so going down the route of buy once cry once, I'm leaning towards the weise 100AH battery. The size and weight seem to be a bit in range of what I'm after... though the cheap SOB that I am, I would like it better at half the price.
I was thinking about a 75AH one, few pounds lighter, about about 25% cheaper but the way I see it: if I am running at 6A an hour (let's say it's a hot day in SoCal - which is not unheard of) for 10 hours, that's 60AH. at 12 hours, that's 72AH. I figure that not all of the night I would be running 6A (I try not to go venturing on extremely hot days - late spring through fall is cool area weather not desert weather)
So figure between 7PM and 10PM I'm running 6A/hr, between 10PM and 7A I'm running 4.5A/hr. At that point I'm looking at under 60AH for the night leaving me just a hair over 60% consumption.
If I went with a 75AH battery, the above scenario would drain it a tad low and potentially harm the battery. I could also potentially trigger the protection fault in the fridge resulting in the fridge turning off.
Now if I'm at camp and I have perfect view of the sun on the battery, based on my rough calculations I'm going to push about 8A towards the battery and if my usage goes up to 6A, I'm charging only at the rate of 2A.
Btw, the calculations above are assumptions based on WAG's of usage and sun performance.
So... am I making sense or did work suck my brains dry and I'm not longer making any sense