Adding AC in a Campervan is it worth it?

You picture sitting in your van during those hot days in a cool 70 degree cabin all by just bolting on some AC on the roof of your van right? We can just plug it in and add a battery. Well its a bit more complicated than that. For the most part installing the AC itself on the roof of your van isn't much more difficult than adding a fan (you should have one of those always). Mounting area has to be reinforced, but for the most parts certain brands use a standard 14 x 14" hole...

EXPECTATIONS

However the simple part stops there. Powering it and having realistic expectations of performance generally fall way short of what one might expect. What is the single most expensive electrical item to run in your home? Yep its the AC! It can easily double or even triple your electrical bill! It uses that much power. In a van however unlike your home you have limited power supply, the AC unit has significantly less power than your engine AC, and reality is you likely greatly underestimate what it will actually do and how much power you will really need.

GREATLY UNDERESTIMATING POWER REQUIREMENTS, A case study

Even the most efficient AC units in the market can blow through 400ah well under 8 hours in regular operating mode, and in ECO mode still pull that much power in the same time period. 400ah is a lot of power. More importantly charging that back up can't be done in a few hours generally speaking unless you are connected to shore power or running off a separate alternator with significant DC to DC charging converter. (ie...this is a ton of $$) It can take many days to charge that much power back through solar unless you have 800w of solar on your roof. This is unlikely as if you have an AC and a Fan...you are lucky to fit 200-300 watts max on your roof in a regular length van. (Sprinter 144" Transit 148") In one of our demo units with ~860 ah of power, using an ultra efficient 48v top-of-the-line roof AC unit we blew through 40% of the power running it on a 90 degree day in less than 8 hours on regular mode! Wow. Yeh, the van was very cool as we set the thermostat below 70 degrees, just to mimic what most people would "really" do in their vans. The van was very insulated. We did not use insulated window covers. This was a real live what I would call "reality" test. To charge this much power back up just using 200w of solar could take over a week...so that it not going to happen, and driving the van with the current DC to DC charger would take a full day of driving. Shore power however at 15 amps...only took a few hours. We could put this on eco mode, insulated the windows, turned the thermostat to 77 degrees, and I am sure we could reduce the power consumption a lot, but most customers really would not do this in real life. Influenencers online promoting a brand don't really test the AC this way...they are trying to sell you something. BOTTOM LINE - have realistic expectations, you will really need to conserve your power, you likely will have to accept a temp differential from outside temp (like 15-20 degree max), and you will get even with a very big system a night or two of cooling, but certainly not all day functionality unless you are plugged into shore power or have a massive amount of solar panels on your roof.

WHAT TO LOOK FOR IN AC UNIT

Power consumption, BTU ratings are everything, just like your home AC. Performace is key. Our demo van unit (Nomadic x3) is 48v putting out just under 15,000 BTU's...that is almost 2x the power of most AC units...and it still sucks a ton of power and works hard to cool down a 144" HR Sprinter. AC units can range from a few thousand to 5k just for the unit. You generally pay for what you get. If you are going to mount your AC above where you sleep...then you need to consider fan noise as well.

POWER

You will need a lot of power, minimum of 400ah of Lithium to be able to run it over night in ECO mode and still have some power left to run other things in your van. I would not recommend at all to have all electric powered appliances (cooking, hot water, heater) if you have AC. You will be dead in the water if you run out of power and its likely. If you cook your lithium you could go into SOC safety mode and this can be a challenge as you will not be able to charge your batteries unless you have a SOC override switch or a way to wake up the batteries. Larger systems in your van are very expensive and needed if you run AC. The portable power generators are NOT a good solution to run your AC on, they have very limited charging options and those are not good enough to recover from using most of the power unless you have shore power access.

IS IT A WORTH IT?

AC is great to help cool down and make sleeping expecially a lot more comfortable, just have realistic expectations. If you are 90+ temps, especially over 100 degrees you will need shore power for sure and expect a 10-15 degree temp differential to be realistic at best unless you are running multiple super high performance units, especially in a very large van.

COSTS

Expect to spend at least 15-20K at least in your power system and AC unit to properly power it. You can spend a lot less, but it will very likely not work well and you have very limited time to run it. Most of this cost is in the electrical system to support it. AC units for parts alone are generally 3-6k, power systems (Solar and show power) generally will be 10-16k or more.