Question re Solar power

[Nix]

(12 September 2013, 21:36)Waylander Wrote: With a fridge or a freezer, you will have to allow for, something that is called 'cap start'.

A fridge may only require 500 watts to run it, but may require 1000w to start it running. This is because the motor has a capacitor attached which draws a higher load to start it.

Fridges stop and start quite frequently, as they switch off, to save power when the required temperature is reached, and start frequently to maintain that temperature.

You may be better using you solar panel to charge a bank of batteries then running from that.

Many motors have a 'cap start'.

Waylander

Absolutely right.

The capacitor start is to give the electric motor more torque on start up. In reality, if you have a decent battery bank supplying a big enough inverter, you should be ok as most inverters can take a temporary peak load. When I tried to run my fridge and freezer on a 1kW inverter it was too much for it so it cut out. When using my 2kW inverter, no probs. The initial surge was almost exactly 1kW from each appliance so if both fridge and freezer happened to start together I suspect that the 2kW would also have been near it's limit.

After start up, with the motor running, each appliance used about 100 - 150W so easy peasy.

It can be done but only with the correct power inverter.