who dry camps with residential fridge?

Shhot I paid two grand each for Danfoss powered 18 CF units 25 years ago. They weigh close to 290 lbs each. They have near bulletproof oil bath bearing brushless 28 vdc motors. The freezer, kept at -5F uses a max of 48 amp hours at an ambient temp close to 95F. I insisted on an expensive thermostat with adjustable Delta T. So min/max is four degrees. All it was a lot of money. A LOT of money. Both units have enhanced baffled convection cooling. Eight and a half feet worth. Silicone (medical) door seals. Velcro travel latches.

Upright DC compressor fridges, except for Sun Frost, are under 10 cu.ft, need additional insulation, and very, very expensive. 14 cu.ft Sun Frost is a wide behemoth and is the most expensive of them all. At $2,800 it could be THE most expensive fridge ever, across all types and classes.

And all you get out of this is 10-12 AH daily energy savings. This is one 50W solar panel.

I planned my solar with 7 cu.ft DC fridge in mind, but will probably adjust my energy sources and get 9 cu.ft residential when the time comes. Hopefully by that time there will be many 120V variable speed inverter fridges to choose from. There are some already, but efficiency numbers are not clear yet.

There are also fairly large 12 VDC compressor fridges that draw less than 7 amps. No inverter losses.

Valkyriebush wrote:
My friend recently took a few days away from his 2016 Bounder with a residential fridge and ask me to monitor the voltage discharged on his batteries while gone. 18-24 hrs max without having to start the generator. For this reason Ive decided to repair my norcold when that day comes. Is that the norm?

That Depends
On size of the battery bank and any other parasitic loads
Two GC will work for travel or over night
But four or more large AGMs will be a lot better
And allow for more flexible use

Valkyriebush wrote:
My friend recently took a few days away from his 2016 Bounder with a residential fridge and ask me to monitor the voltage discharged on his batteries while gone. 18-24 hrs max without having to start the generator. For this reason Ive decided to repair my norcold when that day comes. Is that the norm?

Yes, 18-24 hours.
2*6V batteries have mere 112 AH of usable charge.
Residential fridge with inverter needs 70-110 AH per 24 hours depending on model and weather.

Keep in mind that running generator every other day for a few hours won't bring the batteries back to Full.

Quicksilver has 18 cubic foot individual refrigerator and freezers - freon. But my situation is special circumstance. They are 24 volt units with five inches of closed cell insulation operating off 4 L16 batteries. Any freon system has to be very heavily insulated to make it into a rational choice.

Hi,

Add 600 watts of solar, a 400 amp-hour battery bank and the residential fridge will run forever.

Valkyriebush wrote:
My friend recently took a few days away from his 2016 Bounder with a residential fridge and ask me to monitor the voltage discharged on his batteries while gone. 18-24 hrs max without having to start the generator. For this reason Ive decided to repair my norcold when that day comes. Is that the norm?

I just happen to be trying to do the same thing right now. You should be ok with 1200 inverter but some models may be pushing it. It's difficult to find technical info onn friges but some do have high defrost loads. I'm running a xantrex 2000 prowatt. There are not many choices of refrigerators available in my area so I bought a Magic chef/vassani from Home Depot and just returned it this morning. It seemed to work ok at first but ended up never shutting off and kept pulling 8 amps all the time. It had a locked rotor rating of 10 amps which is 100 amps DC or 1200 watts. In the thread that I started a few days ago a couple people recommended the Whirlpool WRT111SFDB. It's 1/2 inch too wide and would stick out a little too far in our case. I also found a Whirlpool FFTR1022QB which is 24 in wide and 60 tall.

According to the energy guides these units will use about 75 to 100 ah per day. People suggest planning on 100 ah a day in real world use.

What frig models have you been looking at?

My friend recently took a few days away from his 2016 Bounder with a residential fridge and ask me to monitor the voltage discharged on his batteries while gone. 18-24 hrs max without having to start the generator. For this reason Ive decided to repair my norcold when that day comes. Is that the norm?

The only kind Wind Machine I would even think about being mounted on top of a RV would be the Vertical Axis Wind Turbine (VAWT)... I read about one that looked like the heat turbo fans on house roofs made for RV's'

Looked something like this unit...


Being a vertical type you would have the generator down inside the RV somewhere driven by a long shaft... They make magnetic type bearings that have almost zero resistance for turning shafts. You can turn a shaft using a couple of these type bearings with your hand and it will turn for days haha...

The BLADE TYPE turbines make alot of noise...

These all have to be in zone where you have a sustained 5-7MPH wind going all the time. Great for Texas-Oklahoma Area and around the mountains or sea shores... The Vertical Axes type mounted on top of the RV going 60MPH would be great too...

Roy Ken