The way I had to think about it was to abstract every need, then look for different ways to accomplish it. I.e. refrigeration. How can temp be lowered and held. Then go down that rabbit hole. What I’ve learned is that RV tech from the late 70s to early 90s came up with decent solutions to a lot of this stuff.
Discussion
Any resources you could point me to for alternative refrigeration?
It’s not like that really.
There really isn’t a central resource because it’s kinda fringe. But you can look into:
-Propane refrigerators out of RVs
-Super insulated DC fridges. (Sundanzer)
-Modifying chest freezers using a secondary on/off thermostat
- old school cold houses using a stream.
Personally, I am using a propane RV fridge, but I want to take a chest freezer ( top opening keeps cold air inside because it’s heavier than warm air. Stand up fridges pour the cold air on the floor every time you open them) and build a second layer of insulation around it, then add a secondary thermostat which turns the power on at 44 and off at 40 making it a refrigerator. A guy in Australia did this and claims it uses 110 watt hours per day. Which is incredible if true.
I’m a fan of the versatility of rv fridges. Ours runs on both ac and propane. Not sure how they compare on efficiency with the sundanzer. I like them as well.