I found out about the fridge this morning! I guess I'd been lucky with the other motor-driven things I've tried to run off generator or inverter. Up til now I'd only had one thing (9000 BTU mini-split A/C) that I couldn't get to start on the generator. Interestingly, the 9000 BTU portable A/C unit does start and run just fine on it. (The first time I had it on generator, I thought just the blower was running, kept waiting for the compressor to kick in. Then realized it was blowing cold air!)
But I tried running the fridge with a 300W (600W surge) Samlex pure-sine inverter, and no joy! The inverter made some noise, I saw a 100W draw, but nothing from the fridge then a few seconds later the inverter tripped. My Kill-A-Watt isn't quick enough to catch that surge, of course, so had never shown it.
I knew motor inrush could be pretty substantial (I work with 460V 3-phase stuff for a living) but had always heard 3x running, or maybe as high as 6x running. 2kW, though, for a fridge... Wow!
I hadn't thought about the equalizing voltage yet. Up to now I've only used SLAs, so it hasn't been an issue. I may just turn off / disconnect everything during equalization, or switch over to the PSU. The MFJ conditioner is another good idea, been thinking about getting one of those anyway for portable use.
[ Parent ]
