Spare solar power to run fridge?

Owlhouse

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Once my solar has topped up my battery could it then be used to power the (3 way) fridge to save gas? I haven’t yet seen anyone doing it or method if it can be done.
 
If I turn on my inverter, it makes all the van think it's on EHU and the fridge automatically switches to electric.
Can't help with how the inverter was wired though.
 
Owlhouse said:
Once my solar has topped up my battery could it then be used to power the (3 way) fridge to save gas? I haven’t yet seen anyone doing it or method if it can be done.
Click to expand...
Lots of folk have done that in fact.
There are certain vans that are setup in the factory to do that.
For others, if you have a a fridge that has AES (Automatic Energy Selection), you can do a setup where an inverter will switch on, or a mains relay will enable, when the battery is at a certain state of charge and then turn off again when the battery has dropped to a certain lower state of charge.
You can also use the same principle to heat the hot water via AC rather than Gas. This is what I do in my Motorhome if I have spare power, as my Fridge/Freezer is all-electric

If you want to read a bit more, you can check out the following Blog entry on my website which goes into some detail. Note this was written some years go before I changed my fridge from a 3-way to a Compressor model, so does discuss Fridge and Water.

Control Power to Fridge based on Battery Level​




PS. For anyone who says using an inverter is inefficient, wasting say 10% of power by converting 12V to 240V is going to be a lot more efficient than wasting 100% of excess solar power by having no route for it to be used.
 
Last edited:
wildebus said:
Lots of folk have done that in fact.
There are certain vans that are setup in the factory to do that.
For others, if you have a a fridge that has AES (Automatic Energy Selection), you can do a setup where an inverter will switch on, or a mains relay will enable, when the battery is at a certain state of charge and then turn off again when the battery has dropped to a certain lower state of charge.
You can also use the same principle to heat the hot water via AC rather than Gas. This is what I do in my Motorhome if I have spare power, as my Fridge/Freezer is all-electric

If you want to read a bit more, you can check out the following Blog entry on my website which goes into some detail. Note this was written some years go before I changed my fridge from a 3-way to a Compressor model, so does discuss Fridge and Water.

Control Power to Fridge based on Battery Level​




PS. For anyone who says using an inverter is inefficient, wasting say 10% of power by converting 12V to 240V is going to be a lot more efficient than wasting 100% of excess solar power by having no route for it to be used.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the info - I knew it was possible but wasn’t sure how to do it 😎
 
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