Auto Defrost Fridge Vs. Inverter Search [RE-wrenches]

[Bill Loesch, Saint Louis Solar]

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Ray,

You certainly know more details about your customer's refer than I do. 

In general bypassing the auto defrost timer may not be the best idea for a
number of reasons. First, the heater is sized so that the defrost timer
operates _twice_ a day. So unless your fridge owner has _no_ life,
operating the auto defrost fridge in "manual" mode is really not an option.
The reason the heater operates so frequently is because the heater is
relatively small and if the frost builds up to where one normally manually
defrosts (like when the door won't close), the heater will not be able to
handle that quantity of accumulation. Actually, if the heater misses a
couple of cycles in humid summer conditions with frequent door openings,
that might be enough to thwart heater operation and require "power down"
defrosting.

These comments are based on dated experience where the defrost timer is a
mechanical timer. I would have a hard time understanding how a mechanical
timer could be effected by the inverter starting sequence waking from sleep
mode. Perhaps in the quest for product improvement (nee cost cutting) a
chip (with a distaste for non sine wave power) now performs that mechanical
timer function.

PS What are you going to tell your astute customer when he buys a new
fridge and plugs it in to his DR inverter and it doesn't work properly or
at all? The mod sine inverters have their supporters but in general _a lot_
of problems never even arise with sine wave machines. 

Respectfully,

Bill Loesch, Solar 1 - Saint Louis Solar, St. Louis, MO, tel 314 631 1094

Message text written by Ray Walters INTERNET:RE-wrenches at topica.com
>
Hi All;

An astute customer noticed that when ever a separate load (light) pulled 
his DR 2424 inverter out of sleep mode, his Kenmore refrigerator (energy 
star rated) would go into its frost free mode which apparently takes a lot 
of extra power. It would reset to this mode several times a day instead of 
the once a day it should. My short answer was to disable sleep mode in the 
inverter, because I figured the Kenmore's defrost timer was being reset 
every time. What is interesting is that if the fridge itself pulls the 
inverter on, it doesn't go into defrost mode. Only when another load does 
it.  Anybody else notice this or have any suggestions? I thought of somehow

bypassing the auto defrost timer and instead put the defrost mode on an 
external switch that the customer could turn on when needed. The warranty 
is out for the fridge anyway, and he's almost ready to buy a different one.

Thanks for your help,

Ray Walters
ray at solarray.com
President, SolarRay, Inc.
NABCEP Certified Solar PV Installer
BS Mechanical Engineering, UT Austin 88
Returned US Peace Corps Volunteer <

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