Uncle Monster wrote:

... The heat is just enough to trick the thermostat, not to warm the
refrigerator compartment.

How would that accomplish the goal?

The slight heat produced by the heater is enough to raise the temperature
around the thermostat to trick it into running the compressor for a longer
period of time. It's not necessary to increase the temperature of the whole
refrigerated box, just the temperature around the thermostat.

That doesn't make sense to me...

Nick