Off grid heating/ac minisplit efficiency

Where is this cabin located? What's the typical humidity there?

Hi, Have you looked at the passive stuff, like white or reflective roofing, low E glass, and good shading to keep summer sun out?

Yours, Larry

Mini splits don't have the inrush of typical AC unit as all the bits are inverter controlled. They do ramp up to near full power when doing periodic oil recovery but as long as you size for max power, you should be fine.

One thing to watch in off grid is power quality especially in remote areas with lighting. Make sure you have surge protection on your main panel and the AC itself.

For off grid, you want heat that is guaranteed to work 100%. Generators have a nasty habit of not starting when you are not there, so can't be relied on for power for heat (your boiler and pumps need surprising amounts of power once you calculate it). Best to install a pilot operated heat source such as a through the wall vented heater that can keep your place from freezing even with power out.

Anything with electronics inside is going to run on DC, why would it care about frequency or anything else?

That said I'm still waiting to hear where they are, maybe a swamp cooler will work.

The PCs I build certainly don't seem to.

Why would something that's runs 100% on DC need anything special as far as the AC side?

LEDs I could see because I do not believe they have actual power supplies in them like anything computerized would.

I don't know .

@mattmia2 have you seen SMPS have issues with AC power quality? If so, why?

The power requirement has to do with the power supply in the widget, whatever that is. If that power supply can cope with off-frequency components — spikes or harmonics — then no problem, and some types of power supplies can. Oddly enough what little observation I've done suggests that either the power supply is actually charging a battery which in turn runs the item — such as a laptop computer or (shudder) a Nest, for example — or inherently doesn't care, such as LED lights, or is in high end enough equipment to afford very high frequency switching power supplies (a lot of current high end high fidelity things) or supplies with hefty capacitors and chokes. Otherwise the high frequency grundge on the input power gets through to the computer and confuses it…

Once in a while really grundgy power can have enough high frequency harmonics to overheat a transformer — but that seems to be rare.

No SMPS runs it's transformer at 60hz. It rectifies it and runs it through a high frequency oscillator. That's kinda my point.

And any modern computer or even cell phone charger is usually a SMPS not a linear supply.

But maybe there's something I'm missing. It's quite possible, that's why I'm asking. So far personally I've never experienced this with any of my equipment.

I believe you.

My question is why.

Sigh.