Glad it was helpful, but if you are starting from scratch, might I suggest using a 12v compressor style fridge. I have a BougeRV brand and while it has less internal volume, it doesn't require an inverter and is much more energy efficient to power. Check my channel as I have a few Will it Run it videos related to the BougeRV fridge. Thanks for your comment!
You are welcome! I don't much about Freightliners, but I would suspect if the wiring is heavy gauge enough, then it would handle it. Do you know if trucks like that are 12v or 24v? If 24v, and your inverter could run on that 24v leg, it would reduce the amp draw by half, and also reduce voltage drop by half - possibly more. Let me know how your setup goes. This stuff is so interesting to me.
Most fridges have the amperage of the start up surge not constant power usage yhats why it jumoed ti 200 watts then dropped down and leveled off still would use pure sine for constant use but modified is fine for temporary back up i have heard that fridge compressors are usually ok to run fir long periods if you have to but idk if would risk it
Interesting, has an electroboom feel to the video. I like it. Alternatively you may see if you know any HVAC technicians that would like to work on a project to use a DC motor to operate a compressor. Then you could run off a cigarette port possibly with a lithium battery that charges during down time and operates in parallel with the car but only runs the compressor if it's plugged in and runs an LED when the door is open regardless
I took an old freezer on a long remote hunt and it ran for a while. The freezer died half way through the trip. Not sure if it was the modified sine wave that killed it, or the compressor didnt like offroading. Trying pure sine wave and a new freezer this year.
great video thanks for sharing. Lots of good information. Question, how big of an inverter can you run of the cigarete lighter connection? Is it better to connect ones inverter directly to the battery? Any inverter brand you can recommend? Just checked my 10th gen civic and the alternator outputs 130 amps, how big of a inverter can my car handle?
Standard cigarette lighter connectors are generally protected by a 15 amp fuse. In my experience however, they aren't good at pulling 15 amps continuous as they tend to melt or at least wear out the spring that holds them in the socket due to heat. I would suggest cutting in half to roughly 7.5 amps to be on the safe side. Remember - the amp rating is at 12 volts. 12volts x15amps = 180watts (on the inverter side). This is likely why you rarely see inverters rated much more than 150 watts that are designed to run on a cigarette connector. Same calculation at 7.5 amps would be 90 watts. To be "safe" stick at or below 90 watts. This is your load - you can have a 2000 watt inverter run on a cigarette lighter outlet as long as the load you put on the inverter stays under the 180 watt range. Connecting directly to a battery is preferred if consuming more than that. Keep your wiring as short as possible and be sure to still use a fuse if permanently connecting it to a battery. Reminds me of my father-in-law that had a 750w inverter to run his 400w fast battery charger for his drill gun batteries between jobs. We wired it directly to his truck battery with speaker wire since it couldn't power the battery charger through the cigarette lighter connector. Hope this helps!
Hello - I would not recommend this setup for when the vehicle is off. It would be interesting to see how long a large size Lithium battery would run this fridge for though.
Hi. You need to use a “true sine wave” inverter, not a cheapo like this one. He said that, too. The fridge ‘will’ run on a modified sine wave inverter like this but motors don’t always do well because while the voltage ‘averages’ 110 volts, in actuality it is jumping from potentially 60V to 160V 60 times per second. Having done a lot of stuff with solar in recent years plus 12V and inverters for 20+ years and I have fried computers and stuff on modified sine wave inverters is why I say true sine is needed. Cheaper to spend on the inverter up front than replace fried equipment, trust me. I’ve done it. Advice for you: get a 1200W inverter. The Giandel 1200W is moderately priced and its soft-start load feature will start a mini fridge. I’ve tested several on one. Plus, 1200W won’t fail to work as it won’t be stressed to start the fridge. Lastly, a 1200W inverter will let you do other things down the road. Anything up to 10amps really. You shouldn’t run it on the car battery while car is not running. It could drain the battery so the car won’t start AND you will need to replace the battery sooner if you discharge it regularly- starting batteries aren’t made for that. Good luck to you. I wish you had a van. I have lived “on the fringes” myself but doing it in a car would super suck imho. No way really for a stealth shower or a comfy bed. You need a daily shower, a decent bed, and room for clothes to live fringe - yet live parallel enough appearance-wise to the mainstream to have a good job, good social context, and a healthy mental state. A gym membership can take care of the shower but trust me: that gets old and can be awkward/embarrassing. Sometimes you just wanna be in your own space. Figure out a way to get into a van or maybe something like a Ford transit. 300W of solar will take care of the fridge, computer, phone, water pump, and lights, more. See DIY Solar with Will Prowse. Living fringe/stealth and not “looking” homeless is bigtime important to not getting stuck in your car with no way out. Trust me (third time I’ve said that!) living ‘fringe’ by choice and with real goals is SO MUCH more pleasant than getting stuck homeless, stuck living out of a car, stuck feeling like a victim. It actually gets cheaper to live fringe/stealth comfortably than living out of a car because keeping a job- and progressing to better jobs- is easier than looking “below” who you really are or looking like a struggling basket case. Seriously. (You “may be” a basket case. I don’t know. I was for years but I did two things: I didn’t show people I was a basket case (still don’t) and I got myself with good people and good counsel cuz I didn’t want to stay vulnerable, stay where I was) Seriously- I wish you the best. I know I’m making assumptions about your situation but just maybe if I’m wrong SOMEONE will get something good from this. Living out of a vehicle: I was always able to at least rent a building or have a camper on a cheap lot but wow I’ve been so close to living in a car more than once. I’ve been so fortunate to be... resourceful. I had rented a 30x40 building for shop space once. Circumstances with health issues I wound up very stealth living there; no running water but I brought water from a nearby freshwater spring, rigged a shower, had a fridge, coffeemaker, and electric frying pan. All my stuff wound up there and as it turned out I was quite comfortable. Do at least one thing EVERY DAY to better yourself. Always be going in a direction to better your circumstances. Don’t drink or do any drugs. Don’t even smoke pot. Write down every day what you did to improve your circumstances, summarize those every week writing them down, summarize the weeks once a month - and FEEL how you are succeeding at moving towards your goals. I hope you are doing well and days are satisfying as you travel your path in life.
I highly doubt its pure sine wave. I will say that I've learned not all inverters are created the same. Some other things to check in your condition. 1-Make sure you are using heavy gauge cables, and make sure they are short. Like a foot or two. The longer the cord, the heavier they have to be. 6 or 8 gauge at a couple feet should be fine I would think. 2-Make sure its got a good connection to the battery. Use ring terminals and bolts if you can. 3-Make sure your battery is in good shape. Lots of these inverters kick off if voltage drops below a threshold, but voltage will drop below a threshold with high current and long wire runs, and even worse for older or not fully charged batteries. Good luck!
Yes to all. It still works, I've used it a number of times since recording this video, and it is a compressor style fridge. I am actually working on another project at the moment where I'm doing some more tests with this fridge, so stay tuned!
I have a hisense mini fridge, a jupiter 740w msw inverter, brand new 105 ah deep cycle, oversized wires, 400w solar panel, 30 amp controller. It will not run the fridge. Nowhere can I find the amp/wattage for this fridge. It actually drags down my 1400w generator when the compressor kicks in. I don't have a killiwatt meter. What to do? 🤔
Really what you should do is buy a 12v mini fridge . For the price of a big pure sine inverter it would be cheaper to buy a mini fridge that uses a fraction of the power. Just my opinion
The Power Factor represents the phase difference between the voltage and the current. In an inductive load like the compressor in that fridge, the current will lead the voltage.
I didn't have any luck running my 80 watt mini fridge on a 150 watt inverter. Just too much draw at the start. I now use a 400 watt inverter and it works just fine.
0.59 Power Factor is a bad Modified Square Wave. Pure Sine wave would be 0.95. (1/ 0.59) x 70 watts == 10 amp draw on the battery... Pure would be closer to 6 amps.
I think you mean the bad-PF load should be run off PSW inverter rather than MSW, and I agree. The wording of the comment above makes it sound like the low PF is a function of the MSW inverter rather than of the inductive load.
I didn't test how long it would run, but I highly doubt you would get much runtime out of it. It also depends on if you want to deplete your battery all the way to where you will need a jump start, or if you want to run it down maybe 50% so you still have a charge left to restart your vehicle. Wild guess would be 1 day, but of course it depends on a number of factors - one of which being ambient temperature. Example: I often to winter camping, and a fridge doesn't see much time when its winter time if kept outside.
It is not pleasant when not so smart or well knowledged people trying to explain why things work this way. Please do your homework before you do any videos.
This has to be the most useful video I have watched on inverters. Good work!
I have hooked mini fridges to 300 watt power stations and ran them for a couple hours so I would hope the 750 watts would run it.
I was looking for a video exactly like this absoloute legend. Buying inverter and fridge to now 👌🏼
Glad it was helpful, but if you are starting from scratch, might I suggest using a 12v compressor style fridge. I have a BougeRV brand and while it has less internal volume, it doesn't require an inverter and is much more energy efficient to power. Check my channel as I have a few Will it Run it videos related to the BougeRV fridge. Thanks for your comment!
Thanks for this video!! I have a 1500 W inverter and wanted to plug in my mini fridge in my Freightliner! This lets me know it’ll work with no issue.
You are welcome! I don't much about Freightliners, but I would suspect if the wiring is heavy gauge enough, then it would handle it. Do you know if trucks like that are 12v or 24v? If 24v, and your inverter could run on that 24v leg, it would reduce the amp draw by half, and also reduce voltage drop by half - possibly more. Let me know how your setup goes. This stuff is so interesting to me.
@@uthe54 Think trucks are 12 and have pretty huge amp rating alternators that can continously handle high loads
Good to know thank you for going to the trouble for us! Good lookin out
Most fridges have the amperage of the start up surge not constant power usage yhats why it jumoed ti 200 watts then dropped down and leveled off still would use pure sine for constant use but modified is fine for temporary back up i have heard that fridge compressors are usually ok to run fir long periods if you have to but idk if would risk it
For me using a new 3.4cu ft mini fridge it draws about 55 watts ac and 6 amps on the DC side
Interesting, has an electroboom feel to the video. I like it. Alternatively you may see if you know any HVAC technicians that would like to work on a project to use a DC motor to operate a compressor. Then you could run off a cigarette port possibly with a lithium battery that charges during down time and operates in parallel with the car but only runs the compressor if it's plugged in and runs an LED when the door is open regardless
Too little fireworks, bleeped cussing, and eyebrows, for an Electroboom video. :D
@@IstasPumaNevada agreed, it has the educational aspects of electroboom without the comedy.
I took an old freezer on a long remote hunt and it ran for a while. The freezer died half way through the trip. Not sure if it was the modified sine wave that killed it, or the compressor didnt like offroading. Trying pure sine wave and a new freezer this year.
I'm having similar issues.. could it be from the inverter or the fridge
great video thanks for sharing. Lots of good information. Question, how big of an inverter can you run of the cigarete lighter connection? Is it better to connect ones inverter directly to the battery? Any inverter brand you can recommend?
Just checked my 10th gen civic and the alternator outputs 130 amps, how big of a inverter can my car handle?
Standard cigarette lighter connectors are generally protected by a 15 amp fuse. In my experience however, they aren't good at pulling 15 amps continuous as they tend to melt or at least wear out the spring that holds them in the socket due to heat. I would suggest cutting in half to roughly 7.5 amps to be on the safe side. Remember - the amp rating is at 12 volts. 12volts x15amps = 180watts (on the inverter side). This is likely why you rarely see inverters rated much more than 150 watts that are designed to run on a cigarette connector. Same calculation at 7.5 amps would be 90 watts. To be "safe" stick at or below 90 watts. This is your load - you can have a 2000 watt inverter run on a cigarette lighter outlet as long as the load you put on the inverter stays under the 180 watt range.
Connecting directly to a battery is preferred if consuming more than that. Keep your wiring as short as possible and be sure to still use a fuse if permanently connecting it to a battery.
Reminds me of my father-in-law that had a 750w inverter to run his 400w fast battery charger for his drill gun batteries between jobs. We wired it directly to his truck battery with speaker wire since it couldn't power the battery charger through the cigarette lighter connector.
Hope this helps!
Gotta have cold brewskis when riding them dirtbikes
Thank you very informative
Nice shop wow yeah I have one of those 750 watt and after a few years I took it out of the box and still have not used it
Love the Yamaha bike.
Would you recommend this method?, I'm about to be living out of my older Honda and I know I'll need a fridge for food
Hello - I would not recommend this setup for when the vehicle is off. It would be interesting to see how long a large size Lithium battery would run this fridge for though.
Hi. You need to use a “true sine wave” inverter, not a cheapo like this one. He said that, too.
The fridge ‘will’ run on a modified sine wave inverter like this but motors don’t always do well because while the voltage ‘averages’ 110 volts, in actuality it is jumping from potentially 60V to 160V 60 times per second.
Having done a lot of stuff with solar in recent years plus 12V and inverters for 20+ years and I have fried computers and stuff on modified sine wave inverters is why I say true sine is needed. Cheaper to spend on the inverter up front than replace fried equipment, trust me. I’ve done it.
Advice for you: get a 1200W inverter. The Giandel 1200W is moderately priced and its soft-start load feature will start a mini fridge. I’ve tested several on one.
Plus, 1200W won’t fail to work as it won’t be stressed to start the fridge. Lastly, a 1200W inverter will let you do other things down the road. Anything up to 10amps really.
You shouldn’t run it on the car battery while car is not running. It could drain the battery so the car won’t start AND you will need to replace the battery sooner if you discharge it regularly- starting batteries aren’t made for that.
Good luck to you. I wish you had a van. I have lived “on the fringes” myself but doing it in a car would super suck imho. No way really for a stealth shower or a comfy bed.
You need a daily shower, a decent bed, and room for clothes to live fringe - yet live parallel enough appearance-wise to the mainstream to have a good job, good social context, and a healthy mental state. A gym membership can take care of the shower but trust me: that gets old and can be awkward/embarrassing. Sometimes you just wanna be in your own space.
Figure out a way to get into a van or maybe something like a Ford transit. 300W of solar will take care of the fridge, computer, phone, water pump, and lights, more. See DIY Solar with Will Prowse.
Living fringe/stealth and not “looking” homeless is bigtime important to not getting stuck in your car with no way out. Trust me (third time I’ve said that!) living ‘fringe’ by choice and with real goals is SO MUCH more pleasant than getting stuck homeless, stuck living out of a car, stuck feeling like a victim. It actually gets cheaper to live fringe/stealth comfortably than living out of a car because keeping a job- and progressing to better jobs- is easier than looking “below” who you really are or looking like a struggling basket case. Seriously.
(You “may be” a basket case. I don’t know. I was for years but I did two things: I didn’t show people I was a basket case (still don’t) and I got myself with good people and good counsel cuz I didn’t want to stay vulnerable, stay where I was)
Seriously- I wish you the best. I know I’m making assumptions about your situation but just maybe if I’m wrong SOMEONE will get something good from this.
Living out of a vehicle: I was always able to at least rent a building or have a camper on a cheap lot but wow I’ve been so close to living in a car more than once. I’ve been so fortunate to be... resourceful. I had rented a 30x40 building for shop space once. Circumstances with health issues I wound up very stealth living there; no running water but I brought water from a nearby freshwater spring, rigged a shower, had a fridge, coffeemaker, and electric frying pan. All my stuff wound up there and as it turned out I was quite comfortable.
Do at least one thing EVERY DAY to better yourself. Always be going in a direction to better your circumstances. Don’t drink or do any drugs. Don’t even smoke pot. Write down every day what you did to improve your circumstances, summarize those every week writing them down, summarize the weeks once a month - and FEEL how you are succeeding at moving towards your goals.
I hope you are doing well and days are satisfying as you travel your path in life.
Should I buy a pure or modified sign wave inverter to power a cool box (no compressor) in a cabin on a solar system forever?
Doesn't matter
Are you sure it isn't a pure sine wave? Reason I ask is I have a similar fridge and I can't get it to work off a 1500w modified sine wave inverter
I highly doubt its pure sine wave. I will say that I've learned not all inverters are created the same. Some other things to check in your condition. 1-Make sure you are using heavy gauge cables, and make sure they are short. Like a foot or two. The longer the cord, the heavier they have to be. 6 or 8 gauge at a couple feet should be fine I would think. 2-Make sure its got a good connection to the battery. Use ring terminals and bolts if you can. 3-Make sure your battery is in good shape. Lots of these inverters kick off if voltage drops below a threshold, but voltage will drop below a threshold with high current and long wire runs, and even worse for older or not fully charged batteries. Good luck!
@@uthe54 Thanks for the advice
is it still working the mini fridge?. no damage?. and the mini fridge does have a compressor?
Yes to all. It still works, I've used it a number of times since recording this video, and it is a compressor style fridge. I am actually working on another project at the moment where I'm doing some more tests with this fridge, so stay tuned!
I have a hisense mini fridge, a jupiter 740w msw inverter, brand new 105 ah deep cycle, oversized wires, 400w solar panel, 30 amp controller.
It will not run the fridge.
Nowhere can I find the amp/wattage for this fridge.
It actually drags down my 1400w generator when the compressor kicks in. I don't have a killiwatt meter. What to do? 🤔
You probably need to change your inverter.
@@temp911Luke Thanks! I did. Got a psw 2000w and new controller..works great now 👍
Really what you should do is buy a 12v mini fridge . For the price of a big pure sine inverter it would be cheaper to buy a mini fridge that uses a fraction of the power. Just my opinion
Good content, dear stranger
The Power Factor represents the phase difference between the voltage and the current. In an inductive load like the compressor in that fridge, the current will lead the voltage.
Do you think I can run a 100W refrigerator on a 150W inverter?
I didn't have any luck running my 80 watt mini fridge on a 150 watt inverter. Just too much draw at the start. I now use a 400 watt inverter and it works just fine.
@@davidanderson563what inverter are you using ?
Yea it will but it is not a very efficient way to keep stuff cold
0.59 Power Factor is a bad Modified Square Wave. Pure Sine wave would be 0.95. (1/ 0.59) x 70 watts == 10 amp draw on the battery... Pure would be closer to 6 amps.
Thanks for your comment! I guess I should try this again with a pure sine wave inverter to compare the difference.
I think you mean the bad-PF load should be run off PSW inverter rather than MSW, and I agree.
The wording of the comment above makes it sound like the low PF is a function of the MSW inverter rather than of the inductive load.
No, a induction motor has a low power factor on its own, that has nothing to do with the waveform!
can it run a week long without shutting down the inverter?
I didn't test how long it would run, but I highly doubt you would get much runtime out of it. It also depends on if you want to deplete your battery all the way to where you will need a jump start, or if you want to run it down maybe 50% so you still have a charge left to restart your vehicle. Wild guess would be 1 day, but of course it depends on a number of factors - one of which being ambient temperature. Example: I often to winter camping, and a fridge doesn't see much time when its winter time if kept outside.
You should say thin wire instead of small wire.
You sound like a lot of people that encourage other people with even less knowledge to try their luck.
It is not pleasant when not so smart or well knowledged people trying to explain why things work this way. Please do your homework before you do any videos.