It's often said that much energy can be saved by replacing a refrigerator that's 10 or more years old. My neighbor wanted to find out whether the advice is reasonable. His refrigerator is a typical Whirlpool top-freezer unit about 18 to 20 cu ft, about 21 years old. I have a 1997 KitchenAid top-freezer in my garage, also about 20 cu ft. Inside my house I have a 2004 GE Profile Arctica, rated as 23 cu ft.

The neighbor bought a Watt-A-Meter to find out how much power his refrigerator uses. He brought it over to test mine. I don't know if the test periods include any defrost cycles.

My GE used 1.83 KWH in a 24-hr period. I checked the meter when the compressor was running, it reported between 83 and 94 watts. That's right, less than a 100-watt light bulb! Opening the refrigerator section door shot the number up to 290 watts, there are four light bulbs inside.

My KitchenAid used 1.64 KWH in 24 hrs. Interesting. It's in a hot garage in south Texas, but is seldom opened. The freezer section is packed fairly full. The refrigerator section isn't full, primarily storing some 2-liter soft drink bottles and a few other items.

His Whirlpool used 3.86 KWH in 24 hrs. True, that's a bit more than double my GE ... but still is not an enormous consumption of energy. Far as I'm aware, the condensor has seldom, if ever, been cleaned, which I imagine cleaning the condensor would reduce the figure by at least a small degree.

Based on the local (current, summer) electric rate of $0.1438/KWH per my last bill (neighbor is on the same provider), a 30-day month costs
GE $7.89
KA $7.07
Whirlpool $16.65

Note that the winter rate is significantly less. Nov-Dec 2006 was $0.0845/KWH.

Figuring on the full summer rate, and estimating $1200.00 for a nice new GE SxS refrigerator, (if I've figured it correctly) it'd take 136.98 months for the electric bill savings to payback the $1200. That's 11.4 years. By that time, the new refrigerator would be OLD again and due for replacement. :-) Of course, it'd actually take longer when the lower winter rate is included. On the other hand, electric rates won't go anywhere but up.

But the neighbor is now skeptical as to the merits of replacing a working older refrigerator for no reason other than to save energy. Considering the energy costs involved in manufacturing new refrigerators and disposing of the old ones, the payback on an individual level seems to not be what the pundits are touting. On a global level, if EVERYBODY followed suit .... maybe.

Comments?

I guess that'd take about 25 years for payback.

And they used to make fridges that's last for 30 - 40 years ...

... now they last for about 10 years.

Engineers getting stupider over the years, I guess.

But ... please don't whisper a word of that to the astronauts, O.K.?

Have yourselves a great week.

Daughter is planning a move from Toronto, Canada to AZ.

ole joyful

How much energy goes into producing the new ones?

The first phase aspect was to try to get people to get rid of "Old Faithful" that was in there garage or rec room. Then, the "new" thinking was that those refigerators in kitchens, that were only ten years old were hopelesly out of synch with today's living and sucking too much energy, and those should be tossed out like used Kleenex.

If they really wanted to solve energy problems they could focus on deveoping cheap wind power and solar power, making it affordable for the average homeowner. Right now the investment made for solar power intallation in the average home, can never be recouped in energy savings and hence monetary savings.

Solar can pretty much power all of the average homes needs and one would only have to rely on energy brought in occassionaly. Once the infrastructure for solar power is in, the sun energy is free. The batteries have been improved over the years and are not the
huge expense of replacing them so often anymore. Everyone could keep their appliances.

The really shocking one was replacement windows. The actual figure would vary widely, but they said around £40-60 a year was a good average. One single window would cost £200 and upwards.

It would seem there are no worthwhile savings here, you're better off in most cases keeping your old existing things. Light bulbs are the only exception I've found.

Even central heating boilers (including my ancient low efficiency unit) are better off not replaced it seems. The cost of a new boiler is very steep, and the money would in fact be better spent on insulation anyway.

Anyway, I live in an old house with an old boiler, old windows, old appliances and I have the smallest energy bills of anyone I know. The savings are more in how you use things, not what things you're using.

Boil sensible amounts of water when you make coffee, turn the heating down when you go out, try to combine baking things so that you're using the oven less. These types of things do make a big difference.

One point I should make is that there's no way I could justify a $1200 frig to replace my current one. Apples and oranges. Now if I had an old side-by-side hog, maybe it would be more fair. But if I were to go to, say a bottom freezer or a fancier one, I could only say that part of it would be recouped in energy savings but I'd only be fooling myself to say the whole thing. Some of the cost is just for a "better" or different style. So I need to compare closer, then consider if the improvement is worthwhile, e.g. easier on my back to have a bottom freezer, etc.

Now there's some numbers to consider. And here's where it gets more interesting. 6 years ago my cousin bought a bottom freezer Whirlpool branded Amana and it's energy rating said to expect it to use $56/yr. I looked at some Top freezer ones that said anywhere from $32-$42/year. It surprised me that the bottom freezer used that much more power, but that was the specs. Now they seem closer. Go figure.

I took a few random, low-end units from the Sears site (since it's easy to get the info I wanted there), they're all about 450-457kWh/yr (top or bottom freezer - I randomly checked a couple of each) and at my electric rates, that's about $67 annually. If my old one is comparable to the Whirlpool that was measured, it costs about $212/yr to operate meaning about $145/year less. I could recoup a $500 comparable unit in 3-4 years, a step up in 5-6 years and OK, even the $1200 unit (I do like that bottom freezer French Door LG...) would take 8+ years. But if I give any credence to the upgrade being a charge onto itself, it would cut that down

I'm not planning to rush out and buy a replacement frig, but it does confirm my thought to never buy a used refrigerator. And hopefully, someday I'll move and get a place where I'll put in all new appliances.

Thanks for the info. It was interesting. I thought my unit was in the area of $100 or a little more to operate.

BTW, the referenced Whirlpool didn't have an ice-maker did it? How about the new(er) units? Since I wouldn't want an ice maker, it should cost less to operate. Seems hard to frind a frig these days without one though.

Suppose I could unplug it for a month and see how the bill if affected, but now the a/c is running on occasion so that would throw it off. Unless I ran an extension cord to the neighbor's outdoor outlet! :D But that would be wrong, wouldn't it?

Guess I should go fill the tank with gas. Where did I put that siphon hose???

The "garage" KichenAid does also, but it's not connected there.

The SxS GE has ice/water in the freezer door. I also found out a few weeks ago that (if the tech advisory stickers on back of it aren't fibbing) it has a variable-speed DC compressor. ("Use ONLY motherboard for variable-speed compressor." "DO NOT connect compressor directly to AC power, use ONLY a power invertor.")

Taking Cynic's example, for the mid-range fridge it takes 5-6 years to pay for itself. However, you don't quite have your money back yet, you're still missing the cost of the fridge - something which you would still have if you had kept the old one.

It will take another 5-6 years to have your original investment back again. In 10-12 years you may have saved $1000, but it cost you $500 up front, thus it takes that long to break even.

Unfortunately, in the 10-12 years your original investment was tied up in that fridge, it hasn't earned any interest at all, so in fact you have lost money. Worse still, taking in to account the quality of many modern appliances, you may need another new fridge soon too. Depending on events, it's looking like you may never break even on the fridge investment, let alone see significant returns from it.

Even a bad savings account would be far ahead at this point, having had around a decade to accumulate interest.

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