12 volt fridges and boondocking?

[Fisherguy]

We have a 07 27' Komfort trailer, I put 480 watts of panels on the roof, we have a 600 watt inverter for the Sat TV and 2 GC batteries. The only time we need to fire up the genny is after 2 or 3 days of rain. We only boondock, never have hookups.

I'm on the ORV Facebook group and people there seem to have lotsa money to upgrade their new expensive trailers. 3000 watt inverters, lithium batteries and 12 volt fridges are all the rage.

So now I've found a 2019 ORV with 3 - 100 Ah Lithium batteries, a 12 volt fridge, 600 watts of solar and an automatic sat dish on the roof for sale at (what I think is) a great price. I think the owners travel a lot in the US with full hookups.
It also unfortunately has a Schwintek slide, so I've been researching that but also I'm unsure if the 600 watts of solar would be enough for us when boondocking for 3 or 4 weeks at a time.

Any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks and Merry Christmas
Will

[Vintage465]

StirCrazy wrote:

Fisherguy wrote:
We have a 07 27' Komfort trailer, I put 480 watts of panels on the roof, we have a 600 watt inverter for the Sat TV and 2 GC batteries. The only time we need to fire up the genny is after 2 or 3 days of rain. We only boondock, never have hookups.

I'm on the ORV Facebook group and people there seem to have lotsa money to upgrade their new expensive trailers. 3000 watt inverters, lithium batteries and 12 volt fridges are all the rage.

So now I've found a 2019 ORV with 2 - 100 Ah Lithium batteries, a 12 volt fridge, 600 watts of solar and an automatic sat dish on the roof for sale at (what I think is) a great price. I think the owners travel a lot in the US with full hookups.
It also unfortunately has a Schwintek slide, so I've been researching that but also I'm unsure if the 600 watts of solar would be enough for us when boondocking for 3 or 4 weeks at a time.

Any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks and Merry Christmas
Will

I have 480 watts in my 5th and four 6v batteries, so simular set up except I can go a bit longer before I worrie about power.

for you two LPF batteries will give you twice the usable amount of power asuming your 6V are around that 200AH mark. with two of them for max life you should only use about 50% of the capacity so that gives you 100AH to use. with the two LFP you have 200 usable AH to get the rated life, if you want more you can use less of it, but you don't need to set that up as right now if you can go three days with out sunlight with 600 watts of solar you will be shallow discharging anyways and can go longer without charge before it draws the battery down.

the only issue I see is how were the batteries treated, did he use a normal charge profile and just keep them up all the time, did he store them properly, is the converter and solare charger a proper LFP one so the profile is proper for charging and so on.. for me I would rather the guy take a healty chunk off the price and keep thoes batteries and purchase new ones if I had any suspisions about them.

I would definatly find out if he change the converter and solar charger to ones that are LI compatable at the very least.

I am not a fan of 12V fridges, I would probably trade it to some one with a good propane fridge if it would work, but it probably wouldn't haha.., but thats because I mostly boondock and using power for a fridge is a waist to me when propane lasts forever and does a good job. most I have looked at have a 5am draw when running, when I cam in the summer the temps are pretty warm (around 40C) so that would probably work out to a 50 to 60% duty cycle so that would use up 60 to 72AH in a 24hour period. right now running my 40 foot 5th wheel I only use 80AH in 24 hours and that is the very early spring or lait fall when I am running the furnace 24/7. in the summer I use 30 AH or less and that using the kureg in the morning and after supper and letting the kids watch a movie in the evening, if I had a 12V fridge it would take my daily use to 90ish AH in the summer and up to 150Ah in the winter..maybe less 130 to 140 as the duty cycle will drop a bit. the extra cost in batteries and panels to off set that over the cost to run the firdge on propane just doesnt make sense. now if you buy somthing with a 12V fridge you just have to make it work and in all likelyhood I would try grab that 3rd battery to give you the extra reserve capacity

Steve

This is the Way

[Grit_dog]

I think this thread could be merged with the other one that’s been going on for a year now almost.

[2oldman]

Love the quoting.

[StirCrazy]

Fisherguy wrote:

StirCrazy wrote:

Fisherguy wrote:
We have a 07 27' Komfort trailer, I put 480 watts of panels on the roof, we have a 600 watt inverter for the Sat TV and 2 GC batteries. The only time we need to fire up the genny is after 2 or 3 days of rain. We only boondock, never have hookups.

I'm on the ORV Facebook group and people there seem to have lotsa money to upgrade their new expensive trailers. 3000 watt inverters, lithium batteries and 12 volt fridges are all the rage.

So now I've found a 2019 ORV with 2 - 100 Ah Lithium batteries, a 12 volt fridge, 600 watts of solar and an automatic sat dish on the roof for sale at (what I think is) a great price. I think the owners travel a lot in the US with full hookups.
It also unfortunately has a Schwintek slide, so I've been researching that but also I'm unsure if the 600 watts of solar would be enough for us when boondocking for 3 or 4 weeks at a time.

Any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks and Merry Christmas
Will

I have 480 watts in my 5th and four 6v batteries, so simular set up except I can go a bit longer before I worrie about power.

for you two LPF batteries will give you twice the usable amount of power asuming your 6V are around that 200AH mark. with two of them for max life you should only use about 50% of the capacity so that gives you 100AH to use. with the two LFP you have 200 usable AH to get the rated life, if you want more you can use less of it, but you don't need to set that up as right now if you can go three days with out sunlight with 600 watts of solar you will be shallow discharging anyways and can go longer without charge before it draws the battery down.

the only issue I see is how were the batteries treated, did he use a normal charge profile and just keep them up all the time, did he store them properly, is the converter and solare charger a proper LFP one so the profile is proper for charging and so on.. for me I would rather the guy take a healty chunk off the price and keep thoes batteries and purchase new ones if I had any suspisions about them.

I would definatly find out if he change the converter and solar charger to ones that are LI compatable at the very least.

I am not a fan of 12V fridges, I would probably trade it to some one with a good propane fridge if it would work, but it probably wouldn't haha.., but thats because I mostly boondock and using power for a fridge is a waist to me when propane lasts forever and does a good job. most I have looked at have a 5am draw when running, when I cam in the summer the temps are pretty warm (around 40C) so that would probably work out to a 50 to 60% duty cycle so that would use up 60 to 72AH in a 24hour period. right now running my 40 foot 5th wheel I only use 80AH in 24 hours and that is the very early spring or lait fall when I am running the furnace 24/7. in the summer I use 30 AH or less and that using the kureg in the morning and after supper and letting the kids watch a movie in the evening, if I had a 12V fridge it would take my daily use to 90ish AH in the summer and up to 150Ah in the winter..maybe less 130 to 140 as the duty cycle will drop a bit. the extra cost in batteries and panels to off set that over the cost to run the firdge on propane just doesnt make sense. now if you buy somthing with a 12V fridge you just have to make it work and in all likelyhood I would try grab that 3rd battery to give you the extra reserve capacity

Steve

I talked to the owner today, he had 3 - 200 watt panels installed professionally and has a Victron controller, also including the Victron DC to DC converter.
He swapped out the charger part of the WFCO for one that is compatible with lithium batteries, and he's also throwing in the 3rd 100 Ah lithium battery he was going to keep for his slide in camper. So I'm hoping I'll be good power-wise but I'll look at adding a 4th 200 watt panel if this deal goes through.
Thanks.

I would think you'll be ok, its how much reserve time will you have if the solar isn't putting out due to storms and such.. will be interesting to see, and you have your genny for emergencys also. I don't have one of thoes so if I run out I run out haha

[Fisherguy]

StirCrazy wrote:

Fisherguy wrote:
We have a 07 27' Komfort trailer, I put 480 watts of panels on the roof, we have a 600 watt inverter for the Sat TV and 2 GC batteries. The only time we need to fire up the genny is after 2 or 3 days of rain. We only boondock, never have hookups.

I'm on the ORV Facebook group and people there seem to have lotsa money to upgrade their new expensive trailers. 3000 watt inverters, lithium batteries and 12 volt fridges are all the rage.

So now I've found a 2019 ORV with 2 - 100 Ah Lithium batteries, a 12 volt fridge, 600 watts of solar and an automatic sat dish on the roof for sale at (what I think is) a great price. I think the owners travel a lot in the US with full hookups.
It also unfortunately has a Schwintek slide, so I've been researching that but also I'm unsure if the 600 watts of solar would be enough for us when boondocking for 3 or 4 weeks at a time.

Any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks and Merry Christmas
Will

I have 480 watts in my 5th and four 6v batteries, so simular set up except I can go a bit longer before I worrie about power.

for you two LPF batteries will give you twice the usable amount of power asuming your 6V are around that 200AH mark. with two of them for max life you should only use about 50% of the capacity so that gives you 100AH to use. with the two LFP you have 200 usable AH to get the rated life, if you want more you can use less of it, but you don't need to set that up as right now if you can go three days with out sunlight with 600 watts of solar you will be shallow discharging anyways and can go longer without charge before it draws the battery down.

the only issue I see is how were the batteries treated, did he use a normal charge profile and just keep them up all the time, did he store them properly, is the converter and solare charger a proper LFP one so the profile is proper for charging and so on.. for me I would rather the guy take a healty chunk off the price and keep thoes batteries and purchase new ones if I had any suspisions about them.

I would definatly find out if he change the converter and solar charger to ones that are LI compatable at the very least.

I am not a fan of 12V fridges, I would probably trade it to some one with a good propane fridge if it would work, but it probably wouldn't haha.., but thats because I mostly boondock and using power for a fridge is a waist to me when propane lasts forever and does a good job. most I have looked at have a 5am draw when running, when I cam in the summer the temps are pretty warm (around 40C) so that would probably work out to a 50 to 60% duty cycle so that would use up 60 to 72AH in a 24hour period. right now running my 40 foot 5th wheel I only use 80AH in 24 hours and that is the very early spring or lait fall when I am running the furnace 24/7. in the summer I use 30 AH or less and that using the kureg in the morning and after supper and letting the kids watch a movie in the evening, if I had a 12V fridge it would take my daily use to 90ish AH in the summer and up to 150Ah in the winter..maybe less 130 to 140 as the duty cycle will drop a bit. the extra cost in batteries and panels to off set that over the cost to run the firdge on propane just doesnt make sense. now if you buy somthing with a 12V fridge you just have to make it work and in all likelyhood I would try grab that 3rd battery to give you the extra reserve capacity

Steve

I talked to the owner today, he had 3 - 200 watt panels installed professionally and has a Victron controller, also including the Victron DC to DC converter.
He swapped out the charger part of the WFCO for one that is compatible with lithium batteries, and he's also throwing in the 3rd 100 Ah lithium battery he was going to keep for his slide in camper. So I'm hoping I'll be good power-wise but I'll look at adding a 4th 200 watt panel if this deal goes through.
Thanks.

[wa8yxm]

Ok here is the power draw 8.3 in "Standard" mode and 6.2 in "Night" mode.

Or about twice what my Chest freezer draws.. Given the size. not bad.

[Fisherguy]

wa8yxm wrote:

Fisherguy wrote:
Thanks for the advice so far.
The 12v fridge is a Norcold. The trailer came with an 8 CF fridge and from what I understand people are replacing them with 10 CF 12v fridges?

We have a 2000 watt Honda generator that worked well with the PF9280 I put in the old trailer but since I added the panels I rarely use it to charge the GC's in the old trailer, best mod ever.

The owner of the ORV put 3 100Ah Lithiums in it, was going to keep one for his slide in camper but is willing to keep it with the trailer, negotiable.

Model please.. As I said in another post
Norcold made a very good one.. i suspect they also make a not so good one (Energy usage wise).

Norcold N10DC

[StirCrazy]

Fisherguy wrote:
We have a 07 27' Komfort trailer, I put 480 watts of panels on the roof, we have a 600 watt inverter for the Sat TV and 2 GC batteries. The only time we need to fire up the genny is after 2 or 3 days of rain. We only boondock, never have hookups.

I'm on the ORV Facebook group and people there seem to have lotsa money to upgrade their new expensive trailers. 3000 watt inverters, lithium batteries and 12 volt fridges are all the rage.

So now I've found a 2019 ORV with 2 - 100 Ah Lithium batteries, a 12 volt fridge, 600 watts of solar and an automatic sat dish on the roof for sale at (what I think is) a great price. I think the owners travel a lot in the US with full hookups.
It also unfortunately has a Schwintek slide, so I've been researching that but also I'm unsure if the 600 watts of solar would be enough for us when boondocking for 3 or 4 weeks at a time.

Any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks and Merry Christmas
Will

I have 480 watts in my 5th and four 6v batteries, so simular set up except I can go a bit longer before I worrie about power.

for you two LPF batteries will give you twice the usable amount of power asuming your 6V are around that 200AH mark. with two of them for max life you should only use about 50% of the capacity so that gives you 100AH to use. with the two LFP you have 200 usable AH to get the rated life, if you want more you can use less of it, but you don't need to set that up as right now if you can go three days with out sunlight with 600 watts of solar you will be shallow discharging anyways and can go longer without charge before it draws the battery down.

the only issue I see is how were the batteries treated, did he use a normal charge profile and just keep them up all the time, did he store them properly, is the converter and solare charger a proper LFP one so the profile is proper for charging and so on.. for me I would rather the guy take a healty chunk off the price and keep thoes batteries and purchase new ones if I had any suspisions about them.

I would definatly find out if he change the converter and solar charger to ones that are LI compatable at the very least.

I am not a fan of 12V fridges, I would probably trade it to some one with a good propane fridge if it would work, but it probably wouldn't haha.., but thats because I mostly boondock and using power for a fridge is a waist to me when propane lasts forever and does a good job. most I have looked at have a 5am draw when running, when I cam in the summer the temps are pretty warm (around 40C) so that would probably work out to a 50 to 60% duty cycle so that would use up 60 to 72AH in a 24hour period. right now running my 40 foot 5th wheel I only use 80AH in 24 hours and that is the very early spring or lait fall when I am running the furnace 24/7. in the summer I use 30 AH or less and that using the kureg in the morning and after supper and letting the kids watch a movie in the evening, if I had a 12V fridge it would take my daily use to 90ish AH in the summer and up to 150Ah in the winter..maybe less 130 to 140 as the duty cycle will drop a bit. the extra cost in batteries and panels to off set that over the cost to run the firdge on propane just doesnt make sense. now if you buy somthing with a 12V fridge you just have to make it work and in all likelyhood I would try grab that 3rd battery to give you the extra reserve capacity

Steve

[theoldwizard1]

Fisherguy wrote:
... I'm unsure if the 600 watts of solar would be enough for us when boondocking for 3 or 4 weeks at a time.
Will

Keep your generator ! You won't make it through multiple low solar input days.

You will love having a compressor refrigerator!

Segue - Think about eliminating propane. Save space and weight !

How often do you use your furnace ? Small counter top butane burner or outside portable grill/stove. Making coffee could really drain the batteries and forget about an electric frying pan or even a slow cooker unless you are willing to run the generator.

[JimK-NY]

2manytoyz wrote:


The temperature of the RV, and how often the fridge door is opened, will play a big part in how often the compressor runs. Looks like the 8 cu ft fridge draws ~5A/HR.

Just a wild guess, a 50% duty cycle of 5A/HR, is 2.5A/HR x 24 hours = 60 Amps x 12V = 720 Watt Hours per day. 600W of solar, with a derating factor of 25% = 450W of actual production. During peak sunlight, you'll replenish all the energy used by your fridge in 1.6 hours.

I have made a lot of measurements for my 12v Nova Kool compressor refrigerator. The run time is highly dependent on ambient temperature. In the 65-70 degree range, my unit runs roughly 1/4-1/3 of the time. I do a lot of summer camping and day temps are often well in the 80's. That 10-15 degrees has a huge impact. Run time increases to about 75% of the time. A few degrees more and the unit will run almost continuously and does not cycle again until temps drop in the evening. Those are measurements without using the refrigerator. When opening and closing the door numerous times a day or trying to cool down some water or other drinks, the unit can easily run continuously with temps barely above 80 degrees.

A unit that pulls 5 amps is likely to use roughly 100 AH/day for moderately warm Summertime camping.

I use the following calculator to estimate maximum solar output:

http://www.where-rv-now.com/Notes/Solar/index.php#Calculator

For my latitude at this time of year, 600 watts of solar is barely enough to output 100 AH/day with full open sun and no clouds. Mid Summer peak would be roughly 300 AH/day, enough to run the refrigerator for at least 3 days on warm days without any additional solar. Certainly the OP should be able to do well with this combination of use and solar.

[2oldman]

Fisherguy wrote:

time2roll wrote:
12v compressor fridge? Get the make and model #

Norcold N10DC

[wa8yxm]

Fisherguy wrote:
Thanks for the advice so far.
The 12v fridge is a Norcold. The trailer came with an 8 CF fridge and from what I understand people are replacing them with 10 CF 12v fridges?

We have a 2000 watt Honda generator that worked well with the PF9280 I put in the old trailer but since I added the panels I rarely use it to charge the GC's in the old trailer, best mod ever.

The owner of the ORV put 3 100Ah Lithiums in it, was going to keep one for his slide in camper but is willing to keep it with the trailer, negotiable.

Model please.. As I said in another post
Norcold made a very good one.. i suspect they also make a not so good one (Energy usage wise).

[2manytoyz]

I've had several different types of RV fridges. My current one is the 10 cubic ft Norcold 12V compressor type.

The downside to 12V compressor fridges is they consume more power per day than an absorption type fridge running on propane. The upside is they cool better, and much faster.

The Norcold has a night mode, which draws less power. They expect the fridge to be used less in the middle of the night, so they run the compressor less.

The temperature of the RV, and how often the fridge door is opened, will play a big part in how often the compressor runs. Looks like the 8 cu ft fridge draws ~5A/HR.

Just a wild guess, a 50% duty cycle of 5A/HR, is 2.5A/HR x 24 hours = 60 Amps x 12V = 720 Watt Hours per day. 600W of solar, with a derating factor of 25% = 450W of actual production. During peak sunlight, you'll replenish all the energy used by your fridge in 1.6 hours.

Short of measuring your actual usage, and actual collection, hard to give accurate numbers.

If power consumption becomes a big deal, consider using a portable Engel refrigerator. It only has one moving part, and is incredibly efficient. I added an external thermostat to mine, details here: http://2manytoyz.com/engel-thermostat.html

[Fisherguy]

time2roll wrote:
12v compressor fridge? Get the make and model #

Norcold N10DC

Norcold Link