What would a saltwater home battery bank be for solar applications with a fridge?
Would it be able to run big appliances like a fridge for a couple weeks? The fridge optimization and continual running is essential to our plans for living off-grid.
As you can read on this page, there don’t seem to be saltwater batteries in production anymore than we know of. But to answer your question about battery capacity, determining the right bank of batteries for a solar array to keep your home running in a power outage would all be about the same. Here is a page on the latest home battery systems to get you in right headspace too –
The latest solar home battery technologies
When you are sizing a solar array to power a home there are some variables that needs to be entered, the fridge is just a part of it - though to be certain of minimizing food waste, be sure to optimize fridge organization and use with our comprehensive guide here. A solar installer will ask you to provide an idea of how much power you use by calculating everything from the amount of lights and lamps in your home, the amount of televisions, and the make and model of all appliances - fridges, stoves, dishwashers, laundry machines etc. A home battery installer will know the power storage capacity of a particular battery, and to size one correctly for your home they will want to know how much power things like your the fridge consumes in operation. Once you’ve determined the general load your home consumes in operation then you can decide how much emergency reserve you want.
An important note to remember, is to make any changes (switching to LED bulbs, or choosing more efficient appliances, etc) before sizing solar panels and batteries, otherwise you are in away oversizing a system for no reason and exponentially adding cost.
It's also useful to read our guide on how to survive a power outage in cold weather