For Mark and others who have life-dependent needs for refrigerators...

I know I posted this before, but I believe it was in another context and may have been skipped over.

An Aussie by the name of Tom Chalko took a standard chest-type freezer, added a thermostat (uses 2 AAA batteries), and wired the freezer to turn off when the programmed refrigerator-level temperature was reached. It uses only 1/10 of kilowatt per day, running about 90 seconds per hour.

The .pdf article and wiring diagram is shown at BuildItSolar.com: 0.1kW refrigerator from a freezer

I don't know how well this would suit your requirements, if it could be adapted to a smaller freezer, etc, but it's food for thought.

Sue