Dumpng your old inefficient Fridg

insulation?

 

We replaced a side-by-side last year with a top-fridge-bottom-freezer of the same size. I bought one without an opening in the door for ice to improve insulation, and replaced that utility with a Zogirushi (sp?) dispensing thermos for ice water. By kill-a-watt we use about 750 wh a day for most of the year, although that peaks to 1200 wh a day during the hottest summer months. Average annual consumption is under 1 kwh/day; the EPA rating is ~ 1.1 kwh/day.

This is about 1/2 the energy the 16 y/o we sold for $200. Most interesting to me and somewhat unexpected: most of the money savings is from less fruit and vegetable rot, and the top-down design along with smart interior design make this fridge MUCH more accesible. Same nominal size, but easily 20% functionally larger.

 

What's more remarkable is that 13 years ago, that fridge was way more efficient than fridges from 13 years before that. When you go back that far efficiency wasn't much of an issue.

 

+1

Energy star is probably the most sucessful program of the DOE
About ENERGY STAR : ENERGY STAR

Even appliances that are not energy star rated, are more efficient because of advances and competition from the program.

 

Not to be political, but this is a great example where the market follows the government mandate, despite loud opposition! To keep it simple, fridge prices have gone down,, and Ef rates have gone up, largely due to the market being forced to build better stuff. How about higher CAFE standards, CO2 emission controls etc?

Icarus

 

While I normally wouldn't approve of reselling energy hogs, this transaction certainly was beneficial. They weren't buying it to have a second fridge in the garage.

I wanted to replace a 1989 fridge during a household appliance efficiency upgrade six years ago, but we could not find anything that met all our wants. A year ago, the fridge made up its mind for us, forcing us to quickly trim our wants to conform to what actually exists.

My Kill-a-Watt had measured the old one as hair over 800 kWh/year, based on a mid-spring measurement. That was substantially less than its energy label, likely due to our cold house. The new one tested out as 40o kWh/year, slightly under its label, measured in July when the house is warmer.

 

I'm a bad boy, because I just added a 2nd fridge, although only 10 cuft. Rated 300 kwh annually.

I didn't check what type of light is in it, but it's solely for the purpose of my new beer brewing hobby. I think my 5 year old kitchen fridge, is rated 400ish kwh/yr. I did swap out the old incandescent bulbs (2 - 30? watt ones) with a single LED one that doesn't provide much light.

I don't think it was bad to offload the old one to a tenant. You upgraded your efficiency, the power company would have junked a perfectly good fridge that your tenant is now able to use. So, one upgrade is still better than none. There's always a market for the used, working appliances.

Just make sure you keep the coils cleaned at least every 6-8 months on them, including where the exhaust heat blows out (seems most blow out the front of a unit). I had to turn my fridge a full notch colder, and was worried about something going wrong with it. Turns out, just needed to clean the exhaust part and coils, because they were pretty clogged with dust and cat fur. Local appliance shop recommends every 3 months for folks with pets. I got a $10 coil brush, which I'm sure will get used enough to make worthwhile.

 

This is analogous to the question of whether it's better to buy a new Prius than to keep running an older traditional vehicle. The issue is, what happens to the average efficiency of the vehicle "fleet" when you make the transaction.

The simple way to think of it is, the worse the fridge that gets junked, the more good you have done. The fridge "fleet" improves by the net difference between your new fridge and whatever fridge ultimately gets junked as a consequence. So if trading results in a worse fridge being junked, then you've done better by trading. But if no fridge got junked, then it's a dead loser.

Obvious the real world is somewhat more complex. What if your neighbor would have been forced to buy a modern very-efficient fridge when theirs ultimately died, and so on. But to a first approximation, junking the worst possible appliance right now gives you the best improvement right now. I'd say you did better by trading than not, assuming your neighbor junked a fridge that was less efficient than yours.

First related footnote: The energy required to produce the fridge is small compared to the energy required to run it. See, e.g., figure 3 in this article ApplianceMagazine.com | Assessment of the Environmental Impact of Household Appliances - Engineering - Energy Consumption

This is pretty much true for all household appliances. So junking a few years of potential useful fridge life has minimal energy impact. Seems wasteful, but from an energy use standpoint, it's not very wasteful.


Second related footnote: Chest freezers are now inefficient, compared to fridges. That's due to the improvement in fridge efficiency. The old conventional wisdom was that a chest freezer didn't use much energy -- compared to a fridge. But fridges have gotten much more efficient, while chest freezers haven't, that the old wisdom is now wrong. The upshot is that nowadays, running a typical chest freezer (15 cu ft, say) is like running a second fridge. E.g., looking at the Home Depot site, their best-selling fridge (18 cu ft, top-freezer model) uses 383 KWH/year. The biggest top-freezer model they sell uses 422 KWH/year. Their best-selling 15 cu ft chest freezer (energy star rated) used 354 KWH/year. Even a 7 cu ft chest freezer (which is small) runs 244 KWH/year.

 

..some states (eg VA) have green appliance rebates. We got a nice new HE washer from Home Depot on Black Friday for $150 after $350 rebate from VA. I've been trying to play same game for refrig but no luck so far.

 

Quite a deal

I made out like a bandit with my clothes dryer. I bought a can of paint, clothesline and pins for about $10, and converted an old unused swing set to a dryer. I used to think that 200 kwh/month total electric consumption was a nice target, but now I am getting greedy and am eyeing 100 kwh/month. No fancy PV, geothermal etc, just cost effective unsubsidized conservation.

 

That rebate amount is ridiculous, and makes that program just look plain stupid.

But I just looked up the regulation, and it says $75 for a washing machine. Googled it, and got the same results across several sources. The largest rebate amount listed is $300, for a house heat pump.

How did you manage to get $350 for a washing machine?

Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy - American Reinvestment and Recovery Act

 

^^ Subsidies to buy lower consumption devices are wasteful to the extent that people offset the device's savings by increasing consumption or use elsewhere. In the absence of higher electricity costs that encourage conservation, subsidies are an even worse idea than usual.

This past week my house is using 6 kwh/day. It is 2800 square feet, and electric is (still!) used for hot water and cooking. Consumption *is* elastic. For most people decisions to use less energy are driven by their monthly electric bill.

Over the past couple of years I have seen way too many examples of affluent people who use taxpayer subsidy to put up huge PV arrays that greenwash a high consumption lifestyle. The irony is they often think they are setting a good example for others to follow.

 

That has been my observation too. Some if not most of the homes with PV arrays in my community belong to heavy electricity users. They seem to have gone PV because of high electric bills and the massive PV arrays allow them to continue using large amounts of electricity without the large bills. They conveniently don't count what the PV system cost them and the taxpayers. I don't begrudge them that though because they still do serve a useful purpose. They are helping get the PV industry off the ground and producing lower cost systems.

 

That is an excellent point about the weak grid. I think that in the short term that is more important than the energy conservation.

 

That depends how much it costs. More to the point though, if they are paying the actual unsubsidized cost of additional clean energy to match their use, I don't care how much energy they consume.

 

Very true!

Manufacturers should be required to make these heat radiators more accesable. Our is buried inside: back panel needs removing, and and also the fan mounted on the coil, for half-decent access. I don't believe there anything in the fridge manual about periodic cleaning, either.