The only generator I could get my hands on as a hurricane was approaching last year was a 2000 watt inverter generator. I managed to keep a stand up freezer, the large side-by-side refrigerator, all our portable electronics running on it for a few days with no problem. It cost something like $500-600.
It would be worth considering for fridge and freezer manufacturers to have a disable feature for the defroster. That's a much higher load than the rest of it. But I guess from their perspective, it's not a good idea. They would have more troubles from people having it turned off, creating problems, without a power outage, most likely. These modern fridges seem to pull a few hundred watts for the fist ten seconds or so, then drop down to under 100w after a couple mins.
that's a good point...
in the good old days it was a mechanical timer a DIY person could easily wire a switch to disable it during power failure
nowdays there is a computer in charge
I wonder if pulling the plug for a few minutes resets the defrost timer?
They must have non volatile memory because it "remembers" the temperature settings even with the power off. So it may not reset, depends on how it was designed.
We need someone to do a test :-)
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