Development of a Plug and Play Solution for Commercial Off-grid Solar Refrigeration : Presenting a Battery Supported System Providing the AC Power Required to run a Coolfinity 300L Commercial Refrigerator

Abstract: In this report the design and testing of a plug and play system to run Coolfinity’s Icevolt 300 refrigerator on solar panels is discussed. Such a system will be able to provide adequate cooling for food & beverages in area’s with unreliable or no electricity available. Currently such systems are only available for small chest refrigerators, while the Icevolt 300 is a large standing commercial refrigerator with a glass door. This is ideal for shops, cafés restaurants and smaller distribution centres. The system contains a solar charge controller, a battery and an inverter. First the component specifications and required solar panels are calculated. From those calculations system components are evaluated. A custom casing is designed to fit the components. An OEM is chosen and the chosen Inverter is tested extensively. The tests show that the inverter does not have any problems starting the Icevolt 300 compressor at a reduced voltage. Many battery manufacturers are evaluated and samples from three different manufacturers are obtained and tested. Samples of one of the manufacturers match specifications and have no issues with the high start up power of the compressor. A full system test proofs that the system works, but also indicates that the original refrigerator consumption estimate was too low. This means more PV panels are needed than originally estimated. With the information from the tests a new model is build that estimates the performance more accurate. A program is written to estimate the performance and decide the PV panels required. The pilot series of the case showed a lot of improvements are needed in the case design, especially on cost. A test is prepared in Mali but no test data is obtained yet. Based on the work done it would be recommend to investigate DC direct refrigerators instead of continuing the path of PV to AC systems.