This page is intended to help calculate the required power (watts) for soft serve machines on a food truck running off a mobile generator. This information can be generally overlooked for “shore” or building power supplied by a utility.

To calculate the correct power supply needed for a machine, you will need the LRA, or Lock Rotor Amperage, for the given primary compressor in the cooling system. Realistically, any other power demands (e.g. drive motors, auxiliary compressor, etc.) will either not be occurring at the same time as the primary compressor, or are too small to worry about. The primary compressor is by the far the largest power demand, and is what should be used when calculating the power supply.

When an electric motor starts spinning from a stop, it pulls significantly more power to get the rotor (output shaft) spinning quickly. Once the motor is up to full speed it will draw much less power; this is called the RLA, or Running Load Amps (or: Rated Load Amps). The running amp draw will vary with the load (demand) placed on motor, but regardless, it is a much lower power consumption overall and should not be used as the basis for this calculation.

Once you have the LRA, you simply need to multiply the Voltage rating by the LRA to get the required Watts. Most generators will be rated in Wattage (e.g. 10,000W generator) so this is what we’ll use.