dry camping with residential refrigerators
I'm thinking of buying a new motorhome but we do a lot of dry camping and I can't seem to get a straight answer on battery life running these new residential refrigerators. Dealers, salespeople say i...
Forum Discussion
The OP indicates he is not familiar with high draws and high amp recharging while off grid, so he is jumping in off the deep end to get into this kind of game. It can be done of course, but "Be Prepared" as they say.
Stealing from my post in another thread:
"The fridge is a killer all by itself. Say 8 amps to run it (if a big fridge---my 3.2 cu ft electric one in the TC draws 4.5ish.) with 65% on time out of 24 hrs. That is 125 AH a day right there.
We use about 70AH a day in the 5er in summer, but that gets close to 200AH a day in winter with more lights-on time, more TV time, and way more furnace time, which can hit 100AH a day by itself if it is cold out (say 35-40F).
So in the 5er, I carry 6 batteries in the winter and four in the summer. Hate to think how it would work with a res fridge in the winter. 300AH a day? Out of the bank of 6 batts to 50% can do, so now to recharge every day back to 90%.
That is going to take some big amps of charging with a big generator and take at least 3 hours. (Takes me two hours and 15 minutes to restore 200 AH as a 50-90 using 150amp charger and a 3000w gen to run the chargers)
Don't forget when it is cold your bank's AH capacity is much reduced from as rated at 25C/77F, so you are already hurting for battery.
Stealing from my post in another thread:
"The fridge is a killer all by itself. Say 8 amps to run it (if a big fridge---my 3.2 cu ft electric one in the TC draws 4.5ish.) with 65% on time out of 24 hrs. That is 125 AH a day right there.
We use about 70AH a day in the 5er in summer, but that gets close to 200AH a day in winter with more lights-on time, more TV time, and way more furnace time, which can hit 100AH a day by itself if it is cold out (say 35-40F).
So in the 5er, I carry 6 batteries in the winter and four in the summer. Hate to think how it would work with a res fridge in the winter. 300AH a day? Out of the bank of 6 batts to 50% can do, so now to recharge every day back to 90%.
That is going to take some big amps of charging with a big generator and take at least 3 hours. (Takes me two hours and 15 minutes to restore 200 AH as a 50-90 using 150amp charger and a 3000w gen to run the chargers)
Don't forget when it is cold your bank's AH capacity is much reduced from as rated at 25C/77F, so you are already hurting for battery.
