Combimaster inverter, DC-to-DC charger) a couple of weeks ago. My Brinkley has the Chill Cube in the living room/kitchen area and a "regular" air conditioner/heat pump in the bedroom. I ran the regular A/C on heat pump mode for 8 hours on a sunny day in Michigan. Started at 100%, ended at 84%. The panels were pumping a lot into the battery. If/when (!) it gets warm here in Michigan, I'll try again just using the Chill Cube. Since it draws about half as much as the other A/C, I'm sure I'll get a lengthy run time.
This is a commonly asked question in the iRV2 forums. You can run air conditioners "on solar" but not for long plus it's not cost-effective or practical. Actually, you're pulling power out of your batteries; solar was only partially recharging them in place of plugging in or using a generator. With a dozen solar panels, you might get 1000 watts for a few hours, but that's not enough power. Generally, one AC is insufficient except for milder days and cooler nights. The same sun that is powering your solar panels is also heating up your coach! Running 2 ACs with a residential fridge can easily exceed a 3000 watt inverter's limits. As I pull our coach back into its garage, I can turn off the generator and both ACs will still run but not for long because the inverter will eventually trip off. Lippert's Furrion Chill Cube is 20% more efficient and that might be a game-changer but it's too soon to tell. The 1800 BTU unit uses 1460 watts and that would require 155 amps from your batteries going to your inverter at 100% efficiency (which your inverter is not). You might be able to run one of them for a few hours and then you'd be out of power. Using lead-acid/AGM batteries for this would be a non-starter since they can only be safely discharged to 50%. For the ability to brag that you can run your ACs on battery power for a few hours, you would need to spend over $20K on upgrades that you would not get back on trade-in. Yes, it's possible, just pointless.
My 400 Ah Mastervolt Lithium battery with a 3,000-watt inverter will run my Coleman 13.5kBTU compressor for around 4 hours at 80 degrees F ambient air temp. In the sun with my 600 watts of solar panels it will get over 5 hours of running time.
Yes, this is expensive to do, but for boondocking without a generator it’s possible to get at least 2 to 3 hours of Air Conditioning at night with 1,000 watts of solar and 400 Ah of battery. Interestingly, the Chill Cube has a variable BTU setting so you can reduce it from 18,000 BTU to 9,000 BTU and something even lower.
Combine this variable compressor speed Air Conditioning technology with a Watt Fuel Cell and you could probably boondock for a week or more with the air conditioner running 12 hours a day on a pair of 20 lb propane tanks WITHOUT a generator.
Looking forward to hearing about this swap as I'm investigating this change as well, mostly because the Dometic that came with my Ember is obnoxiously loud.
I have heard good reports about the Furrion Chill Cube.
I am also interested in more reviews of the Turbro Greenland Inverter RV Air Conditioner w/heat Pump, and how that compares with the Furrion.
Do other major RV air conditioner manufacturers (such as Coleman/AirXcel, Dometic/Penguin) have any new inverter-based RV AC/heat pumps close to public release?
So far the only thing stopping me from doing this upgrade is that they do not currently offer a ducted model. Gree makes a 15K heat pump that runs on less than 11 amps, has built in softstart tech and is available in both Ducted and non-ducted versions
We have a Host Yukon truck camper with 950 watts of solar, 736 AH of lithium battery & a 3K watt inverter. We occasionally run our Houghton Belaire A3400 (13.5K) air conditioner on battery power for 2-3 hours on a really hot day while boondocking. I have run it as long as 5 hours. I also have a 50 amp DC to DC charger. Because we travel most days, just a few hours of travel completely recharges our battery bank. If we have run the A/C for a few hours the day before, it might take 2-3 days of moderate travel to completely recharge the battery bank. But, overall, with our setup, we never have to worry about running out of electricity. Trying to manage a marginal system can be stressful, so it's always better to build a system with more capacity than you think you'll need. We're now on our way to Alaska for the summer & rarely stay in campgrounds. Our set up gives us the ability to be completely flexible in our travels & make decisions on the spur of the moment.
We installed two of these and are very pleased. Power usage is half of old units when compressor is running and about three amps for the rest of the time. They run continually.
Mike, I just had ABC Upfitters install a system (460 A/hr battery, added 800 W of panels to my Brinkley's 740 W), 3500 W Combimaster inverter, DC-to-DC charger) a couple of weeks ago. My Brinkley has the Chill Cube in the living room/kitchen area and a "regular" air conditioner/heat pump in the bedroom. I ran the regular A/C on heat pump mode for 8 hours on a sunny day in Michigan. Started at 100%, ended at 84%. The panels were pumping a lot into the battery. If/when (!) it gets warm here in Michigan, I'll try again just using the Chill Cube. Since it draws about half as much as the other A/C, I'm sure I'll get a lengthy run time.
Good data. Thanks…
This is a commonly asked question in the iRV2 forums. You can run air conditioners "on solar" but not for long plus it's not cost-effective or practical. Actually, you're pulling power out of your batteries; solar was only partially recharging them in place of plugging in or using a generator. With a dozen solar panels, you might get 1000 watts for a few hours, but that's not enough power. Generally, one AC is insufficient except for milder days and cooler nights. The same sun that is powering your solar panels is also heating up your coach! Running 2 ACs with a residential fridge can easily exceed a 3000 watt inverter's limits. As I pull our coach back into its garage, I can turn off the generator and both ACs will still run but not for long because the inverter will eventually trip off. Lippert's Furrion Chill Cube is 20% more efficient and that might be a game-changer but it's too soon to tell. The 1800 BTU unit uses 1460 watts and that would require 155 amps from your batteries going to your inverter at 100% efficiency (which your inverter is not). You might be able to run one of them for a few hours and then you'd be out of power. Using lead-acid/AGM batteries for this would be a non-starter since they can only be safely discharged to 50%. For the ability to brag that you can run your ACs on battery power for a few hours, you would need to spend over $20K on upgrades that you would not get back on trade-in. Yes, it's possible, just pointless.
My 400 Ah Mastervolt Lithium battery with a 3,000-watt inverter will run my Coleman 13.5kBTU compressor for around 4 hours at 80 degrees F ambient air temp. In the sun with my 600 watts of solar panels it will get over 5 hours of running time.
Yes, this is expensive to do, but for boondocking without a generator it’s possible to get at least 2 to 3 hours of Air Conditioning at night with 1,000 watts of solar and 400 Ah of battery. Interestingly, the Chill Cube has a variable BTU setting so you can reduce it from 18,000 BTU to 9,000 BTU and something even lower.
Combine this variable compressor speed Air Conditioning technology with a Watt Fuel Cell and you could probably boondock for a week or more with the air conditioner running 12 hours a day on a pair of 20 lb propane tanks WITHOUT a generator.
Will be very interested in the results of your experiment with the Chill Cubes.