Fridge Options Continued..

[Dahlia47]

A while back I posted about coolers, refrigerators, and iceboxes.
Well, this past weekend we went to the coast and my big block of ice melted overnight and my food was bad.
I am going to be redoing the kitchen area in the travel trailer. I will be adding a spot for a refrigerator. I am looking at the ones with the front door and the top door. Which is better? Which uses less energy? A freezer would be nice, but not a necessity. I've looked at the alpacools and dometics, cha-ching! At this point, I don't mind paying a bit extra. If you all know of any new ones, post them here.

Thank You!

[RJ Howell]

I am came to do I want a freezer or a refrigerator.. Seems pricing goes accordingly with singular or dual. I went frig only. Now, I did go one that could freeze, if required (runs below 0*F).

I found Costway to work for me since I wanted at least a 70qt unit.

[featherliteCT1]

Will you primarily be plugged into shore power or battery to power your refrigerator? My guess is battery power. If battery power, I suspect that even the smallest refrigerator would use no less than 2 amps per hour which is about 50 amps in a 24 hour period.

[RJ Howell]

Will you primarily be plugged into shore power or battery to power your refrigerator? My guess is battery power. If battery power, I suspect that even the smallest refrigerator would use no less than 2 amps per hour which is about 50 amps in a 24 hour period.

Well, so I also thought.. I ran it 72hrs on my 60ah lifepo4 and still have power to spare. Figured I ran it to 20%, but I still need to get my good meter on it (better is to complete the system..). So even if I had gone used all 60ah, that would be a 830 ma average. I was quite surprised and very happy! Now that was not a warm start, which I won't do anyway and had water and beverages in there. Opened it about as I would camping.. maybe a bit less (??).

[Florida Native]

Will you primarily be plugged into shore power or battery to power your refrigerator? My guess is battery power. If battery power, I suspect that even the smallest refrigerator would use no less than 2 amps per hour which is about 50 amps in a 24 hour period.

My Costway 30L runs about 15% of the time while inside the climate controlled house. It's rated at 3.8 amps, so it should use well under 1AH, more like 0.6AH, in 72-74F ambient temp.

-Mike

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

[featherliteCT1]

My 1 cubic foot refrigerator, after stabilizing at 39 degrees F, while bench testing in my house at 70 degree ambient temperatures, taking account duty cycling, per my meters, uses about .5 amps per hour.

I am currently in the process of testing the refrigerator amp hour draws in elevated temperatures.

In my trailer, I rarely have access to an air conditioned environment (to generate 70 degree ambient temperatures) and am not even sure the refrigerator will cool adequately in 90 degree temperatures. I hope I am wrong. Testing will tell the tale.

Below is data from Dometic web page:

CF35 1.1 cu ft, 31 litres
Max 7amp
Max 109 deg F
Min 50 deg F
34.6 lb

Dometic specs.png (122.12 KiB) Viewed 1311 times

[RJ Howell]

My run was in the garage.. not in the sun and not in a controlled environment. Garage doors open for ambient (and to cool the garage down). 2ams dc is quite high for these new units... I'm now convinced of the DC frog's being doable!

[Cosmo]

Hi there. Greetings from a Green State...

The dometic numbers above are accurate but they are measured when the fridge compressor is running continuously. Once the fridge is at the desired temp the thermostat shuts off the compressor and energy consumption drops to a few watts to keep the temp monitoring alive (same as home fridge). For our purposes you might consider a measurement that factors in run time duty cycle and the rest time in between compressor runs. Over an hour the fridge may run for less than 15 or 20 min depending on a lot of factors such as ambient heat etc. Other data appreciated

Happy campomg
=Cosmo

I have to recheck these numbers but this was my findings a few years ago

[featherliteCT1]

Cosmos,

Thanks for the data.
Do you know the approximate, average ambient temperature your refrigerator was in when you averaged .5 amps per hour?

[bdosborn]

Here's how much energy my Dometic CF-40 used when I tested it awhile back:



Bruce

[featherliteCT1]

bdosborn,

Great data!

Does your chart say fairly constant temperature of about 27 degrees C= 81 degrees F over 24 hours, with 11.1 amps used in 24 hours= .46 amps per hour?

[bdosborn]

Yeah, the trailer was in the garage at the time so the temperature didn't change that much. Note that the fridge was set to 40F. I had it at 33F when we went camping last week and it used a lot more energy.

Bruce

[bdosborn]

Here's the total energy use from last week, I was running an upright fridge in the trailer and the CF-40 in the truck bed. Its a screen shot from the Victron phone app, which has all kinds of awesome data it can display:



Bruce

[Cosmo]

Great data Bruce. Thanks for sharing.

Looks like you are getting 4.3 amps an hour or about 51 watts for the CFX-40. I am measuring 3.6 amps an hour or 44 watts (pretty close to you) with the CFX-35.

With a 120 amp hour AGM battery I squeezed 131 amps out of the battery which ran my fridge 36 hours. That took the AGM down to 10.5 volts in my case. Something I don’t usually do. On the shortest days the solar panels can not generate for about 15 hours of darkness.

When camping for several days I am on solar. I carry (3) 100 watt panels here in the east for tree shade and cloud combinations. I have a 4th 100 watt panel I can put in service if conditions are bad enough.

On the short days In the dead of winter (when I need AGM) I need sun in the morning and once I get it I can top off the battery. In horrible conditions it might take all day to top off the battery in my. Success so far.

If the magic wand was working I would use AGM in the dead of winter and Lithium the rest of the year.

=Cosmo

[bdosborn]

Cosmo,

The peak power I saw was 310w from a 420w array laying flat on the roof. That's something to remember when you're trying to figure out how much PV you need - you won't get but 75% of what the panel is rated for in real life so plan accordingly. At minimum you should buy a PV controller that's at least 25 or 50% larger than what you think you'll need so you can expand your array down the road with out too much trouble.

Bruce