Refrigerator draw on LP mode

Chum lee wrote:
I don't understand why you are doing what you are doing. In the larger scheme of things, the electricity (12 volt) to run the board/valve is negligible. If you are going solar, why not consider running the fridge on 120 volts through a 120 volt inverter, solar panels, controller, and a battery bank, (probably 4-6 volt wet cells) eliminating the need to use propane at all? (at least for the fridge) IMO, you could do that with 3-140 watt panels (if you have room) and have plenty of solar power for most everything else too. You don't state what vehicle you have. (maybe the clue lies there)

Chum lee

You are mistaken there for sure.

OPs RV fridge uses a very inefficient "absorption" system which relies on gravity to make things happen instead of a quicker compressor.

This type of fridge requires considerable amount of heat input to cool a very tiny space..

The RV absorbsion fridges use a 325W or so 120V heating element..

Gonna take a huge solar panel array to make up for a 325W heating element.. So, instead of camping with a 100W-300W solar array, they would need to increase that to 600W, possibly 1,000W of solar and add quite a few batteries to their system..

Now, IF you were talking a 120V compressor fridge then it IS possible to work the solar angle with not much investment since fridge compressor uses 90W at 120V instead of a RV fridge heater of 325W..

BUT, we are not talking a compressor fridge here.. In this case, using propane is the better and wiser thing to do instead of carrying a thousand watts worth of panels.

Keep in mind that with most modener RV fridges, the control board does need 12V and that IS what the OP was inquiring about..