Powering a portable AC/DC Fridge

[boywonder]

I have an AC/DC truckfridge... and when driving around and camping it's running of off 12V.....when I turn on my inverter the fridge is running on AC.


In my case, a DC only version would work just fine...and would have saved me about $30.....


The two (minor) downsides about running the Fridge off of the inverter AC are:


I'm using watts to power the fridge which subtracts from the total watts the inverter puts out....so my inverter puts out 1000W max and the fridge is using 30 watts or so...then I'm left with 970W for other AC power.


The inverter is about 92% efficient.......so it takes roughly 1080W in to the inverter from house batteries to output 1000W AC.


Using 12VDC eliminates the inefficiencies of AC/DC conversion.

[jdl8r]

I run the ARB chest/frig. It's awesome. I don't run an inverter (doesn't make sense to me to convert to AC to convert back to DC anyway), plus a good amount of energy is lost to heat with an inverter. That said, I have a dual battery system with a pair of AGMs, no isolator. I can run my frig for 5+ days (before it goes into lower power mode to prevent draining my batteries too much), kinda cool. In the future I'll have something to prevent depletion, but haven't needed it to date...

[basssears]

I run an Engel on our boat, similar fridge and similar setup. You should be fine just keeping it permanently plugged into the DC side, that's by far the most efficient way to do it when not on shore power and when on shore power your charger can provide plenty of power to the batteries to both charge them and run the fridge.


Don't use the AC side plugged into the inverter, you'll lose lots in the conversion from 12v to 120v back to 12v.


FWIW, the only consideration for using both the AC and DC plugs is if your battery charger isn't very high capacity... our boat has a 10a (120w) charger, so when we plug in to shore power (or occasionally use our portable generator) I have the Engel plugged into the AC side (which it will default to if both are plugged in) so the Engel runs off the shorepower/generator and all 120w of the charger can go into charging the batteries... same reason I still carry around AC charger for laptop and a few other things so I can run those off shorepower and have all the charging capacity go to actually charging the batteries.

[Christopher Thwaites]

https://www.equipt1.com/collections/national-luna

If you haven’t looked at the National Luna fridge freezer you should. I bought one in 2008 and used it in my former van for 8 years. High quality, quiet running and very efficient. The folks at Equipt will answer all of your questions on set up and power options. I ran mine right off the battery bank. More expensive than an ARB as I recall but you get what you pay for.
Chris

[Steve Hunt]

Originally Posted by Christopher Thwaites

https://www.equipt1.com/collections/national-luna

If you haven’t looked at the National Luna fridge freezer you should. I bought one in 2008 and used it in my former van for 8 years. High quality, quiet running and very efficient. The folks at Equipt will answer all of your questions on set up and power options. I ran mine right off the battery bank. More expensive than an ARB as I recall but you get what you pay for.
Chris

Thanks for the link. I have heard that is a premium brand but always better to hear it from someone that has owned it for 8 years.