Convert Fridge to AC/DC?

[Ben Campbell]

The fridge on my Bene31 is DC only. The fridge can take over 24 hours to chill down, especially when full of drinks, so we tend to leave it on. But lately we’ve had problem with shore power reliability, and more than once we’ve arrived at the marina to find our house batteries fully discharged. (Ouch)

Has anyone converted a DC fridge to AC/DC, so it can run off AC when on shore power instead of loading the batteries/battery charger? That way, if we lost shore power we might find our beer has gotten warm, but at least we wouldn’t have run the batteries all the way down.

Automatic switching would be nice, but I could live with manual switching. (And I half expect that the existing DC fridge might use an internal inverter…)

Thanks!

Ben.

[Curaçao]

You might consider installing a small dedicated refer battery and charger that you can manually switch into parallel with the house banks for extended cruising. That way on short power outages the beer will stay cold and you don't have to mess with the refer.

Michael Elliott

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[Dakota881]

You would just need a 12volt power supply that has enough wattage to handle the refig. and a switch that both disconnects the battery's and connects the power supply at the same time that way it one or the other. then before you leave the boat just switch it to the power supply and when you return switch it to batteries.

[Btbogdan46]

Your fridge depends on AC for keeping things cold when you are at the dock. When you are plugged in the batteries run the frig, but the battery charger will charge the batteries. If you dock AC is not reliable, you are basically screwed, unless you install solar or wind power. That is what we did. But we are liveaboards and before that did long distance cruising. Try getting flexible panels that can charge your batteries. Figure that when the frig is running, it draws 4 amps and it may run 20 minutes an hour. If you have a freeze, add another 4 amps. Then get enough solar panels to slightly exceed your needs. You could set it up as a temporary plugin setup that is removed when you are onboard. 

On Tuesday, June 20, 2017 at 2:14:10 AM UTC-4, DancingDays wrote:

[Jonathan B.]

Our neighbor in our marina just installed a low-voltage disconnect for this very reason.  The last time our power failed, it kicked in exactly as expected.  I don't have any personal experience with it, but we are considering installing one just in case.  (It's certainly cheaper than replacing the house batteries.)

I did a quick search, and I found the one I believe he is using:  https://powerwerx.com/low-voltage-disconnect-battery-guard

Cheers,

Jonathan 

S/V Callinectes

Annapolis, MD

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[Paul Schwab]

We have an adler-barbour compressor with an optional AC/DC control module. Runs on AC when it is available and switches to the DC house bank when it's not.

In it's third season and works great

[Mark J Wilme]

BUT, if your shore power drops then you stop charging the batteries and you will draw down the bank - this doesn't solve Bens issue does it ?

Mark Wilme
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[Paul Schwab]

There is no perfect solution that will solve his issue if he is away from the boat for extended periods. If my shore power cuts out for several hour, the refer switches back to AC and the battery charger kicks in when shore power is restored. For us, the key is not working the house batteries/battery charger when sitting in a slip.

[Mark J Wilme]

Agree

Even wind and solar won't fulfill the need if the wind drops or the sun doesn't shine.

Mark Wilme
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[Mark Moskovitz]

If I am not mistaken, on our 473 there was a cut out switch, such that if the battery voltage dropped below a specified level, the fridge/freezer was tripped off such that it did not drain batteries to "zero"

This might be a consideration

Mark
301.529.4636

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[Ben Campbell]

Actually, a cut-out switch was my first thought before thinking about an AC/DC fridge. Did your boat come with the switch, or did you install it?

Thanks!

Ben.

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[Ben Campbell]

Solar is an interesting point I hadn’t considered. We’re in Texas, so we get lots of sunny days. We are currently on a lake, so we don’t spend that much contiguous time away from the dock. Solar has always seemed like overkill for that reason. But if we cannot solve the shore power reliability problem, solar looks more attractive.

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[Ben Campbell]

Not loading the batteries and charger when AC is available would be nice on its own. I’ve always wondered if the fridge would kick the charger back to the absorption stage, and overcook the batteries. (OTOH, I got 7 years out of this set before the current problem, so it must not be too bad.)

Did the adler-barbour come on your boat, or did you install it yourself? Is there any capability to manually switch it to disable the 12V mode at dock?

Thanks!

Ben.

> On Jun 20, 2017, at 8:46 AM, Paul Schwab <pschw...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> There is no perfect solution that will solve his issue if he is away from the boat for extended periods. If my shore power cuts out for several hour, the refer switches back to AC and the battery charger kicks in when shore power is restored. For us, the key is not working the house batteries/battery charger when sitting in a slip.
>
> On Jun 20, 2017 8:23 AM, "Mark J Wilme" <mark....@gmail.com> wrote:
> BUT, if your shore power drops then you stop charging the batteries and you will draw down the bank - this doesn't solve Bens issue does it ?
>
>
>
> Mark Wilme
> Mark....@Gmail.com
> +1 (508) 826 5607
> www.linkedin.com/in/markwilme
>
> On Tue, Jun 20, 2017 at 9:14 AM, Paul Schwab <pschw...@gmail.com> wrote:
> We have an adler-barbour compressor with an optional AC/DC control module. Runs on AC when it is available and switches to the DC house bank when it's not.
>
> In it's third season and works great
>
>
>
> On Jun 20, 2017 1:14 AM, "Ben Campbell" <b...@nostrum.com> wrote:
> The fridge on my Bene31 is DC only. The fridge can take over 24 hours to chill down, especially when full of drinks, so we tend to leave it on. But lately we’ve had problem with shore power reliability, and more than once we’ve arrived at the marina to find our house batteries fully discharged. (Ouch)
>
> Has anyone converted a DC fridge to AC/DC, so it can run off AC when on shore power instead of loading the batteries/battery charger? That way, if we lost shore power we might find our beer has gotten warm, but at least we wouldn’t have run the batteries all the way down.
>
> Automatic switching would be nice, but I could live with manual switching. (And I half expect that the existing DC fridge might use an internal inverter…)
>
> Thanks!
>
> Ben.
>
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[Mark J Wilme]

If you know what your fridge draw is could you add enough solar to run it for 24 hours in case you had a total power loss.  I would think you need to do an energy audit

Mark Wilme
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[Mohammad Bayegan]

On my B 49 is the same when voltage drops refrigerator and freezer shuts off.

Sent from my Verizon, Samsung Galaxy smartphone

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[Sailing]

Ben
You might just have to buy n ac/D.C. Frig that automatic shifts. Not that expensive

Joe Sircely