My power is generally pretty reliable, but when it does have issues, it often flickers violently. More than once, I thought the control board in my fridge got fried, but was luckily able to do the refrigerator equivalent to Ctrl+Alt+Delete and reset it.

I have an extra 800W UPS laying around, so I figured I’d give it a try and see if it would run it. I’m not really looking to use the UPS to keep it powered during an outage, just to deal with the power flickers/surges/brownouts that may damage it (surge protectors won’t protect against brownouts). Any additional cooling time during an outage would simply be a bonus.

To my surprise, it works. Not only works, but only seems to draw between 110 and 160 watts (compressor on, door open). However, I expected it to draw power in the 700-900 watt range. Granted, the last time I worried about refrigerator wattage was years ago when I lived in the boonies, had an older fridge, and had to resource-manage when I was running from the generator on a long outage.

Is that normal for a 26 cu ft refrigerator? I’d say it’s probably close to 10 years old. AFAIK, the UPS reports the wattage draw correctly (at least, the values were within expectations when I was using it with my desktop workstation). The manual for the fridge says 115v / 10 A but it doesn’t seem to use anywhere close to that.

Additionally, are there any hidden risks to running a refrierator from a UPS? It’s a pure sine wave UPS, so the power should be as clean as or cleaner than utility.