We got our share of snow in my area and many people had an outage
lasting quite a while. I'd like to be able to power a freezer on
inverter powered from car battery for extended outages. My freezer takes
115W, 145VA to sustain operation, but the compressor is rated at
7.5LRA(locked rotor amps, which you can use to estimate your
fridge/freezer's peak power requirement) and I guess that comes to 900
peak watt.
The 140W inverter I mainly use for charging digital camera
batteries in my car definitely won't start this freezer, but my
700W(1000W peak) inverter can start it(barely.. it beeps when the freezer
starts). Is there anyway I can run a freezer/refrigerator on an inverter
short of getting an inverter with a peak wattage that can accomodate 120V
* compressor's LRA? It's really foolish having to dedicate a 700W(1000W
peak) inverter for a 115W freezer.
Searching the internet showed there's an "easy start kit" that lower's
peak current by starting compressor slowly, but I haven't been able to
find any.
I suppose I could use a series reactor to restrict the starting current
but could the comrpessor start up with restricted starting current?
You can buy lots of extra stuff and try to lower the amps or watt
requirement for starting. I will bet that when you discover the cost of the
soft start equipment it would have been cheaper buy a 1000w inverter. They
are not that expensive. Besides it will give you something else to run when
the freezer is not. I personally would not be to worried about a freezer
when the temps are low. I had a power outage in Arizona ambient was about
100 F. I did not open it up until the power came back, 2 days. I kept a min
max thermometer in it and it never rose high enough to be in danger.
By the time you buy enough battery power to sustain the freezer for
even just 8 hours and the charger to recharge it and the maintenance
of having to replace the dead batteries every 3 years.....you're much
better off buying a nice genset that can power lots more stuff and has
nearly zero maintenance just sitting there....
I recommend tossing caution to the wind and buying the Honda EU3000is
super quiet, electric start at around $1800 on the net. It's a honey!
formatting link
It won't even come off economy speed crankin' that freezer.....
With a 750W load, it will run 20 hours on 3.4 gallons of gas! Mine
does, easy.
Larry W4CSC
Why not buy a generator? That way you could power other things during a power
outage and every so often, you could plug the fridge in to build up the cold
in it.
--
"The militia, sir, is our own ultimate safety. We can have no
security without it...The great object is, that every man be
armed...Everyone who is able may have a gun." - - Patrick Henry
Man, there's no such thing as 'cold'. cold is simply the absence of
heat. Therefore you should say plug in the fridge to remove the heat
inside :)
anyway I didn't mean anything... just said it for fun.
Well, about inverters... wasn't there a thread recently about powering
motors with inverters? You need a sine wave inverter to power that
fridge's compressor motor well. Some sine wave inverters even come
with start up functions to start your fridge.
Alternatively you could place some capacitors across your motor's load
so that it starts up slowly protecting the inverter :)
20 hours on 3.4 gallons!!!Even a tank at full speed doesn't consume so
much.Better buy nothing, save the money because power outages happen every
now and then.Do you have a lot of goodies in the freezer?
--
Dimitris Tzortzakakis,Greece
Visit our website-now with air condition!
M1A1 60 gallons per hour cross-country (1200 gallons in 20 hours).
*Idling* it would use 200 gal. in 20 hours.
3.4 gal of gas costs just a few dollars, what are you talking about?
Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany
X-No-Archive: Yes
Larry W4CSC wrote:
Who said I need to sustain the freezer on normal cycle? I need to sustain the
tempreature low enough to prevent spoilage of food inside.
A freezer can often keep it below freezing for a whole day, but being able to
run the compressor every 12hrs or so for 30min is going to help quite a bit.
We seldom have power outages lasting more than a few min. It will not be
powered from a dedicated battery bank. The inverter will simply get hooked up
to my car and fridge will run with the engine running.
This freezer only takes 115W nominal, so input to inverter is about 140W or
12V 12A.
If I run it on a fully charged car battery for 30min, it will use up 6Ah from
the battery and that amount houldn't interfere with the ability to start the
vehicle.
Once I do this, I can just do this again after I used the car so the battery
is brought back to full charge.
This isn't correct about a gasoline powered generator. Ever had trouble
starting a lawn mower that was stored until the next season by simply putting
it away normally?
Gasoline don't keep very well and it's known to gum up the fuel system.
Oh please. There is no way I'm going to justify spending nearly two grands
for rare power outages.
Amen to that suggestion. Most of us seriously interested in both
heating/lighting our homes and running our refrigerators/freezer have
many years back purchased at least a minimal generator system.
I really can't imagine any responsible person attempting to deal with
these power outage situation by employing what amount to some sort of
a kludge solution.
Then too, my home and family mean a great deal to me, so when my
youngest daughter was born prematurely, I spent enough bucks to
assure that the home environment would never become a health issue.
Harry C.
Many RV owners run apartment size refrigerators on inverters. The duty
cycle of a refrigerator is low enough that they can get by with just a
few batteries. However, they use deep discharge batteries, often 4
golf cart types. Deeply discharging car batteries drastically reduces
their life.
You don't need that size for a freezer. Honda makes a nice 1KW unit
that sells for about $700. It is a DC generator that drives an inverter.
For your use a Coleman 1.8KW unit for $500 would be adequate.
Just a thought that I've had before:
If your power outage is due to SNOW and you're trying to keep things cold
why don't you put it in a box outside in the snow? Here in the northwest
we've had a few outages that lasted over a day with temperatures in the
teens and twenties. I just put the frozen stuff in a box outside.
Refrigerated stuff had to be cycled into the garage which was cold but not
freezing.
I have an old BorgWarner fridge/freezer (remember those)that still works. It
pulls 350w running and about a 1k to start. cycle time
is around 20%. My 700w Vector MS will start it with a little hesitation.
You'd need a lot of capacity for large fridges, but newer smaller ones run as
little as 120w. So even a medium battery bank of
1000ah will only last a few days.
If its cold outside, thats an option. The second option is dry ice. Third is a
gen.
Cheers
Ouch! That hurts!
Larry W4CSC
Is it just me or did the US and UK just capture 1/3
of the world's sweetest oil supply? What idiot wants to
GIVE IT BACK?!!
Let's do what Europeans have been doing for centuries.
DIVIDE UP THE SPOILS OF OUR CONQUEST! Gas will be
$US0.50/US gallon again, STUPIDS!
Yep. That's EXACTLY why every pilot of every gas-powered small
airplane ALWAYS fills his tanks to the brim and runs his carbs dry
BEFORE hangaring the airplane. If you did that with the lawnmower,
you're problem is OVER!
Out in my sheet metal storage building is a 1988 Honda EG5000X 5KW gas
genset with a steel gas tank on top of an 11hp Honda slant 1-cyl
engine with float carb. I bought it cheap from two lawyers after the
power came back on after Hurricane Hugo, vowing NEVER TO SIT IN THE
DARK AGAIN.
The day I got the genset it had about 12 hours on it. I changed the
oil and brimmed the gas tank with regular old 87 octane from Speedway.
This was in 1989. It has sat there in that 130F summer, 25F winter
uninsulated storage building since 1989, except for a few Ham Radio
Field Days and local power outages.....
I don't use the little gas tank on top of the engine to run it. I
took a brass air manifold, made for fishtanks, that has a common rail
and two tiny valves and inserted it into the gas line. The common
rail goes to the carb. One valved "outlet", now an inlet, goes to the
on-genset tank. The other valved inlet goes to an 8' length of
plastic gasline that's open on the other end. Whenever I have to use
this genset, I simply put a plastic jerry can on a step or chair above
the carb which has no pump. I lay out the gasline in the grass and
open both valves, filling the line with gas from the onboard tank.
When gas comes out, I shut off the onboard tank fishtank valve, pinch
the hose to keep the gas in it and stuff it down into my jerry can so
it siphons gas directly from the jerry can into the carb.......no
filling. When this jerry can gets empty, I pinch the hose, pull it
out of this can and plunge it into the next filled can.....never
shutting off the genset to fill it.
The gas in that metal tank on top of my Honda EG5000X is still about
90% gas from 1989. It is refilled to the top before the genset is
stored and the carb is first run dry by the engine then the float bowl
drain is opened to drain the carb of any residue gas that may
evaporate just sitting there......
Stop by the house and I'll start that genset with 1989 gas on the
FIRST PULL. Bring a $100 bill and we'll make "bad gas" discussions
even MORE interesting!
Now why does this work like this? I need "gas stabilizer" or some
other "diesel-fuel-in-a-can" at $70/gallon, don't I?............Nope.
I play a lot with other people's yachts here in Charleston, SC. My
current project is a very nice 1985 Amel Sharki 41' cruising ketch
belonging to an English friend of mine who lives in Atlanta. It's his
boat. I just spend his money on it. Nearly every boat in any marina
around here has fuel problems, gas and diesel. None of it is
necessary. All they had to do was FILL THE TANKS even if they aren't
empty....when storing the boat for over 5 days. They're all lazy....
Let's take a half-empty 10 gallon gas tank. Half the tank is filled
with liquid gasoline, an odd concoction of heavy elements, like the
shellac you see on the mower's carb throat, and light elements like
octane which gives gas that special explosive zip when the plug goes
off. The heavy elements pretty much stay in liquid form. These are
the same elements diesel fuel is made of. But, the light elements try
their DAMNDEST to escape the liquid we forced them into in the first
place at the refinery. (Note how gas "evaporates", actually vaporizes
into a gaseous state so it'll fire.) That's EXACTLY what's happening
in that half-empty gas tank. The light elements vaporize until the
airspace above them is SO saturated there isn't even enough oxygen
left in the tank to make it explode! (Remember that trick of throwing
a lighted match down the gas tank opening in high school? The match
can't burn inside the gas tank's heavy vapor. The mixture is WAY too
"rich" in fuel vapors to support combustion. Gas tanks don't explode
in accidents UNLESS you crack them OPEN to let the oxygen mix with the
gas....except, of course, in movies.
REFERENCE POINT - USED BY THIS STORY LATER......
Ok, so here's our saturated gas tank, half filled with gas, half
filled with VAPOR. It's morning (yawn). Temp is 40F, the sun rises,
raising the temp higher and higher. If the mower is in a lawn
building, it might get to 130F by 3PM, really HOT! No matter if it
only goes up a few degrees, that damned vapor EXPANDS and causes quite
a pressure if the gas tank is SEALED with no vent. Not to worry,
mower gas tanks all have open vents to prevent pressurization. The
expanding VAPOR, laden with all those LIGHT elements that give the gas
its zip (octane rating) are pushed out of the tank all day.
The sun sets....it's getting colder outside. Dew has formed on the
lawn, on the lawn building, whatever gets cold first....or didn't get
warm enough, like our gas tank full of EVAPORATING (cooling) gas. The
evening air is LOADED with water as it cools. It condenses on
anything. Now, back in the tank, the gas is cooling nicely, as is the
VAPOR on top of it. Just like it expands, VAPOR really contracts,
causing quite a vacuum inside the tank. Not to worry, the open vent
sucks in cool, MOIST outside air to replace the vapors that were
pushed out during the hot day. Oh, oh....wait! The moist air looks
like it's forming a tiny film of WATER on the INSIDE of the cold steel
tank! Look! A few of those droplets have touched and a tiny rivulet
of nearly invisible water slowly falls down the side of the tank. Gas
is lighter than water, so the little drop of water goes UNDER the gas
to puddle up around that OUTLET PIPE on the bottom. What crap is
this? Water comes IN THE GAS, doesn't it? No, water COLLECTS inside
EMPTY GAS TANKS this way! Now we have "WATER IN THE GAS" and will go
storming off to protest at Sunoco to the stunned employees. It wasn't
their fault. There's little or no water in their gas.....mostly.
It's after sunset. The water in the new air inside the tank condensed
on the tank and ran down it.....OR....the government-sponsored,
alcohol-based, corn-farmer-PAC-lobbied, greenie-loving, GASOHOL they
forced us to use DRIED OUT THE NEW AIR because alcohol ABSORBS
WATER....a real problem for the gas-powered boaters in the ocean!
More water collects around the intake pipe.....dammit.
Also, now we have a vapor space above the gas in the tank that is NOT
VAPOR SATURATED. All the while the air is being slowly sucked into
the tank......those light element vapors that give that gas the zip
are BLEEDING OUT OF THE LIQUID GAS INTO THE NOW UNSATURATED AIRSPACE
YOU LEFT above it.
GO BACK UP TO "REFERENCE POINT" and read from there to here, over and
over and over, for every day in the life of your HALF FILLED LAWN
MOWER, outboard motor, generator set, stored old car, and every
half-filled gas can in the shed......
What's left in the tank after 6 months? Heavy elements......looks
like shellac......smells like shit! You turn to the wife who's been
pumping on the recoil starter of the old Sears mower and declare, "The
gas went bad because gas goes bad if you just leave it sit all
winter."
The gas "went bad" because you didn't FILL THE TANK SO IT COULDN'T
BREATHE EVERY DAY!!!
-----------------------------------------(c;
Polyethelene gas tanks are made of Polyethelene molecules which are
HUGE, as molecules go. In between these beasts are GAPS big enough to
drive a LIGHT GAS ELEMENT MOLECULE (that gives gas the zip) through!
Didja ever notice how a completely SEALED plastic gas tank "smells
like gas", no matter what you do to seal it? It's called "migration"
and every plastic gas tank has it. Even a FULL plastic gas tank
slowly, but surely, leaks those ever-important light molecules.....not
as fast as the half filled gas tank above here, but they leak.
The only good poly tank, is a TOTALLY EMPTY poly tank. Gas goes "bad"
in poly tanks and you can't stop it. Lucky for you, poly tank vents
can be SEALED to keep the air out when there are NO GAS VAPORS in
them. Leave them empty and vent all the residual vapors out of them
before sealing them up for storage so they don't act like pipe bombs.
If you'd like to STORE gasoline for your emergency genset, be SURE its
done in a very full STEEL tank old hardware stores still sell because
they are BEST. Mine is a 55-gallon steel DRUM, filled to the brim and
sealed. Gas in it is about 5 years old and smells just like the day I
filled it....same idea as above.....(c;
Larry W4CSC
Is it just me or did the US and UK just capture 1/3
of the world's sweetest oil supply? What idiot wants to
GIVE IT BACK?!!
Let's do what Europeans have been doing for centuries.
DIVIDE UP THE SPOILS OF OUR CONQUEST! Gas will be
$US0.50/US gallon again, STUPIDS!
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