Isotherm fridge

[ottorogers]

Anybody have experience with Isotherm 130 Liter fridge that comes with the new FWC??? I previously had a Dometic compressor 85 liter fridge, it was very power hungry, I am told the Isotherm uses about 1/3 of the power that the Dometic used, this is very good news, with 160 watts of solar, and a good battery setup, there should be no need to ever plug in to shore power, right???

 

[Vic Harder]

Otto, I have the 130L Truckfridge. Same unit, different brand.

"with 160 watts of solar, and a good battery setup, there should be no need to ever plug in to shore power, right???"

Very hard to say yes or no to that. Will 160W keep up with your draw? Hard to say. I have 265W on the roof, 250AH of battery. Typical daily draw is about 50 AH, giving me about 3 days without charging. If there is NO sun, then no amount of solar will keep up.

Start with your 165w and a good battery monitor (NOT the ZAMP readout) like the Victron BMV 712 and keep an eye on what the batteries do. Add more solar if needed.

 

[ottorogers]

Otto, I have the 130L Truckfridge. Same unit, different brand.

"with 160 watts of solar, and a good battery setup, there should be no need to ever plug in to shore power, right???"

Very hard to say yes or no to that. Will 160W keep up with your draw? Hard to say. I have 265W on the roof, 250AH of battery. Typical daily draw is about 50 AH, giving me about 3 days without charging. If there is NO sun, then no amount of solar will keep up.

Start with your 165w and a good battery monitor (NOT the ZAMP readout) like the Victron BMV 712 and keep an eye on what the batteries do. Add more solar if needed.

The new solar controllers are Victron FWC told me, I will have about 220 AH of battery (120 usable), and 160 Watts of solar, last year on our Hawk we had 100 watts of solar and only 160 AH of battery and a very power hungry Dometic compressor fridge, I am told the Isotherm uses 1/3 of the power of the Dometic, so given all that, we should be more than fine

 

[veryactivelife]

The FWC Victron (actually branded as Overland Solar) is just a solar controller as opposed to a battery monitor. The Victron BMV 712 will keep track of all your Ah in and out of the Batteries as well as other battery stats. The 712 is the blue tooth version which will maintain an easy to read history of usage. As for the Overland Solar controller, last I heard it was not the blue tooth model but I believe you can connect the Victro blue tooth dongle to it. With the dongle you will be able to track 30 days of solar panel activity and performance. This includes amount of time in the various charge states so you’ll know if the batteries are truly fully charged or only reached a nominal 100% charge.

Dean

 

[ottorogers]

The FWC Victron (actually branded as Overland Solar) is just a solar controller as opposed to a battery monitor. The Victron BMV 712 will keep track of all your Ah in and out of the Batteries as well as other battery stats. The 712 is the blue tooth version which will maintain an easy to read history of usage. As for the Overland Solar controller, last I heard it was not the blue tooth model but I believe you can connect the Victro blue tooth dongle to it. With the dongle you will be able to track 30 days of solar panel activity and performance. This includes amount of time in the various charge states so you’ll know if the batteries are truly fully charged or only reached a nominal 100% charge.

Dean

Solar controllers are not that expensive, I may swap to the blue Victron with bluetooth for full monitoring, thanks for the advise

 

[Mthomas]

per a conversation with Brian at overland, unfortunately the overland unit cannot be attached to the BT dongle from Victron. The port that would be used for that is attached to the separate MPPT controller. Looking at my Overland monitor, it does appear to log some of the data including aH.

 

[veryactivelife]

Solar controllers are not that expensive, I may swap to the blue Victron with bluetooth for full monitoring, thanks for the advise

Depending on where you are in your ordering process I see several options. If you are getting the Yakima roof tracks you can do it all yourself or have Rocky Mountain do it to your specs. If you don’t have the tracks and are mounting direct to the roof, have FWC do it for warranty reasons in the event of leakage. If it’s too late to change your order or you decide to let the factory do the install then consider the following:
- Keep the factory controller, assuming it’s the 100/30 model.
- Remove the MPPT display
- Plug the Victron dongle into the VE port where the display was plugged in to the controller.
- Purchase the Victron BMV 712 battery monitor and mount it where the MPPT display was. The MPPT display is redundant if you use the blue tooth dongle.
- The BMV 712 and the controller will network over blue tooth.
- If your batteries and the controller are located in separate compartments with differing temperatures you can add the battery temperature wire to the monitor and it will communicate battery temperature to the controller.

Seems like a lot, but if I could figure it out anyone can.

Dean

 

[veryactivelife]

per a conversation with Brian at overland, unfortunately the overland unit cannot be attached to the BT dongle from Victron. The port that would be used for that is attached to the separate MPPT controller. Looking at my Overland monitor, it does appear to log some of the data including aH.

If you use the dongle and the app then there is no need for the MPPT display. Just unplug it and plug in the dongle.

Dean