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How long will a 12 volt refrigerator run on battery?

We just wrote about a bunch of fridge stuff. And so I thought I'd chat about this just for a couple of minutes, because it's such a common question. It's all over the web. So it's a people also ask in Google search it's on forums and Facebook, and it's one of those questions that everybody has on their mind.

I think even experienced vanlifers are often wondering; what's my fridge going to draw on this trip or whatever, or with this battery, et cetera.

And mostly I'm here to say that it's complicated and there is no easy answer. You can't just say a 100 amp hour lead acid battery will run a fridge for X hours because every fridge and every user are different

And so what I want to do is just run down the checklist that we made here. And, by the way, you can just go to vantage.com and type in fridge. And you'll, you'll see three or four articles about 12 volt refrigerators and things like power use and runtime, et cetera.

We did a bunch of research on this just to make sure that we had it covered thoroughly and that we could offer a solid response to this question.

There are several factors impacting how long a 12 volt fridge will run on a battery and those factors include the size of the battery, obviously in amp hours. And then quickly we get right to battery chemistry.

So. Consider that a lead acid battery should not be run below 50% of charge because below that they start to break down or, they break down more quickly.

You shorten the life of the battery and batteries are expensive. And so the more you run the thing below 50% of charge, the sooner it will die and you'll have to replace it and this is one of the reasons that, with the newer chemistry out, specifically, lithium iron phosphate or LiFeP04, and even lithium ion in the form of the solar generators that are out available.

I don't think it makes sense to buy lead acid batteries. Now I'm not here to rag on anybody who owns lead acid batteries. I've owned them in the past. They're wonderful things.

Obviously they solve power problems for people. And if you’ve just spend a bunch of money on lead acid batteries, don't think that I'm telling you to run out and replace them.

No, use them till they're used. Or until you're annoyed with charging, recharging them at 50% or...