Your Nova Kool R4500 is indeed a compressor refrig. The specs say that it will use 4.4 amps when running on 12 VDC. This is much less than the 15 or so amps needed by the TM's stock Dometic refrig. In addition, the compressor is much more efficient at producing cold, so it will run much less often. And your Nova Kool does have an automatic low-battery shutoff, which would / should prevent the battery exhaustion problem inherent in the Dometic.
The place where you lose, of course, is that it is a 2-way refrig (no operation on gas) rather than 3-way. Three-way operation requires a different cooling mechanism (absorption rather than compression) that is by definition very inefficient - it is not just the Dometic unit that suffers this limit. Absorption refrigerators were invented 100 years ago, and have continued through the era when solar power was very expensive. Solar power is now quite cheap. I have to believe that 3-way refrigerators will soon be considered a dinosaur, and likely will disappear
If you are talking about using a microwave and an electric skillet, then you are expecting to camp where there is an electric hookup. Once you have a hookup, you don't care what the refrig draws. So as your initial post indicated, your only concern is power while driving. My recommendation, as I mentioned earlier, is simply to turn it off while driving. But since it is going to consume only 50 watts or so, a small solar panel - even 50-75 watts - would keep the TM battery charged while driving, even if the tow vehicle battery doesn't. The panel would have to be mounted on the roof of the TM, of course.
So you have a couple options. A nice situation to be in.
Bill
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