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Forum Index : Electronics : Smaller maybe better for the job

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Bryan1

Guru

Joined: 22/02/2006
Location: Australia
Posts: 1344

Posted: 10:02am 17 Mar 2023

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G'Day Guy's,
Well living off the grid if one has to have a homebrew one does need to buy ice just to cool the beverage for the family.

Ice machines are dead cheap now and the first thing I do look at is the power draw, so lets say 150 watts at 240VAC for the $100 ice maker from Kogan will make 8-10 cubes a minute.

So hardly any major power draw one may say but if one wanted to put a few of them the setup can handle it.

I do have a fetish in life where when I see stuff I just make it smaller my way and this task is one to take on.

So those small toroids we get on old circuit boards etc can be put to task and smaller inverter can be made, an inverter and MPPT so fewer panels are needed for the charging of the suitable battery.

What is the consensus on this is smaller better for the task.

Cheers Bryan

greybeard
Senior Member

Joined: 04/01/2010
Location: Australia
Posts: 161

Posted: 12:40am 18 Mar 2023

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hmmh, 8-10 cubes a minute, 3 cubes per drink, 5 hours solar per day, say 9 cubes per minute = 3 drinks, so 180 drinks per hour x 5 hours = 900 drinks. 900 drinks / 24 hours ~ 37 drinks per hour or a bit over 2 drinks per minute. Yep, reckon that'd work. You could even have a friend visit if you could limit your drink consumption a for the duration of the visit.
(lots of) cheers Rod

rustyrotors
Newbie

Joined: 07/01/2023
Location: United States
Posts: 36

Posted: 06:43am 19 Mar 2023

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i think it is easy to get carried away going for very low copper loss, large transformer designs. for applications where average load is under a few hundred watts, the increased idle loss of a bigger core negates any efficiency gain from reduced copper loss. especially if large loads only run for short periods

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