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You have to be comfortable with your setup and lifestyle or you'll give up. Having 24 hr power is a luxury I am not willing to forego. I found it better to buy more panels and batteries and let er rip. I left the power on full time when I had only 3 panels and some golf cart batteries. I was able to run a refrigerator normally with that. Clock-radio, phone chargers, it's all taken care of seamlessly this way.
Don't think you're saving power by turning the reefer off at night other than by sacrificing the amount/quality of refrigeration being done. If the inside of the reefer is colder than the room (the whole point) heat will leak in and must be pumped out. No way around that.
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I also save power by having a small pure sine inverter. IT runs everything efficiently including my fridge, and has little idle consumption. I can always switch on a larger inverter for higher draw appliances (induction cooker, pressure cooker, etc)
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MarkP: it can make sense to expend the power during the day when you have solar assist, rather than at night. Lead-acid round-trip efficiency is only like 85%. This can really hit you when you have an undersized/old battery bank, and due to the Peukert effect lose amp-hours even faster during high draw.
Gotta love a sunny afternoon when your batteries are floating and all the power is free. I go digging around my house for batteries and gizmos to charge.
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"if a tiny AC load keeps the inverter "active" at less than its "standby" draw, then that AC load is effectively "free"."
Thanks for the insight. I will try this before meddling around with the current on the other side.
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"I used an inverter with a "remote on/off switch" wired to the timer. Works great."
Any chance you can explain this further? How did you mod the on/off switch to a timer?
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Many inverters have a contact-closure remote on/off function; on some Xantrex models this feature is exposed as a standard RJ11 modular jack.
The Flexcharge timer has an SPDT relay with dry contacts wired to the barrier strip -- it's designed for this kind of application.
It's a simple matter of wiring the two together. Note, however, that you need to use the NC side of the relay, because the Xantrex remote is "on to disable".
If there's no remote on/off, it's a simple matter to wire one onto the inverter's existing on/off switch; these are typically connected to the low-voltage control electronics, not the high-voltage output.
All that said ... I've found that it's better to just leave the inverter on anyway. Those "wasted" watts have the side effect of keeping the electronics nice and warm, which prevents issues with humidity and condensation...
