Residential Refrig on MSW Inverter

[RBlasich]

I have a GE GWE19JLSS refrig that I installed in my '06 Holiday Rambler Scepter earlier this year. My information says it has an inverter in the circuit before the "reciprocator" or "Scotch Yoke" type compressor to allow it to run at a variable speed. It sounds like these types of units may possibly run suitably on my Magnum 2000 watt MSW inverter and may not require a PSW inverter. Can anyone confirm if this is true?
If it needs a PSW inverter, can I just plug this additional inverter into the existing inverter outlet in the refrig compartment, essentially piggy-backed on my current inverter? Thanks in advance for your feedback.

[amosnandy]

Originally Posted by RBlasich

I have a GE GWE19JLSS refrig that I installed in my '06 Holiday Rambler Scepter earlier this year. My information says it has an inverter in the circuit before the "reciprocator" or "Scotch Yoke" type compressor to allow it to run at a variable speed. It sounds like these types of units may possibly run suitably on my Magnum 2000 watt MSW inverter and may not require a PSW inverter. Can anyone confirm if this is true?
If it needs a PSW inverter, can I just plug this additional inverter into the existing inverter outlet in the refrig compartment, essentially piggy-backed on my current inverter? Thanks in advance for your feedback.

Everything I’ve ever learned about MSW inverters is they should not run anything electronic. I don’t know that it would hurt the compressor but it might the electronic control panel. I had a friend who lost his microwave oven to an MSW inverter.

As far as piggybacking I don’t know exactly what you mean. Your inverter puts out 110 V to the outlet behind your refrigerator. An inverter runs off 12 V which means you would either have to add an additional one dedicated to this outlet or just replace the one that you have.

[Persistent]

Amosnandy is correct. No piggy backing. An inverter uses 12 volts DC for input and outputs 120 volts. The old inverter wires to the refer only carry MSW AC 120 volts.

A residential refer is designed to work on grid power. Grid power is pure sine wave with occasional spikes. MSW is "stepped" voltage.

Many devices and especially electronics are un-happy with the stepped wave output. The manufacture of the refer may be able to tell you how the refer is designed to work.

Replace the obsolete MSW inverter with a modern pure sine wave inverter. Replacement will prevent all kinds of problems especially if other appliances may be connected to the inverter.

An inverter of any significant size should be installed near the battery with heavy wire. (See installation instructions.)

A new inverter may be install next to the old inverter if the old one is integrated into other energy management systems. Run 120 volt cable from there to the refer, or use existing 120 volt cable to the refer.

There are lots of possible configurations.

I wish you good luck and happy trails ahead!

[WagonMaster]

The only one I know of is the Samsung RF18. I know for a fact it will run quite nicely on a MSW inverter. Maybe the GE has the same type of compressor. Otherwise I'd run it on the pure sine wave inverter.....they don't pull that much current.

On edit: This is an interesting article on the Samsung compressor..

https://news.samsung.com/global/the-...ds-200-million

[paul65k]

Originally Posted by amosnandy

Everything I’ve ever learned about MSW inverters is they should not run anything electronic. .

Candidly this has been said over and over for many years but many devices have been running for more than 20 years on factory-installed MSW inverters, including televisions and microwave ovens.

In any case, the new inverter-style refrigerators do by definition turn whatever signal it receives into a pure sine wave to run the compressor. This is also true if you are using an AC/DC power brick to charge your computing devices.

I ran the same model GE refrigerator for almost a year and the microwave for almost 20 years with the factory MSW inverter before upgrading and rewiring last year when we replaced it with dual PSW inverters and set up all circuits in the coach to run from the inverters.

[astrnmrtom]

Our Fisher & Paykel refrigerator ran fine on our old Heart MSW inverter. Some of the newer refrigerators have their own built in inverter, but in this case, it's a 110ac to 12vdc inverter. The compressors are DC. So all of the internal electronics are running off filtered and regulated DC from the built in inverter.

I did upgrade to a PSW inverter because our newer microwave wouldn't heat using the old inverter.