Portable Ice Maker run off 800 Watt Generator

Hii Everyone,   I'm think'in I could buy a portable ice maker and run it off my 800 Watt generator when i charge my battery boondocking in my van.   If anybody has Input with portable icemakers  I'd like from you and what your experience is.  

I have a Frigidaire brand portable counter-top ice maker and it will run on my 700 watt pure-sine inverter. About $90 from Wal-Mart.

Like most things with a compressor, they pull a lot more currrent on start-up than they do while running.

If you have never used one, they are handy, but they make little thumb-sized round cubes, that are not dry and hard-frozen like you think of ice cubes coming out of a freezer. Of course, you can toss them in a tray in your freezer and save them for later.

I will check running wattage on mine later today and post the numbers here.

lots of conversions = not very efficient. highdesertranger

lol...

Yeah I dont think ice is very 'efficient'...but we like it anyway.

Ran some tests on mine with the kill-a-watt meter.

About 127 watts when pumping water up to the freezing tray and pre-chilling the rods. Compressor start-up watts were much higher, but no way to tell exactly how high with my meter. Several hundred watts for less than a second, I'm guessing. 

But the power factor is pretty low, around .54 or so, meaning the results are skewed and put a bit more strain on the power source than 127 watts would indicate.

Wattage while just freezing the 'cubes': about 115 watts.

Power used while 'dumping' the ice: about 160 watts. The rods heat up briefly to release the cubes. Then the motors kick in to move the 9 cubes to the little basket.

Then the cycle starts all over again. After the basket fills up, about an hour or so, then you have to remove the ice cubes or the machine stops running, with plenty of water still in the reservoir. 

Mine holds about a gallon of water, and takes about 3.5 hours to run thru all of that to make the ice cubes.

In 3.5 hours, mine consumed about .3 kwh of energy. Stated another way: 300 watt-hours, or the full output from 3, 100 watt panels, for one hour. (inverter losses will add to that figure)

If you were running on solar only, you have time on your side, but with a generator, you would be running it for 3-4 hours depending on ambient temps, to make a full load of ice from a gallon of water. Thats a fair amount of ice. But, if you were running the generator anyway, it might be a reasonable use of surplus power from the generator.

BTW, these things make some noise when the fan and compressor are running, and of course, every time they dump ice cubes in the little basket.

Interesting results, I think. 

If you are on shorepower or at home, they are great...but while boondocking....maybe not so much.

Bump! per a post in another thread...

tx2sturgis:
Awesome, thanks - I love numbers, and bonus for the noise review!

How much ice did the one gallon of water produce?

As I mentioned elsewhere, I'm curious if this might be a good option for my unusual situation.
I can mostly get by without food cooling, but every now and then I'd like to open up one or two multi-portion cans, without worrying about them spoiling. I only "want" ice for a day or two, maybe once a week.
So far, I just time all that for right after town runs.

I've got both a small (5 gallon) hard cooler, and a similar sized soft-sided cooler (which can be squished in to minimize the amount of air that would require cooling).

At this point, I'm just fantasizing/thought-experimenting/collating-data, since I can't justify the expense. Maybe in a year or two it would be viable.

If any of you are so inclined, perhaps you could experiment with my scenario, specifically produce just two liters of ice.
How long does it take, and how much power?

Kudos to all the folks experimenting with these and thanks for sharing your data!

P.S. I'd (of course) place a can of root beer in the cooler, too.

HiYa fellow "Toasted" vanner

I'll just say that Tx2Stugis does "rate" the cubes as SOFT...….they are not really HARD frozen.....

they're OK used in drinks but without further FREEZING you're out-of-luck

I would think you would be better off with a small compressor fridge. Even the little ones have enough room to store your leftovers and they are energy efficient units. There are plenty of small compressor fridges on Amazon now that are reasonably priced. You can also watch craigslist for a used portable fridge/freezer. People sell the small ones so they can upgrade to larger ones.

some things you can do with ice you just cant do with a fridge. I can see an icemaker as a luxury, not a necessity but a rather nice luxury. highdesertranger

had one.
bad ice.
cupped center, thin wall, the little ice ya did get was like, useless, cause of the melt so fast.
bag it up and put in rv fridge and then it just froze as a solid mass and ya had to slam the heck out of it to break up again LOL
ours is in the pantry, ready for me to throw out since sitting for like 5 yrs now, but thinking I might have ditched it to the landfill a couple years ago, heck not sure on it LOL
best is high intensity cooler and a bag of ice....it will go further for sure as we have found this to be true.
portable icemaker to us was a PIA that we wouldn't do again.
power draw high and long.
won't use one ever again. just not our thing....and we did buy, what is said to be, one of those top of the line ones, like $149 when we got it...ugh...worst money spent for us.....everyone's mileage will vary on this tho LOL

hahaha roamer tell us how you really feel. highdesertranger

Maki: I should have mentioned that I'm TBI and extremely noise sensitive, so can't risk something that runs all day and may disrupt me.
Excellent point on CL! I am hoping I could find a heavily discounted ice maker. They sound like the sort of thing folks get rid of, a lot.

Again, I do not "need" continuous food cooling.
I will post more shelf stable food reviews (with porn!), so y'all will see that I'm very well set up in that area.
Before deciding to become a full-time vehicle dweller, I already had much experience with shelf stable food, plus did much research & experimentation before the switch.
I know what my personal parameters are.

HDR: you nailed it!
It would merely be "nice" to have something that could produce very limited cooling "on demand".
Heat zonks me out, so I generally don't create Code when it's very hot. I've got lots of other stuff to do (mostly analyzing data), so I can always keep busy.
When I'm in the Coding "zone", I tend to cook easy stuff and need more Quiet. When I'm not in that zone, I'll cook more complicated stuff and can manage some well defined & limited noise.
Plus... cold root beer FTW.

More data is welcome, from those of you who enjoy experimenting methodically.

My solar system has excess capacity, so I've been researching small frugal appliances that would give me more options.
I did recently buy a small used crockpot ($2 at a thrift store), and will be experimenting when it gets hotter.
There's lots of sites claiming one can use slow cookers to bake bread, cookies, and... pizza!
That may not be realistic in a van, but somebody has to give it a try.

Crockpot Pizza?

Now THERE's something you dont hear about everyday.

By now, you know I'll report back... with pics.
Even if it's a bust.

ha ha HDR it really was one of those hit and miss purchases, some swear they love them, others like me hate the darn things a gadget, omg I hate gadgets anymore LOL

craggers said:

Hii Everyone,   I'm think'in I could buy a portable ice maker and run it off my 800 Watt generator when i charge my battery boondocking in my van.   If anybody has Input with portable icemakers  I'd like from you and what your experience is.  

Click to expand...

I would also ask if anyone has ever tried to run a portable ice maker of their car engine with an inverter? I think this should work, but I can't find anyone who has done this. Anyone with any ideas, please let me know!

"I would also ask if anyone has ever tried to run a portable ice maker of their car engine with an inverter? I think this should work, but I can't find anyone who has done this. Anyone with any ideas, please let me know! "

very inefficient. to many conversions.

highdesertranger

It takes a long time to cycle ice through one of those. If you are running the ice maker at the same time you won't have a lot of leftover power for efficient charging of your battery. If you are noise sensitive running a generator is going to bug you.

I had one of the frigidaire ice makers and was happy with it at the time. I'm on shore power and although it does take a long time to make ice I could fill a cooler with it. In batches. Running it off of the car engine isnt really doable as it takes a long time to make enough ice to be useful.

Also I wound up returning mine after 2 months. It stopped working and burned out the breaker for the kitchen. Maybe mine was a fluke but i wont own another one.

For the money double down and get an alpicool 12v fridge. About double the price but a better investment IMO.

There are a lot of portable ice makers on amazon, some of them are pretty decent. My IKICH has been helpful for a year now.

I'm an iced coffee addict. I have a countertop ice maker. I run it on days when sun is plentiful or on driving days and make enough ice to fill a cooler, then I unplug it. The actual amount of time spent making ice is not long, and it's cheaper by far (both in power consumption and in cost of the ice itself) than buying ice if that's something you do.

As a cooler to hold the ice, it's inefficient and expensive. But for just making the stuff, it's great. Yup, it's a luxury. But we all get to choose!