You will need to shop for a car inverter. Find one that is at least 1,500 watts, and it will help you power your refrigerator for up to five hours—usually without damaging your car battery. Considering how much food we keep in our refrigerators, a $200 car inverter is a bargain!
Nah, it’s definitely easier during a tornado to go outside, jack up my car, remove the wheel, remove the wheel liner, and then pull the battery from inside the bumper because that’s a really convenient place to keep a car battery. Then I just have to lug the battery inside, hook it up, and keep 2 small children and 3 dogs away from it. Much easier than a generator.
Looking passed the absolutely insane answer here, no one has even brought up the whole issue of AC vs DC. Batteries are DC, while your fridge that plugs into your wall running on AC. I know they make DC ones, but it isn’t like they are interchangeable.
Funny thing, most modern refrigerators use DC motors for their compressors so that they can run at variable speeds, so there’s likely an inverter that you could bypass if you know the appropriate voltage. The DC ones for RVs are the same internals, just without the inverter.
Correction: they still use AC motors, but those motors don’t use line AC. It goes line AC > rectifier > DC > inverter board > variable frequency AC to run the compressor motor.
Most RV fridges just use DC motors, but there are some that use VFDs and AC motors.
Now I don’t know enough about electronics to know how wrong this is, but I do know enough about electronics to know that this absolutely sounds wrong.
The problem comes when someone takes an answer like this, knowing far less than I do, and they try and hook up their fridge to a car battery.
And this is why I hate LLMs. Being confidently wrong is scary enough when it’s just people, nevermind technology.
It does make me chuckle, though, that Skynet could have been totally innocent in their destruction of the human race, they just confidently came to the wrong conclusion and had the tools to carry it out.
Like a toddler whose inner thoughts are telling him to throw a cat out of the window. He doesn’t know he’s going to kill it, he just knows that’s what his brain is telling him to do.
From a technical stance, it’s right. This top comment does the math pretty well, and I’ve done it myself recently trying to decide if I should add a battery backup on my fridge. If you can overcome the startup surge (and a car battery definitely can), a modern fridge doesn’t draw very much power.
Of course, there’s a lot of details missing about how you do this without dying of electrocution. So I think it’s also a fair criticism of the LLM.
Now I don’t know enough about electronics to know how wrong this is
Very, assuming the refrigerator in question typically runs on a typical power grid you’d find in the US or Europe (source: am electrical engineer)
Mainly because most compressors I’m aware of use alternating current (AC) motors, or at a minimum accept AC power. Batteries alone produce direct current (DC). The simplest way to make this work would involve an inverter (converts DC to AC). Cheap ones probably have at least a 10% conversion loss, so you’re looking at an hour or two at most.
Edit: should also mention that discharging a typical lead-acid battery until it’s all the way flat (realistically
below ~11V) does irreparable damage. Might be cheaper to replace the contents of your fridge :)
No easy conversation from doughnuts to volts or amps. I give up. But with enough oxygen you can hear up pretty gud with a single doughnut. Then you could use a Stirling engine to pump heat from the fridge to the environment. Energy in a doughnut ~224cal according to Wolfram alpha. That’s 940kJ. 940kJ/1hr~260watts which should run a fridge for 1 hr. However energy conversion is probably going to leave you with like 10% at most of usable energy so ~6 minutes run time. America needs a lot of doughnuts!
To answer the original question, a fridge requires quite a lot of power to operate. Could be 500W. There’s also power loss from the voltage conversion, so you need a battery and an inverter that are able to provide more than that - let’s say 600W. Car batteries are typically 12V lead-acid batteries. 600W means 50 amps from the battery. That’s a huge current. Lead-acid batteries can handle high currents for a short period of time, but high currents have a negative effect on the battery capacity. So my guess is that the fridge could work for a very short period of time.
Plus to add that modern kitchen stuff like that will throw on the compressor to cool the unit down with up to a surge of 1200w. Usually for 2-3 minutes as it engages the cooling pumps and moves the refrigerant.
I’ve run fridge freezer units off battery a few times (deep cycle lead acid, lithium/LFP)
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I looked up the page and it gets worse.
Or spend twice that and get a cheap generator that will actually power your frig and other stuff for more than a few hours.
Nah, it’s definitely easier during a tornado to go outside, jack up my car, remove the wheel, remove the wheel liner, and then pull the battery from inside the bumper because that’s a really convenient place to keep a car battery. Then I just have to lug the battery inside, hook it up, and keep 2 small children and 3 dogs away from it. Much easier than a generator.
I mean that’s the least wrong part imo. I’ve ran a fridge off of a car battery and if it starts cold you can go a lot longer than that.
classic example of being wrong with authority.
Looking passed the absolutely insane answer here, no one has even brought up the whole issue of AC vs DC. Batteries are DC, while your fridge that plugs into your wall running on AC. I know they make DC ones, but it isn’t like they are interchangeable.
Funny thing, most modern refrigerators use DC motors for their compressors so that they can run at variable speeds, so there’s likely an inverter that you could bypass if you know the appropriate voltage. The DC ones for RVs are the same internals, just without the inverter.
No they don’t…they use AC motors and a VFD to control the speed.
Correction: they still use AC motors, but those motors don’t use line AC. It goes line AC > rectifier > DC > inverter board > variable frequency AC to run the compressor motor.
Most RV fridges just use DC motors, but there are some that use VFDs and AC motors.
Shannon Martin says just shake the battery and you’ll get AC.
My chickens say Shannon is full of shit.
Regardless of source, if your refrigerator is running you better go catch it.
Its stealing your food.
I was hoping for this old chestnut somewhere here
You keep chestnuts in your fridge?
Now I don’t know enough about electronics to know how wrong this is, but I do know enough about electronics to know that this absolutely sounds wrong.
The problem comes when someone takes an answer like this, knowing far less than I do, and they try and hook up their fridge to a car battery.
And this is why I hate LLMs. Being confidently wrong is scary enough when it’s just people, nevermind technology.
It does make me chuckle, though, that Skynet could have been totally innocent in their destruction of the human race, they just confidently came to the wrong conclusion and had the tools to carry it out.
Like a toddler whose inner thoughts are telling him to throw a cat out of the window. He doesn’t know he’s going to kill it, he just knows that’s what his brain is telling him to do.
From a technical stance, it’s right. This top comment does the math pretty well, and I’ve done it myself recently trying to decide if I should add a battery backup on my fridge. If you can overcome the startup surge (and a car battery definitely can), a modern fridge doesn’t draw very much power.
Of course, there’s a lot of details missing about how you do this without dying of electrocution. So I think it’s also a fair criticism of the LLM.
Very, assuming the refrigerator in question typically runs on a typical power grid you’d find in the US or Europe (source: am electrical engineer)
Mainly because most compressors I’m aware of use alternating current (AC) motors, or at a minimum accept AC power. Batteries alone produce direct current (DC). The simplest way to make this work would involve an inverter (converts DC to AC). Cheap ones probably have at least a 10% conversion loss, so you’re looking at an hour or two at most.
Edit: should also mention that discharging a typical lead-acid battery until it’s all the way flat (realistically below ~11V) does irreparable damage. Might be cheaper to replace the contents of your fridge :)
I thought America runs on Dunkin… (doughnuts)
No easy conversation from doughnuts to volts or amps. I give up. But with enough oxygen you can hear up pretty gud with a single doughnut. Then you could use a Stirling engine to pump heat from the fridge to the environment. Energy in a doughnut ~224cal according to Wolfram alpha. That’s 940kJ. 940kJ/1hr~260watts which should run a fridge for 1 hr. However energy conversion is probably going to leave you with like 10% at most of usable energy so ~6 minutes run time. America needs a lot of doughnuts!
Accept the battery is DC 🔋and fridge runs on AC🔌
So just slap a power inverter in there somewhere and you’re good to go
To answer the original question, a fridge requires quite a lot of power to operate. Could be 500W. There’s also power loss from the voltage conversion, so you need a battery and an inverter that are able to provide more than that - let’s say 600W. Car batteries are typically 12V lead-acid batteries. 600W means 50 amps from the battery. That’s a huge current. Lead-acid batteries can handle high currents for a short period of time, but high currents have a negative effect on the battery capacity. So my guess is that the fridge could work for a very short period of time.
^THIS^
Plus to add that modern kitchen stuff like that will throw on the compressor to cool the unit down with up to a surge of 1200w. Usually for 2-3 minutes as it engages the cooling pumps and moves the refrigerant.
I’ve run fridge freezer units off battery a few times (deep cycle lead acid, lithium/LFP)
seems legit
Its my favorite on Quora too.
Thanks Steve, the “Professional Hustler Entrepreneur” for getting the highest rated answers on the pros and cons of various medical drugs.
Sounds like a jippitty conversation.
Licenced insurance agent. Not for long!
This post made me beat my head with a 2 by 4
It hurts.
This reads just like an AI response
AI told me 75C/170F is ideal for hot tub water temperature.
Sure no problem. Once I get used to that I’ll work my way up to boiling peanut oil.
removed by mod
If nothing else, the tub would certainly be hot at that temperature.
Jesus… the stupid, it hurts.