12 volt cooler watt use

[RolfSail]

For those of you who have an electric 12 volt cooler on board how has the watt consumption affected the battery. I know a solar panel helps but not always. Can it run a few days before your battery is significantly depleted? I’m usually out for 4/5 days before I can use shore power to recharge.

 

[rgranger]

You can easily google this information. For example a quick google of the VEVOR 12 V cooler yielded the following..

VEVOR 12-volt compressor coolers typically consume between 40W and 60W of rated power while running, averaging roughly 0.2 to 0.6 kWh per 24-hour day.

If you know the kWh capacity of your battery bank, do an energy budget of all of the things you want to power from that bank and then see how long your batter bank can hold up to that load.

 

[kloudie1]

Elaborating in really rough numbers, a 100 amp hour 12 V battery has 1200 watts available and in the case of lead acid, only 50% should be used if the battery is to last more than one or two seasons.. In a nutshell, (again rough numbers) the cooler alone will use up a 100 amp hour lead acid deep cycle battery in one day. That is if not much else is running like charging phones, computers, autopilot, chart plotter.. lights, fans, etc. .. If your battery bank is LiFe, the general guidance is 80-90% depletion is OK so for each 100 amp hours of capacity, you have around 1 KW available so the cooler would run around two days . That again is really rough SWAG stuff and accounts for nothing else running. The cooler duty cycle , depending on ambient temperature in the boat, may be 20-30% more or less than these numbers..
A minimal sized solar panel of 100+ watts would extend the battery life further, but anything less than 100 watts is not going to help much.
Good luck !

 

[RolfSail]

Elaborating in really rough numbers, a 100 amp hour 12 V battery has 1200 watts available and in the case of lead acid, only 50% should be used if the battery is to last more than one or two seasons.. In a nutshell, (again rough numbers) the cooler alone will use up a 100 amp hour lead acid deep cycle battery in one day. That is if not much else is running like charging phones, computers, autopilot, chart plotter.. lights, fans, etc. .. If your battery bank is LiFe, the general guidance is 80-90% depletion is OK so for each 100 amp hours of capacity, you have around 1 KW available so the cooler would run around two days . That again is really rough SWAG stuff and accounts for nothing else running. The cooler duty cycle , depending on ambient temperature in the boat, may be 20-30% more or less than these numbers..
A minimal sized solar panel of 100+ watts would extend the battery life further, but anything less than 100 watts is not going to help much.
Good luck !

Great info! Thanks so much for the detailed response.

 

[kloudie1]

Again, really rough numbers.
depending on how often you go out for a few days and your tolerance for noise, a small "suitcase" inverter generator (1000-2000 watts) may be a less expensive option than solar.. (You'd be using your on board charger) The downsides are noise, maintenance, and storage of the unit. Since you already have gasoline on board for the outboard, gasoline storage is not an additional problem.

 

[BigEasy]

For those of you who have an electric 12 volt cooler on board how has the watt consumption affected the battery.

What’s the capacity (amp hour) rating of your house battery bank? As @kloudie1 mentioned, you’re going to consume the capacity of one 100amp battery per day without an external means to recharge; ie., portable generator. You can also try a Yetti or similar quality box using block ice to get you thru 2-3 days, then revert to your refrigerated unit, providing that you have at least a 300 amp bank.

 

[colemj]

There is no way of answering this without specific details. It will depend heavily on cooler size, the environmental temperature it is operating in, the internal temperature setpoint you desire, the type, size, and initial temp of contents you put in it, and the size of your battery.

Everything else is a WAG.

Mark

 

[Alan Gomes]

The downsides are noise, maintenance, and storage of the unit.

And irritating boats next to you (which, I guess, is a downside for *them*), coupled with concerns about gassing yourself to death.

 

[BrianQ]

Running a portable refrigerator from battery power is very doable, you just need to figure out what the power requirement is for the “cooler” you choose and what battery chemistry you feel comfortable with.

I have two ICECO portable refrigerators, a 37qt and a 21qt. The 37qt is an AC/DC model and the 21qt is a DC only model. The 37qt model stays on the boat full time, full of drinks, and plugged in to AC power. Before I depart the dock, I switch it over to DC, drawing power from one of the boat’s battery banks. Generally, I just use the 21qt fridge to transport cold food items to the boat and offload it into the 37qt fridge but will occasionally take it along as well.

Now for the numbers, the 37qt fridge is advertised to draw .430kWh per 24hr period and the 21qt draws .293kWh for the same timeframe. I have found those numbers are close to what I have experienced over several years of use if the fridges and the contents are already cold. If the battery bank used to run the fridge is also used for the initial cooling the 1st day’s consumption goes up significantly.

Converted to amp hours, .430kWh equates to roughly 36Ah per day and .293kWh is roughly 25Ah a day. A 5-day trip would need 180Ah of usable capacity to run the 37qt fridge or 125Ah for the 21qt. Based on consuming 36Ah a day for 5 days a 225Ah Li-ion or 360Ah lead acid battery bank would be required, about 70% less capacity for a 125Ah requirement.