How Much Power Does a 12 Volt Refrigerator Use?

[@OP.ovrlnd]

Dude, you are a life saver man…couldn’t find any definitive info about overall power usage over prolonged periods with 12V fridges and then I found your video. Can’t thank you enough.

[@stevesworld620]

Great video, saved me the hassle of doing it myself. If I understand the data correctly, keeping it in the shade had the biggest impact and insulation really only made an impact when left in the sun. You just saved me 60 bucks on the insulated cover I was going to buy. I'll keep it in the shade...

[@SuraniIlmantahilalatdikakiku]

I was searching for info about 12V Fridge power consumption and then, I found your video using same fridge model that I was planning to buy !!! It's a great sharing. Thank you so much 👍😊

[@thegxdad2223]

Thanks for the feedback and glad it helped!

[@esotericist]

good job. exactly what I needed to learn. delivered clearly - without the hype! Thanks.

[@Cbockhoff]

Thank you for your extra data, shade vs sun, insulated versus non etc. good stuff.

[@brandontomaiko8993]

Thank you for sharing the data with us. And going through all of the trouble.

[@thegxdad2223]

Thanks for the support. I am glad to share. Working on more videos to share info and always open to suggestions for other tests and data.

[@shoshannaperry5518]

@@thegxdad2223 can you help me I just ordered one of these and have a zero yeti 500 X battery which has a 300 W capacity. Will I be able to use this on a five day camping trip? If I’m cool it before with my car battery and just use it at night and hopefully nine 100 W solar panel will loaded up in the daytime when I’m not using it?

[@thegxdad2223]

@@shoshannaperry5518 if you are using that same fridge and a yeti500x how long it will run depends on the difference in temperature of the outside air and the the temperature setpoint for the fridge. As long as your not using it in the summer in Phoenix at 118 degrees like I did in the tests, you will probably use an average of 15-20 watts per hour. If you only run it on the Yeti at night say 12 hours, that would only use 12hrs x 20 watts 240 watt hours, meaning it won't have a problem lasting overnight. If you recharge the power pack fully with the car or solar panels during the day, theoretically you should be able to do this for as many days as you like. The car charger for the yeti is 120watts so it would fully charge back up from the fridge usage in 2 hours. My only tip for getting the most out of the yeti capacity is use the DC power for the fridge and set the fridge voltage shut down to the lowest setting. The AC inverter on the power pack uses battery power so the fridge won't run as long on AC power as on DC power. For example my 500Wh power pack ran the fridge for 28 hours before it died when running on AC. When I ran it on DC in the same temperature it ran for 44 hours before it died.

[@vicherbert9260]

Please make more videos i nerd 🤓 out on this stuff. You did a great job.

[@thegxdad2223]

Thanks. I wanted to know this info and couldn't find it so figured I would do the testing to and make a video and nerd out a little with a regression.

[@CameronCMorgan]

This information is what I've needed. Thank YOU!!

[@thegxdad2223]

Glad to hear it helped. I made the video because I figured I couldn't be the only one trying to design a power system to run a fridge and needed to know power consumption :)

[@charlesboelter5457]

Great explanation!! I like your technique and observations .

[@jackman2865]

Good presentation. Very scientific .

[@thegxdad2223]

Thank you for the feedback!

[@evypr0ductions]

you mentioned a spike at 80watts, is that when the compressor starts up? 80W at 12.6v is 6.4 amps, I don't understand the 15amp fuse, isn't it a bit overkill? thanks.

[@freddieferdinand9591]

Great job.

[@randallgd]

Advice needed please. I am a newbie with solar and these portable power stations. We are doing a two month long camping trip using a van where we will be basically living out of it without ever using any kind of shore power. We live in Idaho and will be traveling into the backcountry of BC, Canada on this trip. I bought a 12V portable fridge and a Acopower 100W 12V monocrystalline solar panel. I only have room on the roof for one 100W solar panel because I have 2 cargo boxes. Just ordered a EB55. We drive a lot, at least a little bit each day. We don’t plan on using the battery for anything other than the fridge, as we have a generator for powering everything else. Any help would really be helpful. This newbie would really appreciate any ideas/input!

[@thegxdad2223]

Cool sounds like fun. I believe the eb55 is around 500wh of capacity. Use the graph to figure out what you expect to be your average power usage for fridge based on you average temperature difference. Take that number and divide 500wh by the average power say 14 wh to get how many hours to run. If you don't want to run out of power, you will need to recharge at least as much as you use each day. A 100 watt solar panel will give you 100 watts in perfect extreme sun at the right angle. You should expect much less for cloudy or shady conditions. The other thing to consider for charging the eb55 is it will likely not charge as fast running off the car battery while running vs wall charging. Watch the display when you are charging from the car to verify how much. Finally biggest piece of advice. Run the fridge off the power pack dc outlet. You will get a lot more running dc. The ac inverter can waste 30-40% of the battery capacity vs the dc.

[@HouseCleaningOC]

thank you for this video.

[@lifeonwheels9802]

Excellent! Thank you

[@tskroyal9198]

Awesome video bro, thank you so much.

[@MrBob58o]

How was the Average Power calculated? When you say 14 watts average power, how long did you run the experiment for? Was the 14watts an average over 36hrs of actual use? Did you open and close the fridge over the course of the test? It should be more efficient running on DC right, which was not tested (the title of the vid says 12volt, but its not using 12V?)

[@thegxdad2223]

Great questions! I calculated the average power as the whole 36 hr test excluding the initial cool down period. I let the fridge reach temperature for several hours before starting to record power consumption. I did not open and close the lid during the tests. You are also right on running straight DC is more efficient and when I did my power pack testing video I actually did a test running the fridge on ac vs DC and got a huge increase in run time before the power pack died. It was due to the lower power pack capacity when running AC and due to inverter power loss, and running on DC was about 10-15% less power consumption. So running on DC will give a great boost in runtime over AC. I originally did the tests in AC because my power pack wouldn't run the fridge on DC but I later realized the power pack was only giving 10.8v so when I adjusted the fridge low voltage shut off it ran no problems

[@MrBob58o]

@@thegxdad2223 Thank you for taking the time to respond. I appreciate the good info. Been looking into off grid living and trying to be energy efficient as possible. I think I decided on a 3.5 cu ft chest freezer and the same with a external thermostat for a refrigerator. These are fairly efficient, relatively cheap, and I think I could use the savings (compared to DC or LP RV/Boat style options) for extra solar panels. Just as an experiment, I plugged my kilowatt meter into my traditional standup fridge / freezer combo. 3 days, 17 hours, 22 minutes... 14.32 kwh

[@joannbrown2842]

Thank you

[@Andreademagistris]

Great video! Really useful! Just a question (It's hard use your graph on a pc monitor): If my temperature delta is 36F I have around 7 watt/hour on the graph, and 7watt*24 hour is 168watt in a day (14 Ampere). Is it correct? Many thanks!

[@thegxdad2223]

You are correct. It is 168 watt hrs. Dividing by 12v gives 14 Amp hrs. Just be careful on comparing these Amp hours to battery Amp hour ratings because they are not exactly the same.

[@Andreademagistris]

@@thegxdad2223 Thank you for your answer! But sorry, I forgot another question: can you confirm what the graph says, is a consumption of only 7 watts a credible figure? it seems so little to me

[@thegxdad2223]

According to the regression I think 7 is what it shows. That being said the lowest temperature delta in the test was 50 degrees with an average power consumption of 11 wh.

[@kr639]

If you didn’t run on straight dc it’s not a great test as AC will consume more on a DC unit

[@neno56527]

you should have made a energy usage using a normal fridge

[@CurvyTribune]

Your microphone was too low

[@thegxdad2223]

Sorry about that. Thank you for the feedback. I got a nicer microphone now. Was my first video on KZbin:)

[@ExploringCabinsandMines]

More confusing than it should be. Just put some food in it and plug it in.

[@Samlittlesr57]

So it takes a little over 10 fully charged 100 AH lead acid batteries to run this frig for 36 hr's

[@thegxdad2223]

It shouldn't. Assuming you are not using it in extreme heat, let's say it uses 15 watts per hr. 15x36hr = 540 watt hrs. To convert 12v to amp hours just divide 540/12 = 45 amp hours or a little less than half of one 100AH 12v battery.