Before you run out and buy a new energy recovery refrigerator, it's beneficial to understand the electricity consumption of your current refrigerator. Why? Here are three reasons.
First, because you'll be finding at energy Guide stickers on the new refrigerators, to find out which ones will cost the least to run, and you may as well know how they collate to the one you're using now.
Refrigerator Door Seals
Second, if you plan to replace your refrigerator generally to save energy, you may find that you don't need to. Although contemporary refrigerators are considerably more efficient than those of a decade ago, your fridge may turn out to be efficient sufficient that there isn't a convincing motivation to upgrade. You might save more money on energy, for the same investment, on adding insulation or a new window or two.
Third, you may find that your current refrigerator burns so much electricity, that a fridge tune-up will save you electricity even in the few short weeks before you get the new refrigerator. Things that make a big disagreement include: checking the gaskets for a good seal, checking the climatic characteristic in both compartments (38-40F for fridge, 5F for freezer), ensuring the compressor and coils are dust free; and ensuring good airflow around the unit. Even if you find out that your current fridge is an energy hog and you do a tune-up, you may survey that the tune-up on its own will mean big energy savings.
Your old fridge could genuinely be costing you to a year more than it should, and your new refrigerator may prove to be less efficient than its energy Star label says, depending on how you use it. But if you merely assume that a fridge consumes what its label says, you'll be leaving a lot of savings on the table.
What if I told you that could save you at least a year, every year? It turns out that there is an affordable gismo that can do just what we want: measure the electricity use of your fridge.
I got a Kill A Watt meter about four years ago and have used it to measure the energy consumption of many appliances in my house. I have also lent it to friends so they could find energy savings in their homes. These meters and other power monitors like them are ready for around and they measure how many kilowatt hours per day (kwh/day) an appliance like a refrigerator uses. A estimation takes about three days, because a refrigerator cycles on and off, and only a longer estimation smoothens the peaks and troughs of the fridge's electrical use. But once you have that measurement, you will know what your refrigerator uses and you can start selecting actions to save electricity, or you can make a more informed decision about replacing your existing refrigerator.
The Kill A Watt meter measures electricity use in a number of ways. The important readings for our discussion are time elapsed and kilowatt hours used. The Kill A Watt meter starts measuring these values from the moment it is plugged in, so if you plug in the meter, then plug your refrigerator into the meter immediately, you'll start to see the number of electricity your refrigerator churns through once at least 24 hours have passed. Here's the process:
1. Pull your refrigerator away from the wall. Unplug it and plug an extension cord into the outlet instead.
2. Plug the Kill A Watt meter into the other end of the extension cord, and the fridge into that. Leave the meter where its display is genuinely read.
3. Push the refrigerator back. (You can just plug the meter in the middle of the wall outlet and the fridge, if that allows you to see the unit while you're doing the measurement.)
4. Wait at least 24 hours to measure. Ideally you should wait 48 to 96 hours. If you keep pressing the red button on the meter you will see readings for, among others, the hours and minutes elapsed, and the kilowatt hours consumed. You can compute kilowatt hours per day using this formula:
kwh/day = kwh / ((hours/24)+(minutes/1440))
So if the final reading is 2.37 kwh and the elapsed hours is 34h22m, the kwh/day would be 2.37 / ((34/24)+(22/1440)), or 1.655 kwh/day. Don't wait more than 96 hours to do your reading, because the time elapsed estimation wraps back to zero at 99h59m.
Most refrigerators are rated in terms of kwh consumed per year, so to collate your current refrigerator with what's on the shop now, you can multiply the kwh/day value by 365. Our example fridge getting 1.655 kwh/day consumes 604 kwh/year. A 16 cubic foot Sun Frost refrigerator, in comparison - one of the most efficient fridges on the shop - consumes only 254 kwh/year.
You can see how your current refrigerator compares to new models by finding in the energystar.gov database, for models that share features of your refrigerator. Refrigerator efficiency standards have gone up in recent years, and a fridge typically uses more energy as it gets older, because of degrading gaskets, dust buildup on compressor and coils, wear and tear on the motor, and sometimes loss of refrigerant. And energy Star rated refrigerators must be a minimum of 20% good than the minimum standard, so if you own an old refrigerator that was not energy Star rated when you bought it, you can see there is a big chance for savings, especially if you know your current consumption.
The efficiency standard for fridges varies based on configuration (top or lowest freezer, side-by-side, or no freezer), volume, auto-defrost features, and coolant type. And the recipe is so involved that few citizen other than Us Epa and Doe officials, and appliance company experts, can genuinely grasp it. So rather than look at the standard let's look at some examples.
An energy Star rated, 10 cubic foot, auto defrost unit that consumes 309 kwh/year, is 21% good than the minimum standard for its class.
A 14 cubic foot partially automatic defrost refrigerator that uses 254 kwh/year, is a whopping 36% good than the standard specifies.
As you can see, even for fridges that have an energy Star logo, there is a wide range of efficiencies, and remember that a large unit that exceeds the standard by 36% may still use more energy than a smaller refrigerator that exceeds the standard by only 20%, if the minimum standard for the two fridges is different. If you can pick a smaller refrigerator when you buy a new one, you will without fail save more money.
Once you have measured your refrigerator kilowatt hour consumption (it will probably be somewhere in the middle of 400 and 600 kilowatt hours per year, depending on the size of unit, or even more if you have wasteful features such as side-by-side doors or an covering ice and cold water dispenser) you can collate the consumption of your fridge to those at the energy Star website, and see if it's time to do a refrigerator tune up, or replace your fridge altogether.
If you're lucky, you may survey that the one you have now is already an energy recovery fridge. If not, at least you'll have a great tool for checking either your new fridge measures up to its efficiency rating.
How vigor productive is My Fridge? Ways to Find Out For Yourself
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