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Since we have a digital energy meter on the side of our home (due to solar installation) I can tell exactly how much energy we are using at any moment. During the recent heat wave, a friend of mine suggested that if necessary I run our air conditioner in the early afternoon - during the peak generation time for our solar system - so that the air conditioner would be running guilt-free from the Sun’s energy. I thought “Hey, that’s a good idea.” That made me curious about how much electricity our central AC actually uses and whether our solar system could handle it along with the rest of load from our home. So, first I checked our PG&E meter without the AC on and it showed that we were producing 2300 watts and using about 1000 of it. Then I had my wife turn on the AC and checked again. Holy Cow! Our total energy use had jumped to 5600 watts! Just one of our two central air units was sucking about 4600 watts - the equivalent of having 46 100 watt light bulbs on. At that moment we’d need 36 solar panels just to handle one of our two central air units. To put it mildly I was blown away. I never realized what a drain air conditioning is.