simple request for fridge that can be hooked up to solar power and how to do it

[DaveSnafu]

I am also looking to replace our siber fridge freezer, it uses 4 big bottles of gas a year @ £57.50 a bottle, the price has tripled in 10 years and will only go up.
It ran out of gas in the summer and I plugged it into the inverter power, on the 1st day it used 11kwh, 2nd day 7kwh 3rd day 5 kwh and then settled down to 4.5-5kwh, I deduced it was a bit of a monster and went and bought a gas bottle.
There do not appear to be many models of AAA rated fridge freezers on the market, and they are 2-3 times the cost of A rated, the difference in consumption is quite marked as well, the best I have found use 140kwh a year, which I think we can manage, they are costly @ £600 ish.
Looking on the internet at all the likely contenders sites I can only conclude that there is a warehouse full of fridges with dozens of appliance retailers trying to sell them.
A bit like the "economy" its a bit made up.

[SimonHobson]

Ooh - like this idea.  I have a fairly hefty APC UPS that will soon become redundant.  I wonder if this might be a basis for powering a Solar Voltaic charged, whole house LED lighting circuit.....  Free lighting appeals to me.  Thinking about it, I'd actually be better making the lighting circuit low voltage due to the conversion losses, ...

Possibly not. Even running LEDs, the currents at 12V soon add up, and you'll need hefty cables to avoid excessive voltage drops. Lose a volt or two off the mains and it's negligible - lose a volt or two off 12V and your LEDs will notice. Also consider if you'll have other stuff that will still need 240V AC - time clocks, etc, etc. If you still have those, then you'd still be running an inverter to be off grid, so you might as well use it to run the lights - and you'll still have a choice of a full range of off the shelf light fittings rather than the much smaller range of stuff that's suitable for 12V only.

From the finance POV, if you are on-grid then export the PV output and take the FIT - it'll be financially much better than trying to run part of the house on PV and some on the grid.

[eabadger]

Those absorption fridges gas/mains/batt, use heat to cool, on main it is a heating element, very poor economy.
We are off grid and have a very large deep freeze, a full size 12 year old fridge freezer and 4 kids, play stations lights dvd’d etc, we are averaging 5.5kwh per day all in.

I always wanted to play with an absorption fridge, directly heat the liquid with say a magnifying glass device, free cooling!! Neat idea in africa, no? didnt Einstine invent them? clever cooling with some dangerouse liquids.



Did have an issue with the fridge freezer, fancy electronic thermostat (bocsh) kept the inverter from going in to standby, this did drink the juice, inverter overhead current was 5a.
Got off ebay a cold room thermostat for £5, came from Bulgaria! Fitted probe on evaporator in freezer, small hole through the insulation, fitted thermostat to break mains when at -22*, works a treat.


steve

[Simes123]

Possibly not. Even running LEDs, the currents at 12V soon add up, and you'll need hefty cables to avoid excessive voltage drops. Lose a volt or two off the mains and it's negligible - lose a volt or two off 12V and your LEDs will notice. Also consider if you'll have other stuff that will still need 240V AC - time clocks, etc, etc. If you still have those, then you'd still be running an inverter to be off grid, so you might as well use it to run the lights - and you'll still have a choice of a full range of off the shelf light fittings rather than the much smaller range of stuff that's suitable for 12V only.

From the finance POV, if you are on-grid then export the PV output and take the FIT - it'll be financially much better than trying to run part of the house on PV and some on the grid.

Yes, thanks - I realised my gaff in the other post about low voltage circuits.  I will be on-grid, but it will be a while before my capital reserves build up again following the house purchase, so a full FIT qualifying install is out of my reach just now.  Though I'd be prepared to stomach the costs of just doing the lighting for now.  I've also read that UPS's don't make great long term inverters, so perhaps back to the drawing board there too.