How much energy is your fridge using?

Here’s a neat calculator from the U.S. Government’s Energy Star website (we can discuss whether the government should be running this type of site in some other post!). It helps you figure out how much energy your refrigerator or freezer is using and what it costs to run it each year.

You can use this calculator to determine if you’ll save money replacing your old unit and how long the payback. You can also find out if the refrigerator or freezer you have chosen is the most efficient for your solar system or if there is one that is more efficient!

We bought our Maytag refrigerator in 1999, just 9 years ago. The cost was about $1000. At the time, it was the most efficient you could buy. We determined it would be more practical and cost less money to purchase the high-efficiency fridge and an entire set of solar panel to power it rather than buy a very pricey Sunfrost-brand advertised in many solar catalogs. In addition to the high costs, the Sunfrost refrigerators needed defrosting and did not have all the nice interior features of a standard fridge. Shortly after purchasing our fridge, Home Power Magazine did an article on the very same fridge. They found it a practical and efficient alternative too!

I ran our Maytag through the calculator and there are definitely more efficient models available today. Ours is still a pretty efficient model though and should last us another few years, I’d expect.

We have friends with an old chest freezer. Not knowing the details, I guessed it was a from the 1980s and about 18 cubic feet. Running it through the calculator, it costs them an estimated $123 per year to run! That’s $10 per month just for one freezer! A new, more efficient model costs just $38/year to run. That a savings of $425 over 5 years. And a new freezer can certainly be had for that!

So go ahead and run your units through the calculator and see what you might save.

April 25th, 2008