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Comment by axelthegerman | Hacker News Reader

Solar and battery for refrigeration seems a waste.

If you own a house I'd look into very old school options like digging a deep hole to store your food in a dark&cool place - forgot the name for it but it'll work for weeks or months without a single milliwatt

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A "cellar"? :)

Or if you want to get technical I guess "root cellar".

That sounds really inconvenient (am I going to keep my food down there all the time, or is the plan to carry the entire contents of my refrigerator down there in an outage?) not terribly effective (RIP all the frozen stuff) and probably not any cheaper. Plus the hole can’t be used for other things like charging my phone.

Convert a chest freezer into refrigerator and you don't need batteries.

https://www.notechmagazine.com/category/refrigeration

That's very smart and might end my quest for a truly quiet bedroom fridge, if it really only runs two minutes in an hour. (Light fridges marketed as "quiet" just produce near-constant annoying fan noise, quietly.)

It really works, and if you fill half the space with water then it'll only need to run once or twice a week (assuming you don't open the lid often)

Have you looked at hotel minibar fridges? They're generally pretty quiet.

It'll work just great to keep half the things in my fridge safe and none of the things in my freezer safe.

Refrigeration is top priority and I would happily buy solar panels just to keep it working (plus leeching a few watts for my phone).

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