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Noisy power from typical backup generators

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Renate:

--- Quote from: Johnny B Good on April 20, 2021, 05:28:17 am ---Regarding VFD compressor fridges, when I checked what was available here in the UK about a year back, there wasn't a single one.
--- End quote ---
I used to really hate the sound of a refrigerator cycling.

If it gets much above 100°F here I might run the air conditioner.
Fortunately, at that temperature it doesn't cycle but runs 100%!

FYI: The 120 VAC heater on my fridge is 180 Watts.
The run time on propane is somewhere around 50%.

SeanB:
With the abnsorbtion fridge you can simply replace the 120VAC element with the dual voltage version, which is the same size, but has 2 separate nichrome element sets in it, and a 4 wire tail. Common on caravan units, where you have a choice of gas when stationary at a park, or mains as well if you are wanting to save the gas as electric is part of the service, or 12V for use to keep it working during towing, where you cannot use the gas. Typically a 60 to 100W heater cartridge, though if you cannot get the 12V version you can have them made by almost all of the industrial heating suppliers, as they are quite used to making custom cartridges, though they likely will have it in stock off the shelf or next day.

Renate:

--- Quote from: SeanB on April 20, 2021, 10:47:13 am ---... mains as well ...
--- End quote ---
Oh, yeah, I remember this "mains" stuff. I plugged in once a few years back. >:D


--- Quote from: SeanB on April 20, 2021, 10:47:13 am ---... to keep it working during towing, where you cannot use the gas.
--- End quote ---
I run the fridge on gas while running down the road.
I don't consider it a safety problem and it never blows out.
Even if it did, the interlocks work just fine.

One thing that always pissed me of was that the "Auto" LED and the "Check" (i.e. fail to ignite/no gas) were both amber.
Now the Check LED has a nice bright red.

james_s:

--- Quote from: Renate on April 20, 2021, 10:32:53 am ---FYI: The 120 VAC heater on my fridge is 180 Watts.
The run time on propane is somewhere around 50%.

--- End quote ---

My home fridge draws around 130W and the duty cycle is pretty close to 50%, so average draw about 65W for something much larger than a typical RV refrigerator. Very rough guess is a comparably sized absorption fridge would draw about 400W vs 65W for the compressor based one, that goes along with my impression that the absorption refrigerators are not very efficient. They offer some very compelling advantages for RVs though.

Renate:
Hmm, you may have a point.
I just rechecked the spec for the 120 VAC heater and it's 325 Watt!
I don't think that I'll be messing around with 12 VDC heaters.
Maybe a big plastic Fresnel lens and some mirrors? >:D

I actually did this graphic a while ago to demonstrate the amount of stored energy that I'm driving around with.
(Ignoring the truck battery. The two GC2 AGM batteries are pretty serious.)

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