Under Construction

We wanted a refrigerator of around 3 cu ft with a large freezer. We didn’t have much luck finding a 12v fridge with an acceptably sized freezer. I really liked the 62-quart Whynter FM-62DZ Dual Zone Portable Refrigerator/Freezer. This fridge/freezer has two compartments, one larger than the other. You get to pick whether each compartment is a fridge or a freezer. My problem was that it is a chest style requiring access from the top. While this is the most energy efficient style, it really imposes severe limits on the van layout.

We were in Home Depot one day and saw a GE GDE03GLHLB fridge/freezer on sale for $289 as I recall. It was the perfect size and the freezer (behind a separate door) was bigger than anything we had seen in the 12v world. It was Energy Star rated at 321 kwh/year which averages out to 36 watts continuous. We figured at that price compared to the high-dollar Danfoss 12v options we were willing to roll the dice. We haven’t been sorry. The fridge label says that it draws 0.89 Amps at 115VAC. That works out to 102w. This is probably on startup. I measured with a Kill-A-Watt meter and it draws right around 65w when running. When the van is parked in our carport so no sunlight can get to the solar panels, we drop about 6% per day on our 4608wh LiFePo4 battery bank. That works out to just 12w continuous. We do live in a beautiful micro climate just a few hundred yards from the Pacific Ocean where the temperature generally doesn’t get much above the low 70Fs. I was a little concerned about the robustness of the compressor designed for a dorm room or bar bouncing around in a van down rough dirt roads, but up to this point it hasn’t been a problem.