Dumb Question: Powering Portable Fridge

Does anyone just run a Deep Cycle or Group31 and done?

 

Make or buy a steel battery box and mount it in the bed to the side rails and sitting on top of the wheel well. I have mine there with a deep cycle 80ah wheelchair battery. I have a Victron dc/dc charger to charge it when I am driving and a 315w solar panel running through a Victron charge controller the rest of the time. When camping I usually have two 50qt fridges (one Engel and one ARB) running and never run out of battery. I don’t even need to have to solar panel facing directly into the sun to have the battery back up to 100% within three hours of the sun coming up.

 

Not enough power. It’s not even an efficiency thing, the inverter is only good for like 3 amps at full power while a fridge will draw up to 8-12 when Running.

 

I ran a 12V outlet to my bed, use my starting battery, and set the ARB fridge to ‘battery protect mode’ and have no issues with anything. I am glad I didn’t clutter my engine compartment with a second battery for my use case.

Generally I’m not looking to keep food frozen for weeks or days. Most trips I plan have us dropping back into civilization every couple days, so the fridge isn’t being relied upon to keep meat from spoiling over many days. If it doesn’t run all through the night, it’s not a huge deal for me.