Adding panels

Sonomaguy

In theory, if I use a Boulder 200 solar panel charging my Goal Zero Yeti 3000x while in use during a power outage, what would be a ballpark estimate of extension of hours I could get? The Yeti site claims 43 hours running a refrigerator.
I’m only going to use the Yeti to power my typical Kitchen Aid side by side refrigerator/freezer.
Best estimate of sun for the panels would be around 6-8 hours due to hillside exposure.

jg164

Hi @Sonomaguy,

This type of question comes up often. The most accurate way to do this is to experiment and document your results. Benchmarking fridge runtime on a weekend when you can be around and swap over the plug to the wall when it runs out is what I would do. The Yeti App has energy usage history that can help with this or you can purchase a Kill-a-watt or smart plug that can record what-hours over time.

The yeti display estimate is for instantaneous power draw right now, not what has been happening over hours. Your fridge may have times when it uses more or less power. If you want to get a realistic average power use you can use for backup power planning, measure the power use over a 24 hour period in hot weather and average the use so you have a good mix of high and low power use in the calculation.

The Yeti 3000X has 3054 Watt-hours of power in the battery. The inverter is roughly 80-90% efficient at making 115V AC power so that leaves 3054*0.85= 2595.9 Watt-hours you will realistically get to the fridge out of the AC port. if the average power use of the fridge is 95Watts then you will roughly hope to see 27 hours of runtime, again this is an estimate and real testing will show more accurate results.

If you are able to get a Boulder 200 in perfect solar conditions, you could see 5 solar hours or 1000 Watts of charging from it per day. 95 Watts times 24 hours is 2280 watt-hours the fridge might use in a day so a 200 watt panel could not keep up forever.

If you max out the solar input of the Yeti to 600W at 5 good solar hours per day you might hope to see at most 3000 Watt-hours of solar recharge power per day and that seems like it could keep up with the fridge as long as solar conditions are great and you keep moving the panels towards the sun etc.

Does that help?

Sonomaguy

That was very helpful. I will run the refrigerator in a test to see what amount it uses. I think I may go for extra solar panels as you pointed out they could power the refrigerator for unlimited days which would be my goal. I found the energy savings sticker that came with the refrigerator. Rated at 610 kWh per year. Divide by days 365 = 1.67 per day, so probably not the 43 hours as advertised to run a refrigerator. In my case maybe 32-34 ish. Thx!