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[Chance]

Originally Posted by howzball

Same here, that's why we put solar on our main house. We certainly never expect that to pay for itself but, $20-$30 electric bills in the heat of a Texas summer aren't a bad thing.

Someone on here needs to come up with a roofing material for RVs that's nothing more than the flexible solar panel material. Kill two birds...
That And, figure out a way to only use energy efficient mini split DC powered A/Cs instead of those noisy rooftop units.
Surely in all these years RV A/Cs have had some sort of technological advancements? They seem to be stuck in the dinosaur days.

Modern RV air conditioners are available with much higher energy efficiency ratings than those from years ago. They are not stuck in past.

The challenges roof-top RV A/Cs face compared to others include size, weight, and cost. To improve efficiency like mini-splits requires larger heat exchangers that add significant size and weight. Those mini-split are huge and heavy for their capacity compared to RV units. For RVs, buyers want sleek low-profile units that don’t stick 2 feet in the air above the roof.

Additionally, newer A/Cs use inverters or DC power to slow compressor and fans down as load on A/C decreases. This doesn’t increase EER in itself, but can increase the SEER significantly. For an RV it wouldn’t help much in middle of hot day, but it would help a lot to cool at night. We are now seeing inverter technology applied to small window air conditioners, and could easily be applied to RV air conditioners. The problem is that RVs generally don’t get used enough for energy efficiency to matter as much as residential applications if one expects a payback. It’s only now that there is interest in powering RV air conditioners from batteries that A/C manufacturers are getting serious about offering higher-cost options that can reduce energy requirements.