Solar with a residental fridge

Groover wrote:
My inverter shows 20A draw when the fridge is running, most of the time. When in defrost or the ice maker is dumping it can spike quite a bit. But then the fridge doesn't run all of the time either. My Thor coach came with 100amp/hr, batteries, I suspect that yours did too. The batteries can generally get me through a good nights sleep and maybe a little more. I recently upgraded to 120amp/hr and they seem to be doing a little better but I don't think that any lead acid battery is going to give you the rated power without damaging it. If you have incandescent bulbs you need to upgrade them to LED. I have not put in any solar panels but I am thinking about shooting for at least 300 watts if I do. I have been looking at Lithium Iron batteries but just can't convince myself to drop that much money yet.

Good to know! Thanks. I'm headed over to my RV here in a few minutes, I'll double check the ratings on the batteries. My coach is all LEDs so I'm a step ahead there. I'm going to run these batteries until they die then look at something else. By then I'll have a good idea of what type of camping I end up doing more of. If I'm finding myself plugged in 90% of the time, I'll probably stick with cheaper batteries, but if I'm boondocking more (which I hope is the case), it's worth it to spend the cash on the longest lasting/most powerful I can get.

Brian