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In our kitchen is a 20 cubic foot upright freezer on a Johnson Controls external thermometer, that we use as a fridge. Opens to the front like a regular fridge. I installed it new within this year. I have a thread about off grid refrigeration here somewhere.
Most of the studies I've seen use a chest freezer with that control because they hold the cold in better when the door is opened. I'd be curious how that works out watt hour wise compared to a normal Energy Star fridge.....many of them are now in the 1.5kwhr/day range.
Most of the studies I've seen use a chest freezer with that control because they hold the cold in better when the door is opened. I'd be curious how that works out watt hour wise compared to a normal Energy Star fridge.....many of them are now in the 1.5kwhr/day range.
Not sure about studies. No doubt a chest freezer would be more efficient, but I am 71 and the wife is 69, so bending over a chest freezer is not in the cards.
Freezers have much better insulation than refrigerators. The insulation can't be that expensive, so it puzzles me why they just don't increase it. Maybe they have, I don't know. Our fridge (an upright freezer) is not self defrosting. It has no top freezer (it IS a freezer). It has no interior light, which is fine as I added an LED light with a door switch. Pretty simple and cheap.
This unit uses far less power than our former 20 cubic foot regular fridge.
it is very rare to see an upright fridge with more than 1" thick sides. Even in the age of Energy Star fridges. Some folks add insulation but there is a risk that one may be trapping an area that is used to "breathe" - exchange thermal energy.
We could easily do so much more in the energy conservation area. Like allowing TV screens to be blacked out when the participant leaves the room, talks on the phone etc. The list goes on and on and on.
I just got an energy bill from someone in Cape Coral, FL that averages over 30 kWh/energy usage every day of the year. Which pales to Al Gore of course.
This unit uses far less power than our former 20 cubic foot regular fridge.
So how much is 'far less' and how are you measuring it ?
We replaced a 22cf side-by-side of mid 90's vintage that used 1200kwhrs/yr with an energy star 25cf bottom freezer, double top door model a few years back that uses 650kwhrs/yr....that is less than 2kwhrs/day. (Those numbers from the 'yellow' tags)
Newer models DO use more insulation, and foam insulation instead of fiberglass, the compressors are more efficient, and the interior lighting is LED.
I just got an energy bill from someone in Cape Coral, FL that averages over 30 kWh/energy usage every day of the year. Which pales to Al Gore of course.
Our use last month was 722kwhrs.....and we have 4 chest freezers running (another 4 that are currently empty)
Modern refrigerators use more energy to keep the unit frostless than it does for creating refrigeration. Not only does the heating element run about 600 watts, it raises the temperature in the compartments that later has to be re-cooled when the defrosting cycles are over. That is the primary reason why chest freezers are so much more energy efficient right off the bat. The other freezer savings come from superior insulation, and all the cold doesn't "fall out" every time the door is opened. An upright freezer would still be more energy efficient than a standard fridge but it will use more power than a chest model depending on how many times it's opened, but I can definitely understand not wanting to bend over.
Also, If you are using your chest freezer for a freezer, the food will take much longer to show signs of freezer burn compared to the freezer in your standard refrigerator.
I'm still using a deep freezer for my off grid refrigerator, albeit a bigger one now . I have the bottom filled with frozen salt water 5 gallon jugs ( as recommended by nor'eastah! ). I have a bunch of hanging shelves and can keep colder stuff on top of the frozen jugs which act as a bottom shelf of sorts, keeping the reaching down to a minimum.
I ditched the external thermostat I used to keep the freezer at a refrigerator temp. It would turn on and off too frequently, and since my solar system was smaller at the time I didn't like the unexpected big draws. I now just run it on full blast once or twice a day for 30 minutes or so. I've left it alone without power for up to 5 days at a time and come home to a perfectly cold "fridge".
Happy in Wyoming also mentioned his nice ice house in the above thread. I have built something somewhat similar, I dug a 4 foot deep hole and lined the top with a box made of 2x's. I then tightly fitted a piece of insulation board attached to plywood for the cover. It stays very cool all summer long and in the winter acts a super deep freezer. Only problem is that one is a PITA to access.
I installed an 11kw solar system in stages from 2.1kw to present. 6kw of it is grid tied, with battery backup. Battery is a 1200amp/hr 24v pack of 12/2v AGM units. The remaining 5kw is grid tie only using Enphase microinverters.
Battery:
Twin 2500w Outback inverters:
Some of the panel arrays:
Adding on recently to the ground mounted section of the system:
100amp manual transfer switch in garage. Runs circuits in subpanel to the left that are normally on grid when we switch to solar only.
That is quite the nice set up! Thanks for sharing the pics. And here I thought my set up was getting nicely sized with my 1000 watts of panels and six batteries .
Has anyone made their inverter generator even more quiet? Or made any generator come close to silent?
Even quiet inverter type generators can carry sound for surprisingly long distances in the right conditions.
I've made boxes and even an underground box (with air intakes and exhaust) with limited success. They have quieted it down somewhat, but it's still noticeable sound. These generators like a lot of fresh clean air and it seems to create problems for me too.
They also don't seem to run well in super cold temps.
Nor'eastah, how does your propane Honda inverter run in the winter time? I've thought about converting my old one over to propane. Any problems with the propane being too cold to flow?
You probably already know this but others may not, the same size generator will produce less watts running full blast on propane than it will on gasoline, and it will burn through the propane at a faster rate (compared to gas) to achieve that loss. Results vary, but I've read 10-25% less watts. I don't know about the extra propane consumption.
Propane is less energy-dense than gasoline, so it all boils down to physics.
Putting a generator at the bottom of a dug-out hole and then surrounding the hole with sand bags is a trick the military has used to dampen the sound, premature generator death by overheating is a potential issue, but as one guy told me, it wasn't coming out of his paycheck. These were diesel generators, which may be more heat-tolerant than gasoline.
Last edited by terracore; 04-18-2019 at 09:04 PM..
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. I have the bottom filled with frozen salt water 5 gallon jugs ( as recommended by nor'eastah! ). I have a bunch of hanging shelves and can keep colder stuff on top of the frozen jugs which act as a bottom shelf of sorts, keeping the reaching down to a minimum.
