electric ac and ps questions

[orange4boy]

The best place to find kits is with EV conversion services. You will need deep cycle batteries to run it. Running it using your alternator is not the way to go as the efficiency losses are much greater and the load on it will be huge.

Electric AC will use a lot of power. Rough guess(and this is probably very conservative): 750 watts. That's 53 amps.

Standard AC: Engine HP to belt (friction) to AC.
Alternator Run AC: Engine Hp to belt to alternator(45-50%Efficient) to electric motor (60-80%efficient) to AC.

If this is for fuel efficiency leave your A/C stock and do all the Ecomods you can and learn how to hypermile.

You will be far better off.

[metalshark]

its not for economy I kinda actually don't have a/c.

[blueflame]

Instead of cooling the whole car, have a fan mounted on the steering wheel with a built in cooler coil blowing cooled air across your forearms, shoulders, neck and face. Passengers will have to cook and probably hate you.

[blueflame]

White and silver colored cars stay cooler than dark painted cars.

Designing a vehicle cab for coolness wouldnt be hard. Vents and underfloor cool intake, less glass, screening, color.

Maybe no a/c or a/c for only 10% of the time, with a passive thermal redesign of the cab.

Maybe that block of ice, sealed in an insulated box with fans could last 24 hours?

[lovemysan]

I found a system that will draw only 40amps at 12volt, but the unit was $2500. To drive the system electrically using a 12v source will require a physically large motor. 5-6"x 10-14" long. I've seen them in varying sizes. By far the best electric ac systems are the high voltage systems used in modern hybrids. Solectria Force made nice conversions for there cars. The motors were small 144v that were setup to underdrive the stock compressor. I found in my research that electric ac wasn't viable for me. It was to costly and I lacked the knowledge to alter my stock refrigerate system. Its not as simple as driving the compressor off of a 12v electric motor. I also have NO room under the hood.

[gto78]

I work on aircraft and some of them use electric ac. The newest option I've seen is a high voltage unit which runs at 70 volts. It's powered by a second alternator which looks identical to a standard alternator. High voltage obviously uses less current to get the same wattage, in addition the wiring doesn't have to be as big or heavy. The old style electric a/c units use a ginormous amount of power/current. they're also very heavy and waste a lot of space. In my own opinion there's no gain in power or economy by switching to electric, it's not that much more efficient. The benefit for an aircraft customer is they can have the airport services crew plug their airplane into ground power and by the time the customer gets to the airport to fly, it will be cooled off. Also to upgrade a vehicle which doesn't already have a/c, sometimes it's easier when the compressor, condensor, and blower fan are all located together.