http://www.facebook.com/pages/Derry-NH/Freedom-Renewable-Energy/144637162085
(I was using ice before he suggested I use all the great things I had hanging around.) I soldered lugs on the ends of the positive and negative wires and put a 15 amp fuse in line on the positive lead. It take very very little energy to run this pup...I'm shocked. I let it go all night and when I check the battery status on the Xantrax in the morning it's STILL on the highest green light. By the morning I plug in the charger and it only takes a couple minutes to top off the Xantrax!!!!! Holy cow...great insulation on the fridge!!! Let me back up a few steps and tell you why I don't have a "real" fridge.
A couple weeks ago our beautiful 16.8 Energy Star Whirlpool Fridge died...it's a little less than two years old. Mike, our neighbor from Mike's Appliance diagnosed it as DOA and had me check the warranty..of course as Murphy would have it, the warranty was good only for a year. It had a major problem and would have not been worth the money to have it fixed...what a bummer. Our intention was to replace our fridge WHEN it died with a DC Fridge we could run off our solar battery bank...we just were not prepared to have to replace it so soon. We don't expect to be without our off grid system for too much longer so we are trying to do our best to live out of a 1.8 Sundanzer DC Fridge. Once we have the solar controller wired back up and the battery bank charging once again we'll convert the mini fridge to a freezer (you can do that with Sundanzers) and we'll hook up the 5.8 cu. ft.Sundanzer freezer as a fridge...I'm hoping it won't be too much longer. I have the temperature conversion kits and it's a fairly simple changeover.
I do have to admit there has been a very positive side to running such a tiny fridge...no food waste. It's so small I have to plan out every little bit we eat because there is so little room for leftovers. I have the smallest containers of basic condiments I could find at the grocery store, and the smallest size oj, eggs, tubs of butter and miso. Luckily I'm able to pick some lettuce from my garden but I have black calamata olives, roasted red peppers and a green pepper that is crammed in there. We can only fit two bottles of beer and two diet cokes at a time so we replace them as soon as we take one out.
Mark called today to say they'd be swinging by to pick up the DC load center so they could wire it at the shop. It's my lifeline. During the bad thunderstorms this weekend and our tornado watch I told my husband that if we lost power I could always run wire into the load center box, solar controller and to the battery. It seems every time the wind blows or there is a thunderstorm there is a high probability we'll lose power here, since our battery bank has been disconnected a couple months ago we've lost power a couple of times. After talking to Mike I realize it's a really good idea...they'll set it up at the shop and make short connectors where I had cold solder joints and they'll test it out and the set up here will go quickly and smoothly.
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| My lifeline...the DC load Center Box. Top Photo is with the cover off, three shunts will measure three different loads. The middle photo show the FlexNet, the brains/electronics for the battery bank health, wind amps, inverter and dc appliance loads. Bottom photo is the cover with breakers. |
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