In article ,
John Rumm writes:
NT wrote:

What is your figure for the inrush current?

You have measured it ?

From
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Typical_current_draw_for_a_refrigerator

Typical current draw for a refrigerator?

My 20 year old upright freezer is about 10A starting, 3.27 amp running
(263 watts)

My 10 year old fridge is very similar

(Figures from the US)

Derek

US fridges are different animals to UK ones. Typical run power on a
new machine here is around 60w. At 240v thats 0.25A, or a bit more
considering power factor.

If we use your ratio of 3:1 for startup current, then the Vdrop during
startup would be about 1.3v, leaving 238.7v for the compressor that's
rated to run on 220v nominal as well as 240v nominal.

Startup inrush would more likely be 5 x In, perhaps as high a 9 x In.
The power factor could add getting on 50% top of that. If the fridge is
genuinely only 60W or so, then its a non issue since we are talking a
couple of amp tops. If its one that sucks a couple of hundred W then the
number creep up quite quickly.

I haven't measured a fridge, but I have measured by aircon compressor.
The normal power rating is 1.5kW, and I observe the consumption varies
between 1.0 and 1.5kW. When the compressor fails to start with a locked
rotor, the consumption is 4.5kW (for a few seconds before it gives up,
and waits for the pressure differential to decay away before retrying).
A fridge or freezer does exactly the same, in expecting that the
compressor will sometimes fail to start, and need to wait and retry.

I haven't measured the current draw when this happens, and that might
be more than the 3:1 or 4:1 ratio for the power consumption.

--
Andrew Gabriel
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