We recently converted a freezer to run as a solar powered refrigerator for our off grid tiny house in order to reduce our energy usage. Here is an update after running a Kill-A-Wall meter on the new solar powered fridge for 24 hours.

 

At first I did not believe my eyes when the meter showed only 90 watts of power being used any time our new freezer/fridge conversion was running. It seems very low power for a fridge but the meter is working well.

 

I wrote down the time that I set up the meter and then came back the next day, exactly 24 hours later and found that we only used 0.32 KWH of power in a day. That is so insane and hard to believe. I had never dreamed of having our solar powered fridge conversion running so very efficient. I had read of other people's success with such a conversion but I could not believe the numbers myself.

 

This means that I could essentially power the fridge with a single 200 watt solar panel in just 1.5 hours of full sunlight. If I use a deep cycle battery I should be able to run the new solar powered fridge with no problem day and night. 300 Watt Hours is nothing at all. That equals about 24 Amp Hours on a deep cycle battery, but you can remove about 1/3 of that at least because the sun is shining half the day. I think the system would use about 12 to 18 Amp Hours at night out of the battery. During the day the fridge will be running on the solar panel.

 

 

A single 100 watt solar panel should be able to handle the job of filling the battery and keeping the fridge running during the daylight hours. At night the battery would do the job itself through an inverter. I think I will try this out later on.

 

Using a top load chest freezer as a refrigerator takes some getting used to because now all of your food is packed on top of one another. This is a bit more work but with the chest freezer/fridge, you dont lose all of your cold air each time you open the lid as you would with a front door fridge.

 

Somehow we managed to get all of the good that we had in our huge fridge inside our new little chest fridge.

 

Our experience with a DIY solar powered chest refrigerator conversion is quite exciting so far. Stay tuned for more updates as we experiment with this using our off grid solar power.

You can get the digital freezer/fridge converstion here: Willhi digital thermostat control

You can watch today's video here:   Solar Powered Freezer Fridge Conversion Updates Use Only 300 WH Per Day

 

While you are over there please subscribe to my YouTube channel and follow our daily videos as we strive to become self sufficient and off the grid on a budget.

 

Feel free to ask any questions or get help with your project on our

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Troy Reid

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