Power Draw of Residential Refrigerator
Attached is a graph of 120 volt AC power usage of the 11 cubic foot Whirlpool refrigerator that came standard in my Miramar. The left axis is watts, the vertical bars are hours. This test was run to see how much power the refrigerator draws and what the cycling pattern of that draw was. The numbers are most likely within 10%. This was from a warm start with a case of water in it for a heat load and the door was not opened during the test and no icemaker usage. During our first boondocking trip we noticed that the refrigerator began to make different noises, like it was having trouble starting, after about 6 hours with no 120 volt power.
As you can see it takes a couple of hours to cool down and then begins a cycle about once every 48 minutes. It uses about 200 watts of power during cool down, then around 170 watts during each cycle, but it never drops below about 70 watts. So using a factor of 10 this would translate into 20 amps, 17 amps and 7 amps respectively of DC power at 12 volts. Also worth noting is that the ice maker's heater draws 185 watts when it is on.
In answer to the question about load presented while going down the road the Ford V10 has a 175 amp alternator so that should not be an issue.
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