Up/Downsides of 110V Refrig system

[JPGaillard]

Gents,

I've browsed the web quite a bit and found nothing related to the upsides and downsides of a pure 110V refrigiration system. I am old school and have always thought that everything on a boat should be 12V to make it simple, but there is a boat I am looking at which has an excellent 110V Refrig system which requires the generator to run.

For extended cruising, away from marinas, and using solar panels/wind power to replenish the batteries I thought that relying on generator is not right. Is there a simple system I should look into to convert to 12V or simply adapt the system to run both?

The system is a 1997 Sea Frost 110V. I've already emailed them as well for advice.

JP

[camaraderie]

You are absolutely correct about 110V being entirely unsuited for extended cruising. The Sea Frost folks are great and I'm sure will provide you with good advice which will depend on the size of your box, insulation, cruising grounds and battery bank capacity.

[celenoglu]

Most refrigurators demand not more than 60W. You can use an invertor to supply 110V to it from your 12V system.

[Omatako]

I have a 110v system running off an inverter from my house bank.

It draws about 14 amps when running - way too much and it has no thermostat control - has to be switched on and off as required. It's a PITA

I'm about to replace it with two smaller units - both 12v and the spec says average current .55 amps - max 6.0 amps. Hopefully these will only run one at a time and then at a much lower current draw.

See it here:

http://secure.dataview.co.nz/users/f...ff1e188cca30b5

[sailingdog]

While the energy demands of a refrigerator aren't all that high, using a 110 VAC refrigerator on a boat doesn't really make any sense. It would be far more energy efficient to use a 12 VDC system, since you don't need to convert from the 12 VDC battery supplied electricity up to the 110 VAC required by the refrigerator using an inverter, which will introduce at least a 10% energy loss.