DC/AC Converter

[Oldgreystallion]

My Jayco 8U didn't come with a fridge but I have one of those little dorm fridges that runs on AC, doesn't draw much current (need to check for exact current/wattage) and I'm wondering if I could get one of the DC/AC converters to run it off the TV/RV battery power while on the move.
Anybody ever try this?

[lx22f/c]

I believe what you need is a Inverter.
Yes you can run it while traveling a lot of people are installing residential fridges when theirs crap out. Good luck

[RoyBraddy]

I would imagine those will run around 100WATTS maybe less. You would need around 8-10AMPs of 12VDC power to run one.

I saw some new dorm type fridges the other day at the stores that were 120VAC and 12VDC models... They were called thermoelectric which means I guess no compressor...

The problem of course is going to be your battery bank having enough AHs capacity to run these things between re-charge times... My battery bank on my off-road popup is 255AH and I can draw around 20AMPS continuous for about four hours and then a constant drain of around 1AMP for parasitic drains in my trailer for the rest of a night and this will run down my battery to around 12.0VDC by 8AM the next morning. Then I have to to re-charge my battery back up to at least 90% charge state by using my 2KW generator and smart mode charging technology in as little as three hours of generator run time so I can do all of this all over again the next day/night run off my batteries..

So you need to find out how many watts your small fridge will draw at 120VAC and if it is around 100-120WATTS then I would use at least a 300WATT Pure Sine Wave Inverter to operate the small fridge. The next problem will be is your battery bank large enough to run this much load for several hours without running down. You will need to look up your battery specs and see how long it produce 10AMPs or so before going below 50% charge state. You don't want to run your battery down below 12.0VDC before recharging back up to the 90% charge state otherwise you start doing harm to your deep cycle battery... A typical 85AH GP24 battery will produce 25AMPS for about 140minutes (2.3 hours) but that is totally draining the battery so you would only want to drain around 12AMPS of that for about the 2.3 hours to be safe.... Two GP 24 batteries will increase this to around 4 hours at 12AMPS drain just to be safe. So possibly you are looking at two GP24 batteries in parallel to run your fridge for just over 4 hours running from a 300WATT PSW Inverter... It works out something like this....

A 5-day ice chest might be the best way to solve this situation... We pack up our 5-day ice chest and place all of our food we want to keep in a large flat plastic container on top of the ice to keep from getting water logged and it does us just fine when in travel mode.

Just my toughts
Roy Ken

[Oldgreystallion]

Thanks for the tech details, I'll check it out.