[hypoxia]

There's no such thing as too much A/C tonnage in an aluminum breadbox sitting in the sun on a hot day. A major reason I have a Newell is the four 15K BTU heat pumps along with a generator big enough to run them. They can cool it enough to go into low fan speed which is much quieter.

I agree with the comment about needing a 120 VAC unit to use when 30 amp power is all there is. I end up with 30A quite a bit.

[Jack Houpe]

Jim I can get 220vac from an inverter with 120vac grid supplied. the inverter steps up the voltage. Wattage is wattage, current X voltage.

[Richard]

Jack doesn’t need my stamp of approval, but I will say that I have been thinking about this for a long time, and Jack has nailed it. All the angles are covered, and as Forest says, I am watching with eagle eyes. Jack is pioneering the way forward for the basement air coaches. Technology has moved a bit since the late nineties when the coaches were built and Jack is taking advantage of both the inverter driven AC units and the Lithium energy storage. I absolutely love this thread. The Growatt option to allow 30 amp 120
V plug in to run the 220V mini is the cherry on top. Bravo!!!!!!

The huge upside to this project is the noise control. Any of you who have been in an inverter based AC space know that except in the most extreme conditions, you can’t hear it run. I have been in a few Newells and let’s face it, basement air or roof air, it produces noise which interferes with TV watching. In my opinion the lowest noise AC units inside are the Dometic units from the early 90s. Those were the precursors to mini splits before inverter based motors came along.

[folivier]

Dang, makes me want to get another Newell. Well almost. Actually I'm interested in the latest generation of mini-splits with low ambient temperature heat pump feature for our cabin. Not unusual to be at 0º F overnight and occasionally colder. Right now I have baseboard electric heating and wood stove. Electric is expensive up there so we burn wood, lots of wood. But I'm thinking really hard about a mini split for basic heating.
Jack your plans look great, especially the Growatt inverters. So they actually take 120 vac in and can give you separate phases for 240 vac? Incredible!

[encantotom]

in the late 80's i was a product manager at intel on some of the first inverter control microprocessors for inverter aircons. we designed a custom chip to do the control of the motors and compressor. inverter aircons as we know them now were first done in 81 by toshiba. then a few years later the other japanese companies entered in. i went to japan frequently then. in japan, most lived in apartments and had very low power coming into each apartment. so anything that would draw high current was not feasible. plus the concept of only having aircon and heat in the main room was acceptable then. the split unit high efficient air cons were a perfect fit. plus, the japanese were totally accepting of new technologies and prided themselves for doing so. here in the usa, it took decades to get hvac installers off of the mercury switched round honeywell thermostats because they didnt understand anything else and end users were reluctant to accept the newer digital thermostats.

i remember that one of the times the exec from a japanese company was so excited to show off a new digital camcorder. it was using fuzzy logic to control it (you will have to look that up). they were going to introduce it in the usa (early 90s) as the fuzzy focus camcorder......they obviously didnt have an english speaker check to see if that was a good name.....ha

i spent 27 years at intel in various marketing, engineering and general management roles. i am glad i am retired and playing with newells now.....ha

tom

a funny story is that at

[Jack Houpe]

Good morning to all I hope I can live up to everything I've been preaching.   Yesterday was a good day I removed both Coleman units and must admit these things are heavy at least a couple hundred pounds each, we have forks attachment on our little tractor so it made it a little easier but to my surprise what I thought to be mounting screws for the units were not, these units where not mounted in any way the duct work was cobbled with bits and pieces of wood and insulation and a lot of duct tape and silicon. The input voltage on these two units is says on the plate is 120vac but they had 220vac going to them both, this means I would have never been cool or warm on a 30 amp service as you all have said. The aquahot heat exchanger was plumbed into the output duct of the system and the aquahot didn't work when I bought this thing but I got it working for awhile but smelled antifreeze when I turned on the heat pump fan, someone in the past forgot to tighten both clamps on the hoses so the antifreeze smell was coming from that, I'm blessed it didn't blow the end of the hose off and really make a mess.

Yes sir Forest you can get 240vac from 2 inverters that has only 120vac coming into them (refer to page 31 of the growatt manual I'm attaching), these new  inverters open a world of possibility's you can even make 3 phase 120vac with 3 units. Growatt means you can grow wattage as you go or need. If you have time to read the back of the manual it will explain how this all works. The solar system here at our house is a solar generator not grid tied but it has saved us some money, $345 so far since mid June, we installed twelve 440W panels on the top of our pergola in the courtyard and have 2 growatt systems suppling the refrigeration and 2 inverter 1 ton mini split units, one in our bedroom and the other in a guest bedroom. We started with one growatt and only built the system to run the refrigerator and freezer in our house in case we lost electricity and it worked so well and during the day light hours it ran everything off the sun so we did another growatt to supply power to the inverter mini split ac units.

Tom I had no idea inverter technology has been around that long!

[hypoxia]

Interesting to see the latest technology. I like how you mounted the panels on the pergola, I've thought about building one for solar. All of the roofers I know think it's funny when panels are mounted on the roof of a house.

[Richard]

Jack,

Both the SCS units and the Coleman units have two compressors. (Yeah, I know, there are a few one unit SCS units) Newell ran 220 to the units so each compressor would run off a different leg to balance the load. And it’s more clever than that. Comp 1 in Unit 1 ran off one leg, and comp 1 in unit 2 was wired to run off the other leg. Pretty simple strategy to balance the power load. Theoretically you could run one compressor in one unit off 30 amp service. If I tried to run 2 compressors it would trip the breaker or voltage protection system.

[Jack Houpe]

Jim the solar panels on the pergola was not my first idea, its so blame hot in our courtyard which is in the middle of our house in the summer I wanted to put some tinted polycarbonate panels up there to keep the sun off. The bid I got was $3300, my great niece is a sales person for ALTE.com and she sold me the panels for our airstream interstate at a good deal so I bought 12 solar panels to cover the pergola at $3600 which included shipping. Thus started the solar house project.

Richard each heat pump has 2 compressors? No wonder they are so heavy!

I don't want to get off subject to much here BUT there is a way to run these inverter mini splits off DC, my friends who live in the Bahamas have done it also they have three 400 watt panels in series tied into a 220vac 50 gallon hot water heater with NO inverter and the system works perfectly well unless you have no sun or a bunch of people spending the night and using up a 50 gallon hot water tank. These people live totally off the grid as electricity in the Bahamas is 48 cents a kilowatt hour (ours here is 14 cents) PLUS a fuel charge on top of that. The each have a back up diesel generator in case the sun doesn't shine to keep the lithium batteries charged up.

Looks like the fun begins tomorrow!

https://signaturesolar.com/eg4-hybrid-ac...ner-1-ton/

[Richard]

I am going to be REAL interested in how and where you run the line sets.