Hello All,

I am thinking about setting up a power system for the house and I am wondering what others thing. I am looking to put together a couple of 12V deep cycle batteries that will power a largish power inverter to power the refridge and some lights ect. Maybe a battery like this for example:

http://www.partsamerica.com/ProductDetai...tegoryCode=3583

My refridge is rated at 10 amps.

Then I am planning a home brew generator based off of:

http://www.thefarm.org/charities/i4at/surv/tow02077.htm

to recharge when necessary.

thoughts?

Dave

Your not going to run a fridge off a couple batteries very long. Remember that power into the inverter has to equal power out of the inverter. So your 120v 10A fridge is 1200w, taking 1200w on the input side divided by 12v your drawing 100A. Then if your inverter doesn't have an energy star label its less than 80% efficient so your loosing at least 20% to inversion loss which means 120A draw from the batteries.
Granted that 10A probably isn't the continuous running current but its still a lot.

Your link for the battery only turns up the home page so there is no way to know which battery your considering getting, any deep cycle marine or even a golf cart battery should work.

As far as the home brew generator goes, I used to have one, it worked great, the only reason I parted with it was because it was only a 3000 watt and wouldn't power what I needed it to. If you go to auctions esp farm auctions you should be able to pick up the parts easily, thats the way I did it.

If your building a generator to charge batteries to use a inverter why not just use the generator, I would think you would be farther ahead, you would use just as much gas trying to keep the batteries charged as you would running the generator for short periods of time to keep the frig cold.

So why not set up a solar set up.

Though I don't have any plans on running a fridge off any invertor, one of my projects planned for January is this home built 12 volt setup. .

This along with a 3-4 golf cart batteries will allow the use of a few 12V LED lights, laptop etc in the house.

This setup along with solar is sufficient for basic needs and precludes running a big generator all the time. The fridge and freezer depending on the ambient temps only require periodic runs to keep cold.

Well I called Batteries plus and this is what they said, the inverter will draw 3000 watts + 10-15% for loss in conversion. So that is a 27.5 amp draw on the battery if used full draw. which I will not be doing as the fridge will cycle on and off. It will draw 1200 watts running and I am not sure on start up.

Sorry about the bad link for the battery. Here are the details: Exide Deep Cycle Battery: Orbital Select; 12 Volt; 750 CCA; 950 CA; 100 Minutes Reserve Capacity

So if I am doing my amp hour conversion right it will provide 37.5 amps an hour over 20 hours. I would probably use 2 batteries in parallel to double the amp hours and only run the generator to recharge the batteries as not to draw attention. :-)

Am I wrong with my math?

Dave

The person at batteries plus doesm't have his math right, 3000W / 12v = 250A not 27.5A to start with.

Whatever you do, I recommend PowerPoles for your outlets. For 12V up to 45A use the red/black pairs. You can get a nice panel outlet (and a bunch of other neat doodads) here:

http://www.powerwerx.com/product.asp?ProdID=1783&CtgID=1681

HTH,

A

(For your higher-current lines I recommend you hard-wire them- you're not really going to want to plug and unplug a 250A connector! Oh, and you shouldn't anyway- only unplug and plug high current loads when the supply is off.)

Thanks! Well I guess I would get 2 hours of full out run time then on a single battery. Well maybe I need to get one of these;

http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=93519


to measure how much energy the fridge actually uses. It really doesn't run that much, but maybe I just don't know. I am thinking that I should get some pretty good run time since the refridge will be cycling on and off as needed.

Dave

Thanks Ame, Those are pretty cool.

Dave

I hear ya. Maybe this will only be used until the important stuff in the refridge is consumed or if it is winter, we could move every thing in the fridge out to the breeze way and just used the battery pack to provide a few lights or a few hours of tv a day.

Dave