Thread: 60 litre engel fridge - power usage

Originally posted by incisor
anyone out there using a 60 litre engel fridge with cover?

what sort of battery usage / life you seeing in the real world?

i read they use up to 5.5amps but what sort of duty cycle do they run ie how many hours per day are they actually using power on average in your neck of the woods?

Duty cycle is about 40%.

Obviously it depends on what else you are running, but on average I can run mine off a ddep cycle battery for 3 days without having to charge it up. Generally I run the car for 1/2 hour each day if it is not being driven to keep the deep cycle charged while camping. The good thing with the Engel 60 is that if you get it real cold before you go out you generally only have to run it on 1 - 1 1/2 unless the kids keep in and out. Know where things are in your fridge so the lid does not have to be open for long. A temp gauge helps to see what your fridge is doing.

What size deep cycle battery you using CraigE?

I run my green lid Engel a shade under 'II' which cold as I want it without freezing stuff. Just right for stubbies on "fishing trips". [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/laugh.gif[/img]

Never really taken that much notice of it's cycling, maybe once every ½hr. If I ran it less cool probably get longer period however plugged it in and walked away :? would hope a couple of days.

If staying put for a while, more than a few hours, I'd use the gen and run the frig 240V. My gen's running anyway (camp lights, radio, etc etc.) might as well use that power and save the car batts for overnight stops. :wink:

Originally posted by incisor
What size deep cycle battery you using CraigE?

you could get a nice sized one in the camper,,

run fridge long time! [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif[/img]

I am running a Century N70T 75 amp hour deep cycle in the Fender, they just fit side by side in the box. In the RR I am running a Yuasa N70 deep cycle. Relatively cheap batteries and fairly reliable. I seem to be getting 3-4 years use out of these. I would run the biggest you can fit in. Previously I had a Disco tdi300 and ran the same. The great thing about the series 1 Discos and RR's is that they have a second battery cradle as standard. Depending on the size of the battery you may have to make a bracket and move the power steering resevoir slightly, RR I changed the power steering resevoir to a later ZF style. I also have another battery in the camper trailer, mainly for lights same as the other two that can be used for the fridge if need be. Also carry a small generator to run fridge, but only use if I have too and only during the day if we are not near anyone else, as the noise can annoy. If size is an issue Optima battery's are good although expensive.