How Long Can You Run a Chest Freezer on a Battery?
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- Опубліковано 7 гру 2021
- I've been wondering the answer to this question so I tested it in real life with a real tracking meter for 30 days and came up with a VERY surprising answer! Plus, I added more relevant details if you actually wanted to try this and showed off some example battery options.
A useful little trick for knowing if a holiday home or off grid cabins freezer has lost power, thawed, then refrozen while it's been unoccupied is to put a coin (or maybe a stainless steel nut, bolt, or washer) in a small zip lock bag then fill that with water. Put the bag in the freezer, and once it's froze solid, flip it over.
If the freezer's been off long enough for the food to thaw before refreezing, the ice in the bag will have melted, and the coin will have sunk back to the bottom of the bag. If the coins still at the top, then any power outages that may have happened weren't long enough for the freezer to get above freezing.
In an ideal world you'd want an alarm that went off the second the freezer wasn't powered, but if some kind of flat battery alarm wasn't available it might be handy to have a basic and almost free method of being able to tell at a glance if your food could have spent a random amount of time at room temperature before it refroze.
they say a deep freeze will keep food frozen for 24 to 48 hours with power off. just add a timer to run your freezer twice a day. that should make your off grid battery backup last for many days without any charge.
WOW! This video is getting mad traction! Thanks, everyone. Also,
Since the numbers seemed so unbelievably high, I looked up the certification for this exact model and they put it at closer to 18 KHW per month so I guess my 14 was pretty accurate. Also I cannot believe I said "the Earth is tilted away from the sun." The northern hemisphere is tilted away from the sun!!!
Here are a few things you might have not considered: DC motor-driven appliances (Fridges and freezers) are close to twice as efficient as AC ...That goes for ceiling fans too. My 4 cubic foot SunFrost fridge/freezer (still for sale from Arcata, California) can run off a single 100 watt solar panel year round (charging a 200 Ah 12 VDC lead acid battery) in the USA South. Efficient fridge/freezers also use a typical 3" -4" layer of polyurethane foam insulation all around. I have been running this setup for 20+ years now. Sometimes cheap appliances can be a false economy... "Penny wise and Pound foolish"
Kd5txo. Or EST Thanks for your comments. What size and brand/ model would you buy for the freezer?And that battery you mentioned, is it a standard car battery, which battery would you buy.? Also same question on the converter, and solar panel?Excuse me wanting specificity but I’m a senior citizen and need a little help in knowing exactly what to buy. Thank you!
Don't strap blankets to your Freezer! ....Many Chest type Freezers use the metal skin on the freezer to radiate heat away. The condenser coil is built into that outer case.....If you can see a radiator on the back of the Freezer or one down near the compressor that has it's own fan then it may be okay to add insulation. Otherwise you'll be adding insulation over your condenser which will not only use more electricity it will very likely burnout your compressor.
Is there an insulation that you would recommend for me? I'm trying to build a icecream truck cooler in the counter and am very very new to all this! Here goes nothing!♡
I run my chest freezer off solar. It is almost 15 yrs old and not very energy efficient but uses only ~80 watts when running. Chest freezers don't have defrost mode and use less energy so it is easier to run on solar.
Thanks for the video very informative
you need around 200w solar panel in reality. but in theory, 50w
We got an inkbird temperature controller from Amazon. Used it to convert our chest freezer to a high energy efficient fridge! Holds a lot, runs off solar too.
Thats the way to go - I'm on grid as long as it's up I live in the deep South with 60% humidity solar panels only put out. 20% of the rated capacity at noon on the rare no cloud days - humidity defuses. Or scatters UV light panels need the UV to excite them -
I don't use much AC at all - for yrs I had used a1930s fridge because they were made to work well in hot climates -
I upgraded to a front loading standard none frost free freezer and installed a refrigiration thermosta's - even last summer when in most of June it was at 100 to 104 degrees every day for a month - every thing was ice cold in that fridge -
Regular frost free fridges only work well in air-conditioned homes - I don't care for the cold & the heat doesn't bother me if it's real hot I just sleep through the heat - you can't do a lot when it's real hot -
I might add this from about 1890 till 1950 in all of rural America for those that had electricity it was 32 volts DC every thing - Sears sold 32 volt DC refrigiraters, freezers, coffee makers, toasters, irons, hot plates, fans, water pumps, radios, washing machines, 32volt to 110volt inverters for TVs and so forth -
There was no grid power in the area I live in till about 1960 - there was an agreement between neighbors that every one would only run there generator all day Friday to charge there house battery's once a week - generators can be noisy - so they agreed to only charge the house battery's on Friday around here -
No one had Air-conditioning of course so people didn't burn a lot of power like in the south today -
Many of those old generators were oil engines instead of gasoline or diesel - a hurricane can knock the power out for a year at times were I'm at there is 7 miles of wire per customer -
I just use 12 volt battery's and a inverter these days - my oil engine turns a truck altenator for charging the battrey's once a week all day Friday lol when the power is out -
Most don't know much about battery technology today but lead acid flooded battery's set up correctly can last an easy 40 to 60 yrs -
I can run my house fan, ceiling fan fridge's ect for around 1 gallon of oil a week or so on my old old oil burning engine lol -
Those old 32 volt farm lighting power plant battery's were generally 7 kw - the lead acid battery's lasted 40 to 60 yrs easy -
I love to know this
@@able880, I would love to see this setup you describe and see it run. Please make a video of this and tell me and others/everyone about it!
Thank you!
The title just happened to catch my eye as I'm working on a similar but improved system. We here in California have brownouts way too often. I not going to get into the politics of this fiasco situation but I've ditched my gas generator in lieu of the new lithium iron phosphate portable power supplies that are dropping in prices weekly. I have a 2000-watt hour system powered by 400 watts of solar on the roof. It will power my 7 cu foot chest freezer ( which is very low power like yours), our main refrigerator, and lights pretty indefinitely with all that solar. In the case of cloudy days I could still pull out the gas generator to charge up the lithium supply. Anyways preparing for the worse this summer as we haven't gotten much rain this season.
Hey, how long would your gas generator take (approx') to charge your batteries?
How many batteries do you have, btw?
Thanks.
Thanks Very Great Useful Video
Having worked for a decade on small electromechanical aboratory equipment, I wouldn't be surprised if the energy specs on your freezer are either somewhat estimated or slightly variable.
Can you recommend an inverter for use with a deep freeze (compressor) so I don't burn it out. It's a 10 cu-ft R600 that draws 1.4A/130 W. Don't want to break the bank. If it has a volt meter built in to monitor the battery that would be a bonus, but not required.
I think the best in the world for that application is this one:
www.renogy.com/700w-12v-pure-sine-wave-inverter/
Which freezer has less electricity consumption?
So im struggling to understand.. you say you can power a regular small freezer on a regular car battery for days?? Im not sure thats right.
Are propane powered fridge/freezers better than 12 volt? Prolonged cost wise?
Sort of. They're terribly inefficient but solar is about 20-25% efficient but sunlight is virtually limitless when it's out. It's something like 1600 watts per square meter or something. Panels + batteries + controllers aren't cheap though.
But a 1000 gallon propane tank onsite can power an entire house for like several weeks from what I hear, depending on temperatures and draw. The chemical energy held in a standard grill is significant (91,502 BTU per gallon) so 430,000 per 20 gallon tank but I think that's 1000 watts for 126 hours. And that's if it was converted into energy flawlessly. But propane electricity generators are loud and expensive and somewhat inefficient.
With my Lead Acid battery bank I never let it drop below 12.2 volts which is around 50% depth of discharge, so a 100amp hour battery is only actually 50amp hour with Lead Acid.
Yeah the 50% thing makes lead acid obsolete now with lifepo that last a ridiculous amount of cycles.
Oh this is cool !
you can't wrap freezer... it gets rid of heat through walls. feel walls when ir runs. you can put insulation on top, but that is all
It varies for freezers. Some have a fan and an air vent to let the hot air out, some have it built into the walls etc. In the case of an air vent with a fan that's okay to wrap as long as the vent isn't covered.
Nah. Wrap the piss outta it. Only one side wall where the compressor is located gets hot,some get really hot, just keep that 4th side uncovered 3 inches from the wall of the room it's in, and wrap it up. Double time of a cold fridge. And if power outage occurs. WHAP THE WHOLE THING.pretty simple stuff here. Lol thanks for sharing 🍸
@@aleksandersats9577 yup, read my post above
You can't use the average power consumption to calculate / match the device to the battery. To get the rated Ah from the battery you must respect that batteries limits for that rating. Use the full power the device uses when its running, and then add batteries in parallel till they are sharing a small enough load to match the recommended Ah power draw to get the rated Ah discharge time.
If anyone is thinking of using deep cycle batteries they are designed for slow discharge. They are good for very small amounts of power draw over long periods. They can produce more power but it will shorten the life and it will not correspond to the rated discharge (Ah) rating. You must put more in parallel if exceeding the recommended power draw if you want a long discharge and healthy batteries.
In very basic terms, if your using a STORAGE battery it is designed for small amounts of power over long periods, if your using a STARTER battery it is the opposite, it is designed for high amounts of power for long periods. Then there are different styles of batteries in-between like marine or leisure. Check the spec and match the load to spec! Add batteries in parallel to get to the amount of power you need for your load. The more in parallel the lower the load on each battery the lower the load the longer the discharge for the same amount of power consumed.
Hope this makes some sense.
The walls of the freezer discharge the heat .If you wrap in blankets you will destroy your freezer !
You could put a car alternater on a exercise bike and charge up the battery
Ty sir
Probably defrost causing the high draw. Most are frost free, automatic.
Those type of freezers generally don't have defrost mode. The reason he's getting 55 watts is because the power draw rises as the compressor runs. It probably never goes all the way up to 135 watts, but after a few minutes the draw probably rises from 55 to somewhere between 80 and maybe 115 watts.
freezers like this should freeze to 0 f for longest best storage of food.
Most freezers actually run in the negative temps
I want to run a 1500 watt heater in my garage just to keep chill off above 32 deg. Is that a good Idea?
It'll be expensive. Like extremely expensive. It's 10x worse if it's not insulated.
How much solar you think i need to charge battery. I was hoping it would be cheap once its set up. My garage is well insulated. @@EmergencySurvivalTips
About 20-30 100 watt rated panels or half that in 200W minimum and some insanely high capacity batteries.
I would have to agree that to expensive. Knipco can run alot for what I want enough to thaw. Thanks@@EmergencySurvivalTips
You mention your hand for scale ⚖️ 🤔 I don't know how big your hand is so it's difficult to use as a reference. IJS lol
42 hrs
Don't do it! You can't cover it with blankets because it will overheat because the condenser is in the walls of the chest freezer and it needs free flowing air to carry away the heat. If you want to make the freezer more efficient, put a fan to blow air on the outside of the freezer.
Aren't they usually vented via a forced air system or on an insulated area near the back? So just insulate everything but the back, not wrap the whole thing? I seriously doubt the metal walls are one giant heatsink via passive conduction when that's the closest part to the inner walls.
@@EmergencySurvivalTips I have two chest freezers where the condenser is not in the back as one would logically assume. They are on the sides, beneath the steel exterior, which makes sense because the back of the freezer is generally placed against a wall where there is little airflow.
This guy is an engineer 90% chance
Nope lol. I do have IT degrees though.
No do not wrap blankets around the freezer, the heat exchanger is built in to the sides of it and must dissipate heat in order to cool the inside.
How long can 1 car battery that's 1,000cca run a 600w Ac without solar panels ?
CCA is solely concurrent power measured as amps of current. 1000 CCA @ 12V which is 12,000 watts continuous. Dunno what kind of device that'd be running but it'd deplete in minutes doing that.
I have the Identical Magic Chef freezer, purchased from Home Depot for slightly over $100. It is labeled on one end, Huge lettering on the warning-CYCLOPENTANE equipped. That is a similar to function of propane and the instructions stated, Do Not Place in Hot Areas! As your garage with 110 ambient temps. Wrapping the exterior is another No-No! Wrapping is Containing the Heat. Obviously you didn't read your instructions of pay attention to logic function.
How long can a mini fridge run on 2x 35 ah batteries
About 24 hours at least if the inverter is efficient.
42 hours
10 watt panel....really bro. I'll send you a few bucks if ya really need it....get a 200 watt panel minimum
I could use a 200 watt panel. LOL! I`m hoping to have enough of my last 2500 disability back pay left after getting my camper up to at least 1940s level to get a 300 amp hour LiFePo4 battery for emergency air conditioning. I`m thinking of getting just a 200 ah and trying to swing another 800 for a second one to match it later to use them in series for a 24 volt system for less cost but on SSI we can`t have more than 2000 in money in the bank or any sort of "assets" besides a home and one form of transportation.
Not sure if they`ll consider the solar power stations I have for my freezer, dorm fridge, lights, etc as assets. For instance, if I owned a car I can`t own a jet ski, boat, etc, or a bike. I can, but if it`s worth 1800 I can only have 200 in the bank. Joe Biden promised to change these draconian rules but lied. Even if I COULD afford to even use a car I can`t save money for repairs or even a new set of tires. So I`m stranded in an extreme rural area of Louisiana and am forced to buy emergency preps. I have to keep reciepts of all my purchases. It`s disgusting to treat any American like this, especially a disabled chronic pain patient. I can`t buy a beer!
You would only need a pure sine inverter for electronics like TVs DVD player computer and other items like that for a fridge or freezer a modified sine inverter is perfect
@@factsarena9960yes that's bad info
I think we have the same freezer 😂
Ooh do you keep bodies in your too? Lol jk. I think this is still sold at Home Depot. Bought it off my friend tho.
@@EmergencySurvivalTips Don’t call me out like that! 😂
This is the only vid not playing for me. Is it down for anyone else or is it true that youtube started silently banning prepper-related content?
It shouldn't be but mobile users always have trouble with audio playing randomly on some videos
According to certain people those Kill-A-Watt meters are not accurate in all cases.
That can be true - I've used high end meters over the yrs in my case I was a third generation generator man - I worked the offshore oilfields and remote mountain oilfields for decades -
From what I'm seeing the kilowatt meters they make today seem to be very accurate - one inverter I have used for 23 yrs now when the grid is down is a modified sign wave inverter - the kilowatt plug in meter gives me an accurate reading - I'm more than aware of each devices current draw in my house so I'm sure I'm getting accurate readings - some of the meters made 20 yrs ago were very inaccurate on modified sign wave or on portable generators because of there wave form -
The battery cannot charge in a couple of minutes,lol
I don't remember what I said in this video but if I said an alternator in a car can charge one quickly, yeah, at 2000 RPM and no limiting circuit, it can charge a battery in minutes.
it was only 55 watts because you had it on medium
? Idk about that
Consider the possibility of actually switching the DC supply on and off. Your freezer is drawing power 30% of the time, but the inverter is running 100% of the time. This means that for 70% of the time the inverter is using power for no purpose.
If the inverter comes on every 20 minutes and stays on for 10 minutes it's cooling should be good and it's wasted power should be minimised, meaning it will run for longer before the battery is flat.