> > I'm also looking at a camping fridge with phase-change material inside > the insulation. That only needs power for a couple of hours in the > morning, and again in the afternoon, so does not load the batteries if > there's sun. >
Not a "camping" fridge but a marine refrigerator. These are installed in sailboats and are really common. First you buy vacuum panels, There are made of stainless steel and you assemble the panels into a container shape. There are many shops who can do this for you. The refrigerant is used to freeze a block of some kind of liquid. The liquid has very high heat of solidification, even higher then water and on the boat they might use engine power or shore power to run th mechanical refrigerator pump to freeze the coolant. You can go a week with no power and the food stays cold or even frozen. Most are set up to run either off the engine with a belt driver electrically from an AC motor if shore power is available. They use a mechanical control to select the drive motor. It is not hard to find very nice units that last a lifetime even in a saltwater environment. Marine hardware stores are good paces to shop for DC power equipment. For example need nice looking LED fixtures or a breaker panel for DC circuit breakers the is not make from cheap plastic? The parts are all plated and finish so as to stand up to a salt water environment for 20+ years The equipment made for sailboats is ideal for people needing to conserve power. A person crossing an ocean on a small boat has with them perhaps 30 hours diesel fuel for the 21 day trip and they want to have lights, radio, food and so on. You can do it running a 20HP engine about 5% duty cycle., for a few hours every few days. On a small boat wind and solar can work but the amount you get is tiny because yo lack space for a large system If you are on land then you can install a huge grid-tie system. I know of one person whoalsay has a negative electric bill. Hs large house is covered in solar panels, even on the sides of the rood that face the "wrong" way. > > -- Chris Albertson Redondo Beach, California ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
