Nov. 11, 2017
Woke up at 8am
Today was a very rainy day. I was not able to go out to the land and get anything done. So I finished catching up on paperwork and researched some items for ordering online. Managed to pick up this little beauty from Bestbuy on sale.
Hope it will work well with the solar panels, and not eat up too much energy. I guess we will see.
Once this was finished I went out to go watch the new Thor movie. All in all, it was not a bad film. Had the typical Marvel explosions and action scenes fans have grown accustomed to over the years. Most of the films seem to be just setting up for the next one. I’m no movie critic, but it seems that they are starting to get a bit repetitive. After the movies, I went over to home depot to price some more items before returning back home for a nice relaxing day off.
Munky's Hawaiian Adventure 
Hi,
It is a nice project you got yourself here! However your fridge choice makes me wonder if you have done much research about solar and off-grid power systems… Do you know how much wattage you will get in solar pannels? Unless you plan to get so much that waste is not an issue, I think this fridge is a really bad idea, because it cumulates everything you wouldn’t want (ideally) in an off-grid fridge: inefficient components (you won’t get the good ones in a cheap fridge), poorly insulated with all the losses from the glass door, and 110V (rather than 12V) meaning you will need to have your inverter running 24/7 (wasting a lot of power) and will get a big draw on your batteries whenever the compressor kicks in.
Unless you have done your research and know what you are doing, you might want to return the fridge or try to sell it before it gets too old… A good fridge can be very expensive (especially the 12V ones!), but the fridge will probably be your biggest power consumption so it might be worth not scrimping too much on it if it ultimately saves you money on batteries and downsizing of your electrical system (where good high-capacity components such as solar controllers and inverters are very expensive too!).
Bob
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Hello Bob,
Cheers for the comment. The fridge choice, I must say, was out of pure desperation. We were planning on going with the 12v fridge right away but due to the baby on the way, our finances for the home build changed dramatically. The fridge I purchased was only to get me by during the build.
I bought two 285W panels with 1000W inverter and an OUTBACK POWER ENERGYCELL 200GH, 12V 191AH AGM BATTERY. I will be going over the whole hookup situation with breakers, cables,
and controller set up on a later post, so please continue following along.
We found out about the baby once all the flights were booked and everything was pretty much planned out already. So there were a lot of things that were changed at the last minute. One of them happened to be that we will go with the 12V once we are ready to move into the home. This being later down the road. I was using an ice chest at first, but the Hawaiian heat was just too much for what I needed, and going out to eat was starting to take it’s toll on the budget as well. I knew during the build I would only need the Solar panel system to charge my batteries overnight, so waste was not an issue during this time. I do plan on selling this one once the home is finished and we are ready to move in.
Again, I thank you for your concern and I look forward to hearing any other tips or ideas you might have to help me along this journey.
Munky
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Your two panels are plenty of power, and since you have limited needs the fridge can work as a temporary measure as long as you don’t have much else as you would in a normal (tiny) house. I bet your battery gets full pretty quickly in the day, but do you know how much of it is used between dawn and morning, when your panels can’t power the fridge (and charge your tools’ batteries)? It would be a pity to damage the battery by depleting it too much to run the fridge (I assume you have done your homework and know that you’re not supposed to deplete batteries too much!), maybe you can find some cheap insulation to save on nightly power use, and there are probably some other ways to save some more power.
My first post might have seemed a bit patronizing and I apologize for that: you seem to have things pretty much figured out!
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Hey Bob,
For the two months I had it running I only managed to deplete the battery 1 time and that was due to it raining for 4 days in a row. At this point I did have to turn it off and go back to the cooler. The sun came back out after about 4 more days and I was able to get everything running smooth once more.
In hind sight, the insulation idea would have probably worked out rather well. The build portion with me living at the sight has passed and we are currently in a rental
home now, so We no longer will need the fridge. All in all, it wasn’t the smartest or most efficient way to go but it did what I needed and I am glad it ended up working out. We will be selling it soon and getting ready to start doing al the wiring for the home shortly.
Please keep a look out for these updates.
Thanks for visiting my site and I hope to hear more suggestions down the line.
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