Back Up Power for Refrigerator/Freezer

Per philo :

When I worked for the local electric company (Philadelphia Electric) I was out walking the lines during a storm event - looking for downed lines.

One of the residents came up to me to unload about how he had never seen so many power outages in his life until he moved to the Philadelphia area.

"Where did you come from?"

"Saudi Arabia."

"Got many trees there?

"Oh......"

We just had a seven hour outage a couple of days ago.

Five hours from outage to somebody identifying the tree that fell down.

Two hours to clear the tree and get the wires back up.

Per Stormin Mormon:

Call me paranoid, but I would think that, when there is a power outage, the first thing that comes to mind for a certain small segment of the population is "Let's go out and see if we can find a generator or two...".

Since our town was anointed with a tattoo parlor and a finger nail shop some years back - and the local jeweler started chaining his doors shut

- I suspect we now have out share of that certain small segment...

I think there is a combination of factors. One is that the unprepared would like to have a generator. Second, is to "get even with those rich people who didn't pay their fair share, and bring them down a bit."

. Christopher A. Young Learn about Jesus

A very tough and thankless job.

BTW: For the two ...long outages we had , I did have to go out and buy some ice and put as much food from my refrigerator into a cooler. We lost very little food. Certainly no where near what a generator cost.

One of the evenings was rather warm...but my industrial grade UPS with over-sized batteries ran a fan all night with no trouble.

I do a lot of computer repair work and have at least 24 hours of backup power...but not enough for a refrigerator.

Along the lines of getting even, a neighbor told me he heard a story on the radio during hurricane Sandy that some thieves tried to steal a generator that was running, but it was well chained down, so instead they just put holes in the gas tank.

Many around here only ran their;s during the day and took them in at night. Seems reasonable to me, unless it's so hot or cold that you need AC or Heat, but the weather was mild. But then you have some buffoons with the whole house generators that kept them running 24/7 making a lot of noise. It's like they want everyone to know they have one. You can hear the damn thing half a block away and it's still objectionable. But I guess they don't mind listening to it themselves. Either that or they are too dumb to realize it has an off switch on it.

Frequent outages are a sign of poor maintenance, trees or no trees. Our other house had outages almost every day for a while. It was a municipal system and yes, the maintenance was crap. You could count on losing power in any little thunderstorm.

That's pretty damned poor. They should be able to isolate it to a small area in minutes, if not by the complaints alone.

is down for extended periods. I need enough power to run our side-by-side refrigerator/freezer, a small fan, and charge a couple iPhones and a laptop computer. The tag on the inside of the refrigerator says Full Load Amp: 6 .5. How much more will the motor draw at startup? Do I need to size for s tartup or normal operating conditions?

ant in sizing a backup system? If so, how can I use it?

Those are the dummies that keep opening it up every hour to get something out. Then the food spoils and they still can't figure it out.

I figure out what I want to get first, before I even open the door. Then I get a small ice chest. I get ice from the freezer or some handy frozen items that can defrost and be eaten, put those in the chest, together with stuff from the fridge that will last a day or two. Then I don't open it again. That works especially well if more ice is available in nearby areas with power.

The day before Sandy, I put extra quart, gallon, etc containers of water in the freezer so it could freeze and add to the thermal mass

One good thing about those events is you finally go through the freezer and find all the stuff from 3 years ago that you didn't even know was there and most of it's probably no good anymore anyway.

. Christopher A. Young Learn about Jesus

One time, I wrapped a Readers Digest in aluminum foil, and put in a note "25 cents to the finder of this" and put it in my parents freezer. It was almost two years before Mom handed me the note, with an expression on her face.

. Christopher A. Young Learn about Jesus

if you know a storm is coming, fill the freezer with water bottles and turn the setting down to colder then usual.

Anyone know of an easy way to prevent the fridge from going into the defrost cycle when you are on backup power?

Mark

Good question and it could be as simple as unplugging the power to the clock motor of the defrost timer in a fridge with a conventional defrost circuit. The power to the compressor goes through the timer so you may have to make a jumper. The newer electronic controls may be much more involved but you could probably still come up with a jumper for the compressor power. ^_^

TDD

Hmm,If you have chest freezer, upright one is less efficient but it minimizes that problem.

If you have a well matched generator for standby power, why bother cutting it out at all?

If you must, I think that I'd grab the parts diagram, isolate the defrost heater and install a SPDT switch in line and just take it out of the line. Who cares if the timer runs or not? No draw there to speak of.

The timer will cut the compressor off when it cycles. That's a reason for stopping the clock. The timer switches the compressor off and switches the heaters on when it goes into defrost. If you could isolate the power to the clock motor you wouldn't have to worry about anything else unless the timer was already in the defrost cycle. An electronic microprocessor controlled system would be a bit more complicated but could probably be taken care of with a couple of bypass switches. ^_^

TDD

My 17kW Generac doesn't make any more noise than an idling car. I run it 24/7 during outages and can barely hear it in the house.

OTOH, a neighbor has a China Harbor Freight piece of crap...now that thing is loud!

I've been repairing refrigerators for 15 years or so, and no. I don't know any easy way.

. Christopher A. Young Learn about Jesus

Most refrigerators have a fairly small compressor. Would need at least a day to freeze water bottles. I'd figure two or three days, if at all possible.

Yes, it would take an adaptor or jumper. I don't consider that "easy".

. Christopher A. Young Learn about Jesus

Maybe the Chinaman inside is lonely, and wants to go home. Did you go over, and play Chinese lullabies on tape recorder?

Glad to know Generac are fairly quiet. I've also been pleased with my ETQ brand, 1200 watt. Also reasonably quiet.

. Christopher A. Young Learn about Jesus

Maybe new ones suddenly got quiet, but I doubt it. I wound up getting a 12KW Generac unit that was about 5 years old from a neighbor because it quit during an outage and the service company told him it wasn't worth fixing. It looked almost like new, so I thought I'd see if maybe I could fix it and use it. It started up and ran, so I heard what it sounded like. And it sure wasn't like any idling car, except maybe one with a broken muffler. More like a loud garden tractor, which kind of makes sense, since it's a similar ~25hp engine.

Here's a youtube of one if you don't believe me:

Make sure you listen until about 25 secs in, when it actually starts. Before that there is something in the background that does sound more like a car.

Let me know what you think after you watch the video.

I've also been

One big difference there you're talking about an engine that's an order of magnitude smaller than one in a whole house type. The quietest ones are the inverter type, where they sythensize the AC waveform. That decouples the frequency from the engine speed. At low loads, the engine can run at lower RPMS instead of full speed.