12 V Refrigerator

[Sobiepan]

Hello. I am trying to figure out posting on a forum so if this is wrong my apologies.

My question is this. I bought a new 2608 with the 12 v fridge. I brought it home and decided to test the cooling ability at home running off of 2 deep cycles batteries with the 190 watt solar. It is in the 80s where I live as well.

My findings so far:
When virtually empty, the fridge will work for about 2 days. I credit this to being empty. and will be testing it when full next week.

My question:
Regardless of the amount of content in the fridge, what is suggested that it remains cold off 12 v for minimum a week?

Essentially, i want to know what and how many batteries are needed and how many solar panels/watts would be needed to attain that level of functionality

I really like this setup but need to keep things cold no matter what taking into consideration the amount of food in the fridge, cloudy days charging capacity and what not.

I appreciate any input!

 

[tomkatb]

Depends where you live and play.

Here in Ohio it is rainy and cloudy for 10 of 14 days in a row this week.

Add to that we have lots of trees in our campgrounds. So the answer is, you best have a generator for the second morning. Likely you will need to run it depending on the battery bank a lot.

Those who live in California and boondock in the mountains where it never rains and there are few trees, the answer is different.

4 Battleborn batteries and 800 watts of solar $5-6,000 would work pretty well.

800 watts of solar around here gets you 0 to 200 AH of power daily. Enough for two days. Ohio use,

My first purchase would be a battery monitor. Then a generator. Then more batteries. Then solar.

 

[PhilFromMaine]

Hello. I am trying to figure out posting on a forum so if this is wrong my apologies.

My question is this. I bought a new 2608 with the 12 v fridge. I brought it home and decided to test the cooling ability at home running off of 2 deep cycles batteries with the 190 watt solar. It is in the 80s where I live as well.

My findings so far:
When virtually empty, the fridge will work for about 2 days. I credit this to being empty. and will be testing it when full next week.

My question:
Regardless of the amount of content in the fridge, what is suggested that it remains cold off 12 v for minimum a week?

Essentially, i want to know what and how many batteries are needed and how many solar panels/watts would be needed to attain that level of functionality

I really like this setup but need to keep things cold no matter what taking into consideration the amount of food in the fridge, cloudy days charging capacity and what not.

I appreciate any input!

How many amps does your refrig use? Ill guess 2 amps (I could be way off), 24 hours per day (only a guesstimate substitute your own numbers)). Multiply that by 24 and you get 48 amp hrs per day. Take your batteries total amp hr rating, divide it by 2 and that is your usable amount of amp hrs.

So, I am guessing you have two deep cycle marine batteries that have about 140 amp hours total. This gives you 70 amp hrs of usable power by estimation. With lead acid batteries you could get also compute the Peukert Effect which takes into account the rate of discharge of the battery, but we won't deal with it here.

So, using those hypotheticals, you could get 70/48 amp hours of operation of just the frig and nothing else (pretty hard to do).

Next, if you use your solar of 190 watts and it is a perfect solar day in June, you could probably expect, depending of where you are, 6 hours of quality solar input. Assuming you are getting 10.8 amps per hour for 6 hours that would be about roughly 65 amp hours per day.

So you use 48 amp hrs for the frig, you have 70 amp hrs (battery)in reserve and your solar is contributing 65 amp hours per day. These numbers are very optimistic. In reality, you won't be just using the refrig, and you won't always have sunny days.

Your major week point here is your energy storage capacity. Ideally, in my opinion, you should have 200 amp hours minimum of usable amp hrs. Another 190 watt solar panel would be nice too. Hope this helps.