Looking at adding a wine fridge and the perfect spot is right next to our existing fridge. Will the 2 plugged into the same outlet pull too much amperage/voltage and cause it to trip all the time?

Or should I try to pull an outlet down from the normal kitchen breaker that's along the counter-tops to power the wine fridge?

Look inside on the sticker to see how much each unit draws

In general on new most big fridges don't draw over 8 amps and most small don't draw over about 3 or 4 amps.
You also need to find out what else is running off of that circuit and what size breaker is on it.

So I'm 99% sure they ran my fridge plug on it's own breaker. But I will definitely check that later.

How much can a standard plug handle if they are 12 and 4 as you estimate?

check the panel it's on, probably 15 or 20amp

Just checked and i have separate kitchen gfi and refrigerator gfi. Both have a 20 on the switch. So I'm guessing i should have no problems amperage wise as long as both of them combined are under 20.

I know, dumb questions, but I have electrical work

Also, fridge shows a 115V-60Hz-2.1A

Does that mean it only pulls 2.1 amps during normal operating mode? But if I google the model, it shows it's a 15amp refrigerator.

Do I really want to go all the way up to the 20amps on the outlet or should you always leave some "space"?

Pretty sure commercial electric code allows up to 80% load on any given circuit. so max load allowed on a 20A circuit is 16A. I would try to stick to this rule to be safe. You don't want to be running at 19A all day every day. Your conductors will stay hot and could potentially lead to a fire.

Correction, the two fridges would not run at full load all day, but they potentially could be for a given period of time each day and this would not be good for your circuit.

So if the wine fridge only ran at 1.5, I'm guessing 16.5 is acceptable, even though it's over the 80% rule.

you should be fine. do you have a model number? the 15 amps you saw is probably the starting amps that would only be drawn for a brief time when the compressor kicks on.

Something else to check is if the outlet is actually rated for 20 amps. Even though the circuit is rated for 20 amps a lot of times a 15 amp outlet will be used.

DeBoss said:

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Also, fridge shows a 115V-60Hz-2.1A

Does that mean it only pulls 2.1 amps during normal operating mode? But if I google the model, it shows it's a 15amp refrigerator.

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Is this the wine fridge? That looks really low for a fridge. A lot of smaller wine fridges are thermoelectric rather than having a "real" compressor so the loads are pretty small. The smallest plug a manufacturer is going to stick on an appliance is 15A, and it often gets labeled as such, in spite of the real load.

southernskies said:

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Pretty sure commercial electric code allows up to 80% load on any given circuit. so max load allowed on a 20A circuit is 16A. I would try to stick to this rule to be safe. You don't want to be running at 19A all day every day. Your conductors will stay hot and could potentially lead to a fire.

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The 80% only applies to continuous loads, defined as anything running continuously for three hours or longer - not plugged in or turned on,but actually running. Lights are continuous. Fridges ae not. The 80% number is kinda/sorta the backwards way of looking at the requirement. The overcurrent protection, in this case a circuit breaker, has to be sized to 100% of non-continuous loads plus 125% of continuous loads. So if you had all continuous loads, you could only go up to 80% of the breaker.

That's just the breaker, however. Fridges are motor loads. The wire has to be sized for all the loads plus 25% of the largest one. If your fridge is truly 12A, you'd have 12A + 2.1A + 3A = 17.1A. You'd need to have #12 wire which *should* correspond to the 20A breaker if installed as it should.

Being a motor load also means there is a starting inrush. A 12A fridge might spike to 18-20A when starting. If both fridges started at the same time you could have a nuisance trip.

I'd double check the load of your fridge.

I can't figure out how to find the load of the fridge. I looked at the owner's manual from the LG site and it doesn't say anything. The only number I can find is from consumer sites that show it as 15 amp. So right now that's the best number I have. The wine fridge is showing as 1.5A, so based on those 2 numbers, I should be ok.

I'm betting I have the proper wiring to handle 20 amps since this single outlet is on a breaker by itself. But you never know with installers now a days.

With LG, look for a nameplate inside the fridge on the right hand side.

How old is your house?

5 years. I have a picture of the nameplate and it doesn't list it any amperage.

DeBoss said:

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5 years. I have a picture of the nameplate and it doesn't list it any amperage.

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Can you post a picture of the tag that shows the model number ?

LG LMXS30776S

Just go test the amp draw on the fridge circuit. Turn it off and on and see what it spikes to. If you already have the wine fridge you can do the same on another circuit.

You'd need a clamp on and a cut open extension cord to isolate one conductor.

Yeah, you guys have convinced me to have an extra plug dropped from the normal kitchen breaker, that way it's the only big thing running on that breaker. Going to leave the main fridge by itself.