Why consider 12v fridge for boondocking?

StirCrazy wrote:

valhalla360 wrote:

Huntindog wrote:
I have what most would consider to be a healthy solar/battery system. But if I were to add a 12V fridge to the draw, I would come up short a lot.... And adding to what already have is not so easy. It would be quite expensive, and make my roof so full that I would not have room to do maintainence up there.
Saying the additonal cost would be minimal. just shows that you do not have a clue as to what is involved. Another controller, another wire run up to the roof more fuses, more panels, more batteries more cables etc. Using what I consider to be quality stuff (to match what I already have), would be at least 3k. Probably closer to 4K

If you really have a "healthy" solar/battery system, you shouldn't have any problem running a 12v fridge.

I'm borderline with a 50w panel and a couple of basic 12v batteries. I'm light on solar but not by a large amount. Adding a 100w panel and it would cover it easily. That's a pretty minimal solar/battery system.

So far I haven't bothered as we only boondock on occasion and running the generator for an hour or two for other purposes, typically gets the batteries back up where they belong.

If you are looking at $3-4k to add an extra 100w of panels and maybe 1 extra battery, you are getting taken by your installer.

you have a pretty high opinion of the 100 watt panels, that is about 30AH per perfect solar day or more realisticly 20 to 25 for most. on a warm day a 12V fridge is going to consume up to twice that, you get buy because you run a generator like you said. and if its costing 3 to 4K to get a single panel put on run away a 350 watt panel is only 200 bucks CDN so probably 160ish US?

Steve

On a perfect summer day, I would expect somewhere around 500-600w-hr out of a 100w panel. 400w-hr would be a more typical output.

My fridge uses about 50w when running and is typically on less than 50%, so 600w-hr will cover it.

But since I said "adding 100w" I would be at 150w with a typical daily output of around 600w-hr matching pretty well with consumption.

200amp-hr of batteries is around 1200w-hr with 600w-hr usable.

This is all a very small and basic system that can handle the fridge.

So if huntingdog's "healthy" system can't handle that, it doesn't sound very healthy.

PS: I wasn't the one suggesting thousands of dollars for a small to medium size solar system.