Fridge backup shut off twice — then owners found a 4-hour power-saving timer

A refrigerator backup is meant to keep food and sometimes medications cold when power goes out. 

But after one owner's portable power station shut down its AC ports twice, they discovered that a power-saving setting appeared to be interrupting the supply. The homeowner took to Reddit to share their experience.

Here's what to know

In the Reddit thread, the original poster explained that their power station was powering the refrigerator in uninterruptible power supply, or UPS, mode.

OP added, "It handles the surge load fine and has plenty of capacity. Problem is the AC ports have shut down randomly, twice now. There was no overload error showing in display… Any ideas on what may be causing this?"

An inactivity timeout seemed unlikely to the owner, who believed the refrigerator cycled at least hourly and had read that the manual listed a 12-hour AC standby duration.

One commenter asked, "Have you tried turning standby off completely?" to which the OP responded, "I may give that a try. [But] since it is happening randomly, it may be difficult to determine if that is the problem."

Another recommended reviewing the power graph leading up to the shutdown and checking the firmware.

The OP later found that a setting called Smart AC Output Mode was set to four hours. That meant there was a separate timeout from the 12-hour standby duration they had read about.

They then updated their post, explaining, "Mystery shutdown solved. … It looks like my fridge does, sometimes, go 4 hours between cycles. Setting the Smart AC Output Mode to 'never' should resolve that."

Where can I learn more?

Other refrigerator backup experiences offer a closer look at battery settings and real-world performance. 

• A battery powered a family's fridge for 61.5 hours, with 18% charge remaining.

• A portable power station owner's battery dropped 10% with wall power on after connecting a refrigerator.

• A homeowner's 2-kWh EcoFlow battery ran a 28-cubic-foot fridge for about 22 hours during an outage.

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