Two years ago my wife and I installed a Samsung RF-197 residential refer in our 2002 Thunder and we think it has been the best thing that we have done to our coach. Over the last couple of years there have been several questions on this forum about power usage so I thought I would do a little experiment and pass on the numbers. Our coach has 4 three year old lead acid batteries to power the inverter. The coach is sitting in our driveway in direct sunlight with no possibility of shade so the single solar panel does get direct light. The only draw on the batteries (when I unplug from shore power) is the refrigerator and any parasitic draws such as microwave and digital clock displays and electronic memories in the TV's, stereos, radios and CMP-20 display. Ambient temperatures here were high of about 88 degrees. The ice maker was turned off and refer set to economy mode. At 10:00am I unplugged from shore power and started my readings and the temps in the refer were set to the factory settings of -2 and 38 degrees.
10:00am 13.6 volts
2:00pm 13.2 volts
7:00pm 12.4 volts
10:00pm 12.2 volts
At each time that I took voltage readings I also peaked at the temps in the refer and they stayed the same except for the 2:00pm reading at which time the temp in the refer was 39 and the refer was running and the inside temp of the coach was right at 99 degrees.
Looking at these figures one can see that some new refrigerators are not power mongers and are quite efficient. So for those that still wish to dry camp, in my opinion, there would be no problem as long as you could run your generator once a day. I hope this helps those that are leery about residential refrigerators. Marty