The down side is that if you have a modified sinewave inverter (the
typical cheap ones), the compressor may run hot and its lifetime
shortened by many years. A true sinewave inverter does much
better but then again costs alot more. It's a tradeoff as usual.

Doug
s/v Callista

"Marie Rabey" wrote in message
...
I have to go along with the inverter and a decent house battery bank. I
have an 8 cu ft household refrig on boart and run it off the inverter
whenever under power, and can run it about 12 hours (in several 3 hour
stretches) over 2 days. Once packed with food, they keep pretty cold by
themselves - I still have ice in the trays after overnight without power.
A
bit of judicious power management makes everything work well.

Jim
"Rod McInnis" wrote in message
...

wrote in message
...
I have a large refrigerator and don't want to get rid of it since I'm
on the boat a lot, and the majority of the time at the dock. But do
like to go out for a couple of days each week, and the biggest
issue is the frig getting too warm unless the generator runs more
than I like it to.


My suggestion would be to get an inverter and battery bank that would
run
it
while you were away from the dock.

I assume that by "large" you mean a standard household, frost free unit.
These things can be real pigs on energy use, as most use as much energy
heating things (and I don't mean the byproduct of cooling) as they do on
the
compressor.

A typical frost free refrigerator has

1) a heater around the door sill (open the door, put you hand against
the
spot the rubber gasket would rest: it's warm, isn't it?)

2) A heater on the cooling coils, which is energized on a periodic basis
to
melt the ice that forms

Many refrigerators also have a heater under the drip tray to evaporate
the
water that collects from the defrost cycle!

A non-frost free refrigerator would require about 100 amp-hours a day to
keep things cold. A regular frost free unit would probably require
twice
that. If you installed an inverter and a 200 amp-hour battery (two golf
cart batteries in series) and then ran your generator for a few hours
each
day you could probably get by for two or three days.

Rod