Residential Fridges
So we’ve been looking to upgrade to a newer travel trailer and have seen a few models we like, one in particular has a residential fridge. Now we don’t travel full time but we do make some two week tr...
Forum Discussion
pianotuna wrote:
No,
A good solar installation would handle camping in the woods. For example the 256 watts of panels I have do 6 amps in leafy shade, and 3 amps in heavy rain, at solar noon.
Camping in the winter--I get 17 amp-hours of charging on Dec 21 (shortest day of the year)JimK-NY wrote:pianotuna wrote:
A good solar installation would run the fridge for free forever.
By good solar installation, you mean several panels, not camping in the woods, not camping in the fall or winter when the sun is low in the horizon, and avoiding areas and times of the year with substantial cloud cover and of course spending on a substantial battery bank.
Your math and your logic totally elude me. The refrig in question has a 1/3 duty cycle and pulls 35 amps. That is 280 AH/day. So that 3-6 amps for say 10 hours in "leafy" shade or on a cloudy day does not come close and will only run the refrig for about 4 hours out of 24. My solar panels total 270 watts. In the winter, in full sun with no shade or clouds, I get about 50 AH/day. Again that is only about 4 hours of 1/3 run cycle operation. Throw in some clouds or shade and the solar is about worthless.
No, 200 some watts of solar is not close. You would probably need at least 1000 watts to come close to covering the power consumption most of the time, most of the year. A residential refrigerator pretty much restricts the use to having hook ups virtually all the time. Either that or a massive solar system and bank of batteries.
