The 2500 btu Climateright AC is new. It doesn’t start shipping until August, so there’s some early adopter risk at this point, but their website has a video from the head of Little Guy campers (the largest maker of teardrop campers), so small campers are part of their target market. They also expect to sell ACs to dog lovers for dog houses, but that almost sounds like a joke to me. Both the size and the fact that it’s ducted and not a “window unit” appeal to me. Window air conditioners can be very loud.
5000 btu/hr is 1465 watts (by definition). Your friend assumes (correctly) that the AC doesn’t run continuously, so his 500 watts is an average.
2500 btu/hr is 733 watts, so 480 watts is also an average. The manufacturer presumably assumes use over 24 hours. At night, the AC would run much less, so an average of 250 watts during the night seems reasonable, but over eight hours, even 250 watts is 2 kilowatt hours, and I expect to have a one kilowatt hour battery. I’ll spend the extra bucks for a lithium battery (around a thousand of them), but even with these batteries, the weight of 2 kw-hrs is around 60 lbs. With lead acid batteries, the weight is hundreds of lbs.
A second battery also requires another 200 watts of solar panels, which is getting large. A 200 watt solar panel only generates about one kw-hr/day. I am seriously considering an AC, but it’s not at the top of my wish list. I want to tour the country with the camper and to work from it frequently during the day, but I’ll avoid hot weather. To sit in it during the day in Georgia in July, AC is an absolute necessity.
