Ok, I’m looking to supply backup power to my essentials. This will be for both regular winter power outages and emergency situations. I have a couple small portable banks for phones/tablets with a folding solar panel to supply additional power. I’m wanting to eventually get a decent off grid solar. I’ve been looking at a smaller system for now with the Rockpals 300watt solar generator.  My biggest power drain is my chest freezer(I’m not even trying to run a fridge, but would like to keep the chest freezer goin). It’s runs at 28wh. So right around 670watts per day. How can I lower the consumption of the freezer? Is it possible or safe to unplug for say 12hrs at a time?

Fill the freezer with milk caroons full of water. Keep it as near full at all times. You can cyle the freezer on and off. The fuller the freezer is, the longer you can keep it turned off.

Id imagine its easy to maintain freezer temps then it is to unplug and replug and get back to freeze temps

This is true  BUT there are trade offs with this approach.   Yes, filling the freezer with frozen items will hold the cold longer but once it starts to thaw, it will take more energy to re-freeze it and get it back to where you were.   If the OP is working on a minimal energy budget then this might hurt him/her long term.  So one possible work around would be to unload the extra ice containers when it is time to cycle the freezer on battery power.

Adding insulation to the freezer would also help.   Styrofoam sheets are cheap but be aware that they can support combustion so you might choose a different approach.

OP, unplugging the freezer will allow it get warmer than it would typically get before cycling.   If you unplug it for twelve hours then it should still be well within the safe temperature zone.   BUT when you run it, it will still need to make up for that entire time that it was off.    If you only plug it in during the day then you will A) save some power from the inrush current each time that the freezer cycles or DIDN'T cycle while it was off.   B) you should be able to draw power directly from your solar panels, which saves you the loss from charging/discharging your batteries.   And C) I believe that you would use all of the power that your panels produce.   Explanation:   If your battery is fully charged then the panels won't charge it more.    If your battery is fully charged and the freezer needs to run then the power will go to the freezer.

What length of outage are you trying to accommodate?

I have seen this mentioned with 2 liter bottles. I may hook up a temp sensor inside and record internal temps over time. Looks like it’s time to invest in a kill o watt meter.

I may have to do a real world test on this to get some concrete numbers but I was thinking this could go either way really.

how cold does it get by you? in PA power outages in winter we'd just go put anything we wanted to keep in the snow I'm in Texas so that's no longer an option.

Can you do a small generator? Mine is enough to power a freezer. Keep it mostly full and freeze water if needed, then my plan is alternate powering my window AC and freezer.

Just having the water containers in the freezer should cause it to increase the length of time between on and off cycles.

Our freezer is always jam-packed with stuff. Never really checked to see how often it runs or how much power it draws.

In terms of LED lighting, it is impressive how long you can run 120v LED lamps and low-draw items like cell phone chargers off of a 12v marine battery and a small power inverter.  Days, in fact.

As far as the length of outage I’m looking to extend as long as possible. When I do get a decent solar setup( 500w +24v 50ah battery.) I think I could run it Indefinitely. Until then I’m trying to extend the time the Rockpals 300 could run it with a couple 100w panels.

Chest type freezers usually have the condensing coils (that exhaust heat) in the sides of the freezer. If you insulate the sides, you will prevent your freezer from working. You can cover it with insulation when it has no power to it....just make sure you remove the side insulation when it's running.

This.  Be very careful of adding insulation to the entire thing.

And 28 watts is VERY low for a freezer's compressor.  Are you certain of that load?  My smallest is still over 100 watts running load, with a larger startup surge.  The earlier advice is very good with respect to reducing the number of cycles your compressor does- starting it up and letting it run is more efficient that it cycling on and off a lot.

Adding insulation to the lid can help.

Make sure the door seals are in good shape - otherwise, they can let in a lot of heat.

Also, check your thermostat setting - If it's set colder than necessary, it will increase compressor run-time.

That is the number from the manufacturer website. I think it was an average wh over time from only running 1/3 of the time.

Ah, then it might make sense then that is says 28 watt-hours instead of 28 watts.  I assumed that was a typo or other error.

Watts is power, and it what you need to worry about in terms of your running load in real time, sizing your inverter, etc.  Watt-hours is energy, and is your power over time.  If it is 28 watt-hours per hour, but the duty cycle is only 20% your actual wattage would be over 100 watts with an even higher surge/starting draw.  But duty cycles can range from 20% to 50% very easily, and will certainly be impacted by loading, insulation, ambient temps, etc.

Your Kill-A-Watt meter will tell you real numbers that you should use.  That should be a priority purchase if you are doing any of these types of projects.

My smaller deep freeze uses around 80watts running and spikes to around 130 watts on startup.

Ice jugs will help maintain the temperature longer, but if you want to keep things frozen it helps to have things that dump their energy BEFORE letting your food thaw. Add 1/2 cup or so of salt to that gallon jug, mix well, then freeze. I’ve long forgotten the correct proportion but you can easily experiment with it to get the temperature you want to maintain in the freezer. With enough salt the salt water jug will thaw well below freezing, actually helping keep things frozen. Keep in mind the salt water jugs will melt long before the regular ice jugs, also I used pink salt to prevent unpleasant drinking water accidents.

Use regular water jugs to freeze in the freezer, then place in the fridge when trying to stretch time between refrigeration cycles.

I have phase-change packs now in my freezers now that slowly melt between 0-18degF, but used salt jugs before that. Using the phase change packs(Cooler Shock brand), I’ve managed to keep food safely frozen in my Ozark Trails Yeti knockoff cooler with zero issues on all-day road trips in the summer. I pre-cooled the cooler overnight with salt jugs as I didn’t have enough spare phase-change packs.

400w of panels and $400 of electronics and batteries should do it for several years