this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2024
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My jeep has 3-prong electrical outlets. Not sure how much it will power and i assume you would want to have the car running.
From the owners manual: "There is a 115 Volt, 150 Watt inverter outlet located on the back of the center console to convert DC current to AC current. This outlet can power cellular phones, electronics and other low power devices requiring power up to 150 Watts."
I don't know if I'd plug in a fridge to that. I was wondering because my father in law's truck has a similar outlet and I know he's blown a fuse using it to power power tools.
After the freeze in Texas a couple years ago, when many people lost electricity, Ford started advertising the outlets on their trucks.
Edit to add the link - https://www.ford.com/trucks/f150/f150-lightning/features/intelligent-backup-power/
My father in law drives a 2015 F150. That outlet on the center console is 120 Volt outlet supplies 400watts. But a fridge can be anything from 300 to almost 800. I'm not saying it's impossible. And with newer trucks (especially the lightning and the F150 hybrid), I would believe it more readily. Ford is quick to market this in new trucks but I wouldn't count on it with older trucks. I'm just pointing out that real work experience says your mileage may vary. Especially in places like Texas or Arizona where your battery is going through extreme heat cycles due to the weather from like February to November.
I measured my fridge. You could, in theory. Problem is that the motor in the fridge (and in power tools) is an "induction load", meaning it draws a lot more power in a split second when starting. Inverters have to be built with that in mind, or just stronger (killowats range).
I wanted to say "look at the label but it should be fine" but then I did a quick google double-check and depending on whether you get US or EU results you get quite different answers: US 350 to 780W, EU 100 to 300W. Refrigerators have quite lower numbers but we wanted a fridge so let's look at small refrigerators with proper fridge compartment (four stars, -18C), like... a Beko TSE1284N b100, 240 bucks not fancy not shoddy (Beko in a nutshell, honestly). Damn, why are they only listing kWh/24h and kWh/a. Whelp. No pictures of rating plates anywhere. Oh. According to Amazon "50W", according to another trader 90W connected load, which makes sense if we understand those 50W as consumption load (or whatever those things are called in English).
So, yeah, look at the label and you should be fine. Don't get that fridge though it's 220V.
Just make sure you open the garage first