Solar Assisted Split Heating and Cooling Systems

Solar power was a novelty when it first made an appearence back in Bell Laboratories in 1954. While various forms of solar energy have been used for centuries, if not millennia, this was the first occurance in the United States where a solar cell actually converted enough of the suns output into electricity to be used to power appliances. Since the dawn of that marvelous invention, tremendous progress in effeciency, reliability, and overall performance has been made. Now, all of those years of work are paying off as we tackle one of our biggest energy monsters - heating and cooling.

As of today's date, no system can run on 100% solar - environmental factors and energy demands are just too much for that at this point. There are some systems that claim to be 100% solar and 'off grid', but if you research into them you will quickly find they require large numbers of golf cart (6v) or car (12v deep cycle) batteries in battery 'banks' to meet consumption demands - and then, there is still a limited number of hours you can run them per day!

Even a 30% reduction in fosil fuel consumption is remarkable and offers great financial savings. While typical minisplit heat pump systems run in the efficiency range of 18-20 SEER, with the solar assisted systems utilizing either 4 or 5 solar cells you can reach up to a 32 SEER rating!