Whistledoc
Veteran Member
Since launching Annie about 6 years ago we have run the refrigerator solely off 110v. We shut down the generator in the evening and the Kenmoore side by side hold temps overnight pretty well except the ice cream gets a little mushy. .When running in the daytime we run the smaller of two gensets to charge batteries, run bilge blowers, and refrigerator. We are spending more days at anchor and don't want to run the generator just for the refrigerator so I am finally getting around to installing an inverter. I decided to experiment at home to see how things would work before doing the boat installation. I purchased one of the Kill-o-watt meters at Lowes and measured the power drain of a similar refrigerator we keep on the back porch just for drinks. It draws about 180 watts running. I purchased a 1500 watt/3000 watt MSW inverter using some arbitrary numbers that I had read. I read that surge load on an induction motor or locked rotor draw was 3-5 times run load. So I assumed that 3000 watt surge load should cover the start up on the compressor. Apparently I have erred somewhere in that when I plug the refrigerator into the inverter it will come on initially but when I come back 30 minutes later the inverter is beeping and has shut down. My conclusion is that the compressor is not happy with the modified sine wave or the surge load is much higher than I anticipated. The Kill-o-watt will not measure the surge peak so I really don't know what it is. Do I need a bigger inverter or a pure sign wave inverter or is there something else I am overlooking?? Forr my experimenting I am using a freshly charged automotive type battery with no charger hooked up.