What Thickness Cable must I use for my Fridge?

We often receive the question “what size cable must I use for my fridge”

If you use a too thin wire you will get a voltage drop from your front battery to the back of the vehicle. This can cause your fridge to not work, or it can cause the cable to overheat.

There are two things that will influence the amount of voltage drop.

1. The thickness of the cable
2. The length of the cable

You can use 20 amps on a 2.5mm cable if you want to, if the cable is short enough. Then again you might burn the wire if you use 20 Amps on a 5mm cable which is too long. You cannot just walk into a shop a buy a cable thick enough to take 20 Amps, the length of the cable plays a very big role.

Below is a table indicating the thickness of cable you will need for different current drawn. Keep in mind that most fridges draw about 4 to 5 Amps. A 160l/min compressor on the other hand uses about 20 Amps.

The table below is a rough indication of what size cable to use for your application. I selected 5 meters for the length because that is what you use on most 4×4 vehicles to run power from the main battery in front to the rear of the vehicle.

Also note that there is a world wide confusion about the thickness of the cables.

If you talk to an electrical engineer he will talk square millimeters. If he tells you to get a 16mm wire you should make sure, does he mean 16 sqr mm or actual 16mm diameter.

To add to the confusion some companies will talk about the AWG value (American Wire Gauge). The table above shows the correlation between the three different units of measure.

Click here to see the size of cables we stock