Gas or Electric (residential) Refrigerator?

timmac wrote:
But why use up the solar/batt power for the fridg, the solar should be for other issues and not drained daily by the fridg.

Dry camping works best with a 2 way or 3 way fridg.

Technically, there is nothing wrong with solar running res fridge. But, solar array has to be pretty big to do this without worrying that it might not make it on some days. Also, big enough battery bank to handle it for several dark days in row. I gave some numbers in earlier post and don't want to repeat.

In a daytime it doesn't have to come from the battery. With propane fridge I routinely have an excess of solar energy in daytime, it simply goes wasted, controller is sleeping or floating after 12 pm. I've built my solar with a 6 cu.ft 12VDC compressor fridge in mind (not 120V compressor), and it would've probably worked in summer. But I don't find my winter solar harvest to be always sufficient for a compressor even that small and that efficient - flat 500W is "almost enough" but not quite, not every day. Tilted array of this size would probably work, but I'm too lazy for roof-climbing that tilting implies. So I've come to the same conclusion as many others here - propane fridge is a reasonable alternative.

I would've gladly dumped my 2-way propane fridge in favor of a residential if it were on grid. Daily "couple of hours" of genny run for residential fridge (in addition to another 2 hours in the evening for all other loads) wouldn't work for me. Prefer making and eating my breakfast while listening to the sound of waves on a nearby beach and early birds in the trees. Maybe later, when age-related hearing loss will progress some more. Besides, I don't like it when machinery suddenly refuses to run. My truck does this sometimes (i.e. refusing to run), so I have a feeling that a genny could do this too, leaving me with un-usable fridge for weeks.