Wine Fridge and Inverter Question

[scottyb]

I bought a small thermal electric wine cooler for travel and I'm wondering if my modified sinewave inverter will run it. I know they supposedly will not run a compressor type fridge. It would be nice to be able to keep it running while traveling.

 

[Sumo]

My inverter will run my Rv fridge. But, It draws a ton of battery power. I forgot to switch my fridge over to gas before heading out this last weekend and it took my battery bank down to 50% in 3 hrs.

 

[berky]

If it's one of those single-bottle chillers, it will work just fine. They don't have a compressor like a refrigerator, but instead use some solid-state magic to create the cooling. The one I have is labeled as 5 A @ 12 VDC. That's the same power draw as 3 or 4 of your 12 V incandescent lamps.

If on the other hand you are talking about a multi-bottle wine chiller, those generally have compressors. Something like that would run, but would draw your batteries down quickly. And on a modified sine inverter the compressor could suffer an early demise.

 

[scottyb]

It is a Haier 12 bottle but it does not have a compressor. It is thermo-electric. The user guide does not say how many watts it uses, nor can I find it on their website. I will give it a try this weekend before we head out next week. My inverter should tell how many watts, assuming it will operate off of it.

 

[berky]

I found that the 18 bottle single zone model requires 140 W. So maybe your 12 bottle unit is in the area of 80-100 W. That would be about 7-8 A @ 12 VDC. When you throw in the inefficieny of the inverter and of the cooling mechanism, you might actually draw down you battery by 12 AH for each hour that the wine cooler is chilling.

Best of luck. I'm sure the wine cooler will run just fine by the inverter. How long your batteries last ultimately will depend on how many room temperature bottles you throw in to be cooled down.

 

[scottyb]

With that said, I plugged it in tonight and all appeared normal. I added some chilled bottles and will check it in the AM. I have 225 Ah of battery so 110+ of usable storage. I also have the dual alternator (350A) option on my rig, so I'm not sure how much juice gets to the batteries when rolling. I will check it out in the AM and see if everything is still cold.

 

[Speedy]

Scotty, Is there a difference between a wine cooler and a small beverage cooler? I was looking at doing something like you are but I would like it to do double duty.

 

[jimtoo]

Just buy a bag of ice... put ice in glass ,, pour wine over ice... wine cools... drink wine...problem solved.

 

[scottyb]

Scotty, Is there a difference between a wine cooler and a small beverage cooler? I was looking at doing something like you are but I would like it to do double duty.

The wine cooler I have will only go down to 42 F. Also, it has racks that are sized for wine bottles. Not sure what most beverage coolers cool to but that seems a little high for beer or sodas, unless you are floating on the Colorado river in the Grand Canyon. 42 degrees (river temp) seems about right then.

Seems like the DW gets white knuckles no matter what I am driving.