Hi,

I live in a hot and humid tropical country, Belize, where air conditioning is very costly. I am trying to find out the state of the art of solar powered air conditioners and have
been for years with little success.

dwak

state of the art technology on the market for air-conditioning is to reduce the load required to reach an indoor comfort zone. This means super insulating the dwelling using as energy efficient doors and windows that money can buy - all to reduce the air- conditioning tonnage requirement needed to deliver the wanted temps. THis not only means ICF for your walls but also a superinsulated roof structure, whether it be concrete with EPS below it or regular stick framing or trussing with sprayed-in polyurethane. In Belize you are in a hurricane zone. A concrete roof is what I would choose if money is no object. Of course, similar tough roof structures can be build/engineered with out of stick frame/trusses with appropriate metal connectors with the concrete of the ICF walls.

Once you have decreased the load requirement you can look into the solar powered air-conditioning application without using insurmountable Kwh for running the A/C and paying out of the ying-yang for it.

I agree whole heartedly but I have need for a 5 ton solar powered unit to be used as a demo and had one lined up 2 years ago but have lost the contact. I've got the sinking feeling the company fizzled.

Thanks,
dwak

Dwak'
Google
solar vapor absorption
There have been some projects using solar as the heat source, but it takes a lot of space.

Hi Dwak, I was just in Belize City 2 weeks ago on a cruise. What part of Belize are you living in? Having been reading a bit about Belize for tax benefits ;)

Zircote
Thanks. I'll google it. (zircote as in wood?)

Slezen
Both Belize City and Punta Gorda, Toledo District.
Tax haven, maybe. A moot point with me though.

dwak

Beautiful stuff.

Someone asked me about solar AC and my first impression was "not practical".  But then they asked about just for sleeping.

This sounds much more practical.  You could have a windowless room, perhaps not much bigger than a bed.  Super insulate it and put in the smallest most efficient air conditioner possible.  About like a walk-in freezer.

Sounds very logical to me. It's 117 degree's F with humidity and I'm living in a uninsulated block and concrete new apartment building built all wrong for the location. Totally airless too. I'm learning all the not to do's very fast.

dwak

For something smaller like that I'd recommend Daiken.  They're regarded for making the quietest home air conditioners.  Most of the other brands I've heard aren't anything you could sleep through in the same room.

Over on Wind & Sun there is a thread about running AC on solar PV system.  The units mentioned are the sanyo mini split systems with a high seer, 16+. They can be run as low as 300w getting about .3 tons of cooling up to 2 ton running about 2000w.

I'm not sure if this product will work in such a humid climate but it might be worth a try.  There is a company called Coolerado and if you type in coolerado or coolerado.com it will come up on the net.  They are touting energy savings of up to 90%!  Check them out.

Hi Dwak,
I think you have to consider the power cost from the solar.
before i design some solar system for my clients, but the cost is high,
as we known, the 1p air condition will use about 1000w/h.
If you use the solar to support it, the cost will be higher.
King regards!

Gary liu [email protected]

In any water-evaporative cooling scheme the outdoor air dewpoint forms a lower-limit for output air (which isn't necessarily bad), but as-such will barely touch latent loads (indoor air humidity) at all.  In most of the humid/semi-humid areas of the US the latent load is 2-10x the sensible load- you NEED to be able to pring the conditioned air below the indoor air's dew point temp to wring any humidity out of it.  (The indoor air dew point it typically higher, since the relative humidity indoors is raised by breathing/cooking/showering etc.)

But for putting the chill on sensible loads the Coolerado swamp-cooler-with-an-isolating-heat-exchanger approach should work OK, without the  old-skool swamp-cooler clammy feel.  (Great for Yuma, not so much for Houston.)