# Refrigerator on solar power Big Surprise



## budgetprepp-n

I have an older full size refrigerator and I wanted to see how far away from being able to
run it with my solar set up I was. So I plugged it into my inverter . That was two days ago
and we have had two over cast days. Really no direct sunlight but it's keeping up just fine.
Big surprise !! It's very over cast right now the fridge is running and I went out to see how
everything was doing and even with the fridge running the batteries are full and the panels
are keeping up. At night the voltage drops to about 12.4 just before dawn. Soon as we have
any light it's all good. 
That's with 770 watts and 7 Walmart batteries


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## MaterielGeneral

How many panels do you have and what size are they?


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## budgetprepp-n

MaterielGeneral said:


> How many panels do you have and what size are they?


I have 3 100 watt and 2 235watt they are setup as separate systems.

Two controllers but they both feed into the same battery bank



The panels will swing in or out makes it easy to adjust for the sun
also we get some really bad snow storms and I can let them hang straight down
or all the way back under the roof until the snow stops 
A member on here designed this set up for me.


The controller has a light that blinks when the batteries are full
When the fridge is running the lights stop blinking but soon as the fridge stops
the lights go back to blinking.

the controller on the left is 30 amps The one on the right is 40 amp 
the converter is pure sine wave 1500 watt


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## MaterielGeneral

OK, just curious. I have one 100 watt panel so far. 5,000 watt invertor and some accessories. How many batteries do you think I should get for that one panel?


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## paraquack

So here's my best guess MT. 100 watt panel will give you 8.3 amps at 12 volt per hour of full sun. If you get 10 hours of sun that would be 83 amps going into the battery. So you can recharge a battery that has lost around 80 amps. You could go around a 100 amp hour battery, but if you intend to add panels I'd go larger. From personal experience with the batteries in my RV, I really like golf cart batteries. They are 6 volt so you'd need 2 of them and connect in series. This link is just for example: http://www.altestore.com/store/Deep-Cycle-Batteries/Batteries-Flooded-Lead-Acid/Trojan-T-105-6V-225AH-20HR-Flooded-Lead-Acid-Battery/p1771/?
gclid=CjwKEAjw9uypBRD5pMDYtsKxvXcSJACcb9AYP86a7tNbik4jnAPpH0D5ejneZYBgaD103XoT_JU88RoC7zrw_wcB

They are expensive but Sams Club has them at a better price, where I bought my first and only set in 2000 after the 12 volt battery from the factory puked. I was still using the same golf cart batteries in my RV when I sold it in 2014. They are deep cycle and are designed for deep discharge/recharging. The link shows a rating of 225 amp hour when used to supply electricity over a 20 hour span or about 20+ amps over 20 hours. Drawing more amps will obviously use up the battery faster. Remember that if your using an inverter that is actually powering a device rated for 750 watts like a fridge (or 6.25 amp @ 120 VAC) the inverter will consume 10 times the amps from the battery or 62.5 amps per running hour of the fridge. If the fridge runs 10 minutes per hour (62.5 amps divided by 6) or 10.4 amps per hour. You could in theory run a fridge for 21 hours before battery would be nearing complete discharge. Since the inverter isn't a perfect conversion from DC to AC, it'll probably run a little shorter time. The more batteries the longer the fridge will run but with more batteries, you'll need more panels. Would be best to have sufficient panels to more than replace what you take out of the batteries. In the above scenario you would need at least 3, preferably four 100 watt panels to recharge the batteries every day. If you're in a state that has a lot of cloudy days (like the midwest) you'll probably need to double that.


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## budgetprepp-n

I really don't know what I'm doing so take this with a grain of salt,,,,,,,

I would start with 2 batteries what I did was for every 100 watts of panels I added I also added another battery
300 watts = 3 batteries 
400 watts = 4 batteries
500 watts = 5 batteries 
I don't know the on paper formula for figuring it out.
What I did was just watch and see if all the batteries charged up really fast I would ad one battery
And if the batteries took to long to charge I took out a battery or added 100 watts of panels 

I use the Walmart 29D series batteries lots of people that don't use them say they won't work.
The people that use them seem to be happy with them. I been running mine for about 2 1/2 years now no problem
I bet I catch some heck over this post


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## paraquack

This is the best site for info I've seen. It's from a solar wholesaler. They've got a nice calculator for power vs panels.
Deep Cycle Battery Information


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## RobbinLious

When in doubt, 100 watt sunlight powered charger can run a 12V refrigerator for a brief time frame and would likewise require a battery. 100 watts of sunlight based chargers can produce on normal 400 watt-long stretches of energy each day. A cooler with consolidated cooler necessities 2000 watt-hours/day.


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## KellyDude

Glad you got some good backup!


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