westend wrote:
I believe your AH estimate for a fridge is on the high end. If you go with the Danfoss 12v compressor unit, you should see about 20-40 AH/day, depending on use and ambient. I use a small dorm fridge and it uses 80w at a 1/5 duty cycle. The newer Samsung 10 cu. ft. models use just a bit more.
To each, his own, on the module choice. I don't see that the Sanyo HIT modules are that much more efficient to harvest 20% more power. I chose to buy a discontinued 235 watt USA made panel for about a third the price of the Sanyo. I'm about 99% sure any warranty is out the window but the Mfg. is still building modules. If warranty is important, then a Sanyo or Sharp module makes sense.
Good luck with your solar installation!
Edit: Yup, 900AH for those Trojans, I should have caught that. Still, a heck of a lot of capacity.
The fridge in reference is a 20cuft residential one. This is based on the yellow sticker that all fridges come with. But I agree that if I choose a Danfross compressor based one, it will consume maximum half this, if not less.
As for the Sanyo panel choice - one of the bigger reason for this choice is its use of amorphous cells which are better under overcast days. I didn't want to buy 100% amorphous panels because they are quite a bit less efficient under good lighting conditions. Hence initially, I thought about mixing mono-crystal panels and amorphous panels but apparently, that's not a good idea unless I go with multi-controller route which I don't want to consider. At least in theory, the Sanyo panels with both types of cells sound pretty good. having said that, I don't have a proof that these panels work significantly better than 100% mono-crystal panels under shades. Need to do more research. If it only generates 5% more power under shades as well, then I would not go with this panel.
