Not having power to run your refrigerator can be devastating. You’ll open the door to a week’s worth of wasted groceries and hundreds of dollars of food destroyed. The condensation dripping from the freezer will unveil even more of a catastrophe. In the world of unstable power grids and extreme weather events, you don’t have to learn the hard way and let you refrigerator go without power any longer.
There’s no shortage of ways to provide backup power for a home refrigerator. You can rely on traditional methods or reach toward the new wave of innovative power solutions. There’s something for everyone and to meet almost any budget. You can choose a system that will pay for itself in one outage by saving your food. Or go for even bigger backup power to discover what 21st century emergency preparedness really means.
With grocery prices soaring and energy solutions around every corner, now is the time to get a backup system for your fridge.
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Understanding Your Fridge’s Power Needs
No matter the device, the starting point to figure out a backup power arrangement is to identify the power consumption. Once you know how much energy your fridge needs, then you can find the right device to supply that power.
The Fridge Cycle
When sizing a backup power solution for your refrigerator, there’s a crucial detail you can’t overlook: Refrigerators do not draw power consistently. Like an athlete sprinting then jogging, your refrigerator cycles between high-power bursts and lower sustained energy use. What you want to do is find the average consumption rate per hour. This tells you how many watts the fridge uses per hour by accounting for the high-power times when the compressor cools it down and the low-power times when it’s maintaining the cold temperatures.
Many home refrigerators will use anywhere from 300W to 800W when the compressor is running. 500W fridges are some of the most common. This is the maximum energy use. When the compressor isn’t on, the power can be so small it’s not even worth considering. So it’s really the average rate that you need to pay attention to.
Another issue with powering a fridge is that when the compressor first turns on, it usually requires a big surge of energy to get started. So even though it only consumes about 500W while running, the start surge might be 1,000W or higher. This is important when shopping for backup systems.
Average Power Draw
Once you have the energy use in watts, you want to figure out how many watt-hours it uses per hour. Wattage is the running power while watt-hours represents the total power used over a period.
The average power draw of a fridge will often fall somewhere between 150Wh and 300Wh per hour of use. We generally suggest 200Wh per hour is a reasonable estimate for many modern home refrigerators.
Some of the factors that can influence exactly how much energy a fridge uses include:
- Age and energy efficiency: Older models typically use twice the energy as newer Energy Star appliances
- Size: Larger refrigerators consume more energy, with as much as 20W extra per cubic foot
- Ambient temperature: A fridge inside a 70 degree household will use much less than one in a 90 degree garage
- Other usage conditions: Opening the door or putting warm items inside causes energy use to go up
Exact Power Use
We recommend using a watt meter to figure out exactly how much power your fridge uses. This is the most accurate way to see how much power you need to keep your home fridge running in a blackout.
You can plug a watt meter into the wall outlet then plug the fridge into it. The meter will record the energy use and you can see exactly how many watt-hours of energy it uses in a day. It’s a good idea to run it a few times to make sure you account for different conditions. And if you do this in the winter, remember that your fridge will likely use a little more power in warmer months.
Now you either can use the 200Wh per hour estimate we recommend or the exact Wh estimate you got from the watt meter. This is the average hourly energy use of the fridge.
How Much Backup Power to Get
Once you identify the power your fridge uses per hour (on average), then you can start to figure out how much backup power you need to keep it running during an outage. But there are some crucial things to keep in mind.
First, the rated battery capacity is not equal to the power your device will receive. Every battery has a small amount of unusable capacity because depleting them all the way to zero causes damage.
On top of that, every electrical system loses some power to inefficiencies. You know how some wires warm up a little bit? That’s energy coming off of them. Every wire, every connector, and every AC inverter will take a tiny bit of energy.
As a power expert, I recommend getting a battery that is about 20% larger than the energy you want to use.
So let’s say that your fridge uses 200Wh per hour. And you want to buy a backup system that will run your home refrigerator for at least 10 hours. 200Wh times 10 hours equals 2,000Wh. Add on another 20% and you get 2,400Wh. You need 2,400Wh battery capacity to power a fridge that uses 200Wh for 10 hours.
Let’s do one more power example. Maybe you live in a hot area or have a very large fridge. Or perhaps your teenager is an bottomless pit of hunger who hasn’t quite learned how to shut the fridge door. In that case, the fridge might use a lot more energy of 400Wh per hour on average.
Thankfully, your grid is typically very trustworthy and you just want to cover a short power outage. To run this fridge that uses 400Wh on average for about 2 hours, then you need about 900Wh of battery capacity. 400Wh times 2 hours plus 20% equals 880Wh.
Backup Power Options
When you know what your fridge uses per hour and how many hours you want to run it for, you can figure out how much power you need. Now for the fun part: What should you use to provide that battery power?
The main options to provide backup power for a home refrigerator are:
- Fuel Generator
- Portable Power Station
- Home Battery Backup System
Fuel Generator
I’m going to start with my least favorite option. Yet it’s also the most popular. And that’s because using a fuel generator is the cheapest and easiest way to make sure your fridge always stays cold, even during a grid outage or another serious emergency.
As long as you get an inverter generator with an inverter than can meet the electrical demands of your fridge, it will work. There are some important things to consider, both good and bad.
Let’s start with the bad news. Fuel generators aren’t the best way to power a fridge because:
- Fumes: These rely on a combustion engine that must be used in a well ventilated space.
- Noise: While they’ve come a long way, even the most quiet fuel generators are still noisy.
- Fuel: You must have a suitable fuel supply and storing the fuel can require constant attention.
- Maintenance: Fuel generators require you to regularly change the oil, spark plugs, filters, and other parts.
That list is a big pill to swallow. The idea of using a fuel generator goes down much easier when you realize these pros:
- Affordable: Usually the lowest-cost method of keeping your fridge powered up.
- Powerful: Small combustion engines create surprisingly powerful output, usually more than enough for most refrigerators and other devices.
- Portable: You can bring it almost anywhere and use it for a wide variety of purposes.
There are a lot of reasons to go with a fuel generator. Being low priced and a quick solution are two of the most attractive options. Just remember that you can’t simply run this right next to your fridge. Most people will need to run them outside the home and use an extension cord to power the fridge.
Portable Power Station
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could use a device that’s about the size of a fuel generator but offers silent power without fumes? Maybe it could also avoid the headaches of storing fuel and needing regular maintenance as well. But that’s likely asking too much, right?
Portable power stations bring this idea to reality, and have a ton of other benefits to go with. They’re a portable system that includes everything you need in one magical box. There’s a battery to store energy, charging inputs to use with regular outlets or solar panels, and outlets to connect your fridge. You can also charge phones, power laptops, and use them for many other needs.
The main reasons we recommend power stations for a home fridge are:
- Silent: Battery power comes with almost no noise (other than a fan, like your computer has).
- No fuels or maintenance: Nothing to worry about, just charge it and use it.
- Connections: There are usually multiple AC outlets and plenty of USB ports to power many devices at once.
- Clean power: Can use solar panels to charge them if the grid is out.
- Choices: There’s a power station to fit most needs and price levels.
Yet we aren’t going to avoid the problems. Portable power stations have a few downsides too, including:
- Battery level: If the battery isn’t charged, it can’t power a fridge. Solar panels can help solve this.
- More costly: While there are many reasonable options, the larger units cost more than comparable fuel generators.
For powering a home refrigerator, I recommend getting a power station with at least 1,000Wh battery capacity and 1,500W inverter. This will run most refrigerators for about 4 hours. The inverter rating must match your refrigerator’s maximum power needs. And the bigger the battery you get, the longer it will provide power for.
Many of the midrange power stations can fit this situation perfectly. The EcoFlow Delta 3 Plus is one of our favorite options that’s on the lower end of this scale. The Anker Solix F2000 is a bigger midrange power station for your fridge, and another one that brings premium features on a value-packed model.
If you want to run your fridge for an entire day from a battery and it uses 200Wh per hour, then you want to get a power station with nearly 6,000Wh. This is more like a home battery backup system.
Home Battery Backup System
Now you’re in for a real treat. These whole-home battery backup systems go far beyond just keeping your food cold. They’ll keep your outlets fired up and running throughout the house. You don’t have to unplug your fridge. You don’t even have to stop watching the big game. And your kids can still knock out that last-minute project in the hours before its due.
You know those times when the whole neighborhood goes dark? What if your home never has that problem again. Whether it’s a quick outage or a long emergency caused by widespread power disruption, you can keep using electronics in your entire home.
This is modern energy independence. And battery backup systems, often paired with adequate charging sources, are how you get there.
There are two main choices for creating a home backup energy systems:
- Custom systems: Using your selection of battery, inverter, and other components to create a functioning battery backup
- Heavy-duty power stations: An all-in-one device designed, engineered, and manufactured by leading electronics brands.
In many ways, it’s like choosing between building a custom PC or buying a high-end laptop. One you can build to your own specs, but requires some knowledge to put it together and will not be covered by any warranty or customer support. The other is ready to go from the box and comes with fully warranty coverage and customer service.
You can use solar panels with these systems to keep the power going or you can avoid that and just keep the batteries charged when the grid is up. You can also use fuel generators or other power sources. And to connect them to your home circuits, you just use a transfer switch and critical loads panel. This allows you to switch between grid power and the battery backup.
Home battery backup systems are the ultimate way to provide backup power for a home fridge. We compare two of our favorite systems in this article on EcoFlow Delta Pro Ultra vs. Tesla Powerwall.
Making the Right Choice
Now it’s time for you to pick the power source that meets your needs. If you want the most budget-friendly option, a fuel generator is likely your best bet. And if you want to shoot for the moon, start looking into a whole-home battery backup.
For most people, a midrange power station is a great way to provide power for your fridge during an outage. Smaller units can keep it running for several hours while larger units can keep up for longer times. And you can always use solar panels to extend the backup power time too.
To continue discovering the power station world, it can help to see how a power station is different from an inverter.
