Dedicated Res Fridge Inverter

[Scottybdivin]

Originally Posted by Wryly Blithe

Twinboat, that was an impressive demonstration of reasoned intuition.

The rig does in fact come oem with a MSW, not a PSW. .. I never thought of looking before, and it never occurred to me to ask. Not only does it explain why the fridge is shore power / generator only, it also explains why the TV's have their own 400w inverter - I'm betting it's a PSW.

Well, this opens up a whole new can of worms. Looks like I'll be shopping around for a new 3000w PSW inverter. I don't suppose anyone would be interested in a pre-owned MSW inverter that was only driven to RV resorts on Sundays, hmmm?

Wryly, my 07 has the factory total electric option. It came from the factory with the Magnum ME 3112 MSW inverter. Everything in the coach, except the cook top and AC's, are connected to the MSW inverter. Strangely, it came with a Norcold fridge that ran on AC only, which we replaced when we bought the rig. The 1st time the inverter gives me any trouble, I will replace it with a Magnum PSW.

[Wryly Blithe]

@Twinboat: I had the same thought as I was shopping around earlier looking at $1k +/- for a new 3000w unit. Under $200 wouldn't be that big a deal while we're deciding what the best option is for the future.

@gemini5362: the fridge is an Electrolux IQ-Touch with a fairly sophisticated touch-screen interface on it (not exactly what I would have chosen, but... there it is ) I get your point about the rectifier protection and if I had more confidence in what I was doing I'd probably not worry like you. But as a newbie, I don't wanna risk damaging the panel, and I don't wanna get out there to find out it doesn't work.

@Scottybdivin: I get what you mean about the appliances - on ours they've all been replaced with new units - induction cooktop, mic / convection combo over, fridge, DW, etc. I'm concerned about the new appliances working reliably on a 10+ year-old MSW inverter. We'll just have to see...

Thanks everyone!!!

[gemini5362]

Originally Posted by Wryly Blithe

@Twinboat: I had the same thought as I was shopping around earlier looking at $1k +/- for a new 3000w unit. Under $200 wouldn't be that big a deal while we're deciding what the best option is for the future.

@gemini5362: the fridge is an Electrolux IQ-Touch with a fairly sophisticated touch-screen interface on it (not exactly what I would have chosen, but... there it is ) I get your point about the rectifier protection and if I had more confidence in what I was doing I'd probably not worry like you. But as a newbie, I don't wanna risk damaging the panel, and I don't wanna get out there to find out it doesn't work.

@Scottybdivin: I get what you mean about the appliances - on ours they've all been replaced with new units - induction cooktop, mic / convection combo over, fridge, DW, etc. I'm concerned about the new appliances working reliably on a 10+ year-old MSW inverter. We'll just have to see...

Thanks everyone!!!

Sophisticated touch screens products are not all that cheap to replace usually. I dont blame you for being a bit leary. Like I said i plug my computer into the MSW inverter to run but i do not worry because everything is converterd into DC before it gets to the circuitry. It does not hurt to be safer than sorry.

[Mr_D]

Originally Posted by Wryly Blithe

Chaffeekid, solar is definitely in our plans. What I don't know at this point is how much power this all-electric coach actually pulls and how long the batteries will support it. I've done all the math of power draw and amp hours that I know of, but real world use doesn't always produce the same results.

So, solar... yes. Absolutely. Probably four 100w panels. Extra batteries, maybe.. if we need them. The wife is kind of a girly-girl, which means hairdryers and curling irons and straighteners and... I don't even know what-all

We won't know definitively until we get out there and start using it. Until then, it'll be a lot of fun figuring it out.

Thanks!

Our 2000 DSDP had the 2000 watt inverter and 4 U-2200 batteries. We never got around to getting an apartment refer. All plugins were powered off the inverter too. Still, we would have to run the gen set for 2 hrs in the morning and 2 more hrs before quiet time.

Going to watch this thread to see if I can learn some about power. The Magna has 4-100 watt solar panes, 4 -8D AGM batteries for the house and 4 - 950 CCA starting batteries and a 12.5KW gen. Still trying to figure out the boondocking end of it.

[Wryly Blithe]

Assuming I get a secondary PSW inverter, how big should it be? I think it was Twinboat that suggested 600w, but this is a huge refrigerator... not sure that's gonna cut it.

But I can't find anything in the manuals or spec sheets online that says "it uses this many watts." The only thing I can find regarding power is this:

Connected Load (kW Rating) @ 120 Volts: 1.02

I think that means it uses 1020 watts... but doesn't that seem really high? I'm not familiar with how this rating is reported, so I think I'm probably just not reading that right.

Thanks everyone!

p.s You're welcome to look for yourselves if you'd like... see if I missed something:
Electrolux IQ-Touch Series EI23BC35KS

[twinboat]

For 20 bucks, buy a kill A Watt, watt meter and plug it in, to see the draw.

It is a handy tool to check anything you want to run off your inverter. It helps calculate your energy budget.

I would think the 1020 watt figure would be the startup load. Make sure the inverter surge capacity meets that.

[Wryly Blithe]

@Twinboat - yeah, a Kill-A-Watt is on my list. Just gonna have to experiment for awhile to see what's what and go from there.

You've been a big help, thank you!

[Gilleshps]

Sounds like a pretty fancy fridge, if you really want to know how many amp hours your coach uses while boondocking I would highly recommend installing a "battery monitor". Look up bogart engineering (trimetric 2030) with the 500 amp shunt. It'll cost you about $200 installing it yourself and worth every penny!

Also I wouldn't put anything smaller than a 1000watt dedicated inverter for a few extra bucks over a 600watt. If your fridge draws 1 amp on 120v that's 10amps inverting from 12v.

Here's a pic of the battery monitor.




They make a surface mount (2030RV) above, and a flush mount (2030A)

[Wryly Blithe]

Originally Posted by Gilleshps

Sounds like a pretty fancy fridge...

Honestly, it's way more fridge than we need for an RV, but the coach was remodeled around it so it stays

I had toyed with the idea of swapping it out for something simpler, but the new fridge we just bought for our stix-n-brix is very similar - so trading them doesn't do any good - and I'm not buying a new one just to have to go through the headache of un-installling, re-installing and then selling this one on eBay or Cragislist or whatever. Too much hassle; too little return.

I do have a lot of homework to do, but I am still considering adding just a smaller (1000w?) dedicated PSW inverter for the fridge. The other option is to simply bump up the whole system to a 3000w PSW when we add solar. Problem is that ain't cheap, and after paying cash for the rig I have a limited budget for upgrades - and new tires are taking up most of that.

Looks like we won't be boondocking as much as I had hoped - at least not for awhile. That's fine - the DW isn't so crazy about camping out in the middle of nowhere anyway... she's a full hookups / resort kind of girly-girl

[twinboat]

Gilleshps said:
"If your fridge draws 1 amp on 120v that's 10 amps inverting from 12v."

OK, that 120 watts. Amp × volts = watts.

[Gilleshps]

Originally Posted by twinboat

Gilleshps said:
"If your fridge draws 1 amp on 120v that's 10 amps inverting from 12v."

OK, that 120 watts. Amp × volts = watts.

Correct so 1000 watts

[Gilleshps]

Originally Posted by Wryly Blithe

Honestly, it's way more fridge than we need for an RV, but the coach was remodeled around it so it stays

I had toyed with the idea of swapping it out for something simpler, but the new fridge we just bought for our stix-n-brix is very similar - so trading them doesn't do any good - and I'm not buying a new one just to have to go through the headache of un-installling, re-installing and then selling this one on eBay or Cragislist or whatever. Too much hassle; too little return.

I do have a lot of homework to do, but I am still considering adding just a smaller (1000w?) dedicated PSW inverter for the fridge. The other option is to simply bump up the whole system to a 3000w PSW when we add solar. Problem is that ain't cheap, and after paying cash for the rig I have a limited budget for upgrades - and new tires are taking up most of that.

Looks like we won't be boondocking as much as I had hoped - at least not for awhile. That's fine - the DW isn't so crazy about camping out in the middle of nowhere anyway... she's a full hookups / resort kind of girly-girl

The problem with running the main inverter is everything that is plugged in (TV's microwave etc) will draw a phantom load. Even when they're off so IMO, I would just use a dedicated inverter for the fridge and save that high dollar inverter for larger loads when needed.

[Darrel]

I am currently replacing my failed Norcold with a residential model (AMANA model ART104tfdb). I just measured the 12V draw with the refigerator running. It measured 18 amps. 18amps X 12Volts is only 216 Watts!

Have a nice day - Darrel

[Wryly Blithe]

Originally Posted by Darrel

I just measured the 12V draw with the refigerator running. It measured 18 amps. 18amps X 12Volts is only 216 Watts!

Have a nice day - Darrel

That's around what I would expect the wattage to be, Darrel, but I'm getting hung up on the spec sheet for our fridge:

Connected Load (kW Rating) @ 120 Volts: 1.02

The way I read this is that it's 1.02 KILOwatts... or 1020 watts. Am I not reading it right? Someone earlier suggested that it might be the start-up power draw, which would make sense - it would put it's normal run-time power draw somewhere around what you reported - but there's no mention of it anywhere in the manuals I can find.

It's a head scratcher, but that's the fun part