Refrigeration In a Power Outage - Emergency Grid Down Food

My 2 cents: Eliminate mini-fridge. Purchase a slightly larger chest freezer. Place a couple of 1 gallon water jugs into freezer. When they are frozen, move them to a yeti (or similar) high quality cooler for refrigerator type items (and meds). Rotate another couple of gallon water jugs into the freezer perhaps once or twice per day. If the freezer is taking advantage of solar, then put jugs into the freezer in the morning. Also, if you have a basement, keep the freezer and cooler in the basement to gain a bit of additional efficiency where it's cooler.

You're half right. Your use of a small chest is spot on, you're use of a small dorm refrigerator is wrong. Buy a second small chest freezer and hook up a Inkbird ITC308 Freezer Thermostat sold on Amazon $36. A small refrigerator loses most of it's cold air when opened, a chest unit doesn't. Convert a chest freezer to a refrigerator takes less energy.

Maybe time to add Texas and Florida to the list of places where you’d expect multiple day outages due to natural disaster

After Beryl, I went to 7 days without power. My fridge run almost every day, except one that rained all day, but it did not defrosted because it was kept closed most of the time. Next day the sun came out and the Bluetti 3k refilled. I got 1k of solar panels, I also have two smaller units to run lights, and 12V fans and devices. Just in case, I also have a 12v fridge, but I did not needed this time. I keep water and other emergency items just in case. Good advice given!

I hope everyone knows the order is: water, food, shelter - because without water you die before you eat !

The most important thing to remember about refrigerators and freezers if you want to save energy, is to limit the number of times you open the doors and reduce the amount of time they are open.

I’ve had the same setup for years! I live in Miami and experienced Andrew, Katrina, Wilma and Irma. I currently own two sportsman generators and have four lifepo4 batteries. My chest freezer (36 wh) and 3.2 fridge (41 wh) can run for weeks on my setup. I can cook on my instapot and induction hot plate and keep my 5000 btu air conditioner going in the worst heat. Planning is the key!!!

I actually ran a mini fridge for 48 hrs non stop with a 12v 100 ah lifepo4 battery. I assumed after 48 hrs that the battery was low. I put it on the charger and it showed a 60% charge. Impressive to me .

With a chest freezer you don't have to leave it plugged in you can let it charge for three or four hours and leave it unplugged for 8 hours stretch out how much power you're using out of your solar generators. You'll thank me later

I installed a $30 Generator Inlet to the outside wall of my Kitchen then ran 1 foot of Wire thru the wall to a 20 amp double outlet inside the kitchen to make a dedicated Generator Outlet (NOT connected to house wiring) so my 2300/1800 watt quiet Inverter Generator can run Fridge, Chest Freezer, Internet, TV & Pellet Stove all at once,... Not a "whole house" set up but all the important stuff will run & this was pretty cheap to do & pretty cheap to run :)

Good info, after huricane Maria we spent 45 days without power and interrupted afterwards. Bought an Iceco 45 and with a 12V battery and solar panels we can run it for 24 hrs. Lessons learned after the storm.

Great intro for basic yet completely usable solar power setup. The video was really done well!

I looked into getting a mini fridge a few years ago and realized that a full size fridge used about the same amount of electricity while offering a lot more capacity at 369 vs 329 kwh per year, comparing a $500 18 cubic foot fridge to a 4.4 cubic foot $200 mini fridge.  For 4 times the capacity with about the same energy use and no need to move things over to a different fridge while deciding what items to let spoil, the full size fridge made more sense to me. Of course a chest freezer set to a refrigerator temperature would likely use even less power as others mentioned.  I started out using a dewalt inverter that powers my fridge and standalone freezer using dewalt batteries for a few hours since I already had plenty of their flexvolt batteries. I have since gotten an inverter generator that plugs into an inlet on my circuit panel to run most everything on either gas or propane relatively quietly though you could start out using extension cords. I have wireless Acurite thermometers in my fridge and freezer so I can monitor the max/min temp without opening the fridge and it alarms if it gets too warm. This can be helpful if not using the generator 24/7 and I'm wanting to alternate between using batteries, having everything off, and then turning the generator back on as things warm up so I can run the fridge again, recharge batteries, and then go back to battery power.

Hi, I came across this video and am glad I did. You provided some great info . I have several 12 volt fridge / freezer cooler combo’s. They pull about 45 watts when the compressor kicks on. I use solar generators to power them for the most part. Then I hook up a lifepo4 battery to the solar generator to extend the run time. Again, great video. Have a good one.

I strongly recommend buying frozen dry ice (C°2) packs and keep many of these in your deep feezer. ❄These are much colder than water ice. If the electrical power gets shut off, the dry ice packs will keep your feezer cold for more than 4 days. I also recommend putting a dry ice pack in a good quality mylar bag with meats inside and keep these in the deep freezer also. This keeps the meats frozen for a much longer amount of time !

I bought a 56 Quart Euhomy freezer/fridge cooler. It has the option to charge via wall socket, cigarette lighter, or solar panels. I got it to hold all of my burger in tubes from a 1/4 beef purchase. It works on Eco Mode once everything is frozen and can go for a couple of days, maybe 3. Plus, if you don't need the freezer you can set it as a fridge. Bouge and Bodega have separate compartment/doors in some of their coolers like this. The best thing about this is if you have to get out of town you have food for days and it is multi-use, not just stationary. It is a little more money, but worth the piece of mind for me. One last thing: In the event of a hurricane or fire/smoke, etc. you will most likely be able to charge batteries via solar in a couple of days and if you have a back-up battery you have several days to do that or get out of town.

Water, food, sleep. Without sleep you become psychotic

MAYBE 2 CHEST FREEZERS? A THERMOSTAT ON ONE TO USE IT AS A FRIDGE BUT WITH MORE CUBIC SPACE THEN A MINIFRIDGE.

A 12vDC fridge would use even less power, just FYI.

I plan on the cheat freezer and a quality ice chest. Power the chest freezer and rotate ice blocks to the cooler.