Food refrigeration is something many of us take for granted until the power goes out. Living off-grid with a solar panel setup, the refrigerator gets battery bank priority over all other electronics. The refrigerator is the biggest test of an off-grid battery system, especially when it kicks on at night or has to battle with a hot wood stove.
Refrigeration storage space is at a premium when you are trying to limit your trips to town. We started out with a dorm room style fridge/freezer. We only used the freezer for freezer packs, and that was more for just storing them. After squeezing three bags of milk, a carton of creamer, a carton of eggs, a tub of butter, and multiple bricks of cheese into the fridge, it would be jam packed full. This would only last us a week before we would have to head back into town.
With our new Reach In Freezer converted to a Reach In Fridge, we can easily hold enough fridge supplies to last us more than two weeks. Reach In Freezers are the most efficient using 10-25% less power. When the door is opened, all the cool air doesn't spill out. The weight of the door also helps keep the freezer/fridge closed tight. We have noticed much less power usage. With a Plug and Play thermostat, the freezer to fridge conversion is easy to do.
Freezers are kept below zero degrees Celsius, fridge temperatures are kept from 0-4 degrees Celsius. For the freezer to fridge conversion, the thermostat's temperature probe goes between the door seals and into the freezer.
The plugin for the freezer goes into the thermostat's Cooling electrical plugin. There is also a plugin for Heating, but I won't be using that plugin for this conversion. When the temperature probe detects that the fridge is warmer than 3 degrees Celsius, the thermostat turns the freezer On. When the temperature detected gets to be less than 1 degrees Celsius, the thermostat turns the freezer off.
Plug and Play thermostats have plenty of other uses. Home beer brewers need to keep their brewing beer at the right temperature, so they use both heating and cooling plugins. In a green house it would be useful to turn on the fan when too hot or the heater when too cold. A walk in Produce Cooler could be made with a well insulated shed and an air conditioning window unit. For now, this one is helping provide High Efficiency food Refrigeration for our off-grid cabin.
Have a great day! :)