And I should add, that the later trips are not even measured by the government tricked-up efficiency numbers.
"Energy Star" and government refrigerator efficiency numbers are bogus. They measure empty freezers when most of the cost of running a freezer is making (and unmaking) ice. They don't measure the cost of air-conditioning to remove the heat your refrigerator generates inside your house (or conversely the value of that heat when you're heating). The dollar numbers are based on fantasy prices for electricity. It's just a huge joke of technical boob-bait designed to sell appliances you don't really need.
Just read the test methods if you don't believe this.
formatting link
See "Appendix A1 to Subpart B of Part 430, Uniform Test Method for Measuring the Energy Consumption of Electric Refrigerators and Electric Refrigerator-Freezers"
They are both side by side. On the energy star website you can put in the model of your current refrigerator. They did not have my exact model, but did have one that is the same size and similar model number. That was the $305 yearly operating cost number vs $90 for a new same size side by side energy star. If you can't find your model #, you can also opt for a "typical" late 80's side by side. That comparison gives the $397 vs $95 numbers.
Do you have anything to substantiate that most of the cost of running a freezer is the ice? I understand that ice in the freezer will sublimate and that's a factor. I don't know how fast that happens in your refrigerator, but in mine it's a fairly slow process. It's not like it's making a new bucket of ice every day. If I leave the ice maker arm up so it's off and don't use the ice, there is still plenty left after a month.
I do agree it would seem more reasonable to have the refrigerators and freezers loaded as opposed to empty. This does seem odd, unless they did testing and found there was no significant difference.
They don't measure the cost of
I think it's unreasonable for them to factor in what are clearly second order effects.
The energy star calculator at their website let's you put in your own cost of electricity.
I would agree that should be factored into the test scenario and seems a major problem, as that is one thing I think we can all agree on as a major loss of energy.
On the other hand, we have ransely who actually has an new unit with a killowatt meter on it and he says it uses a lot less electricity.
Not in my case, according to their website. According to them, my old old fridge costs $82 a year to run, and a new one would cost $30. Call it 50 bucks a year savings. What does a new entry-level 22 cu side-by-side cost these days?
(google google google)
Hmm- looks like about a thousand bucks. That works out to a 20 year payback?
Even if I downgrade to a smaller fridge, for say $500, that is still a
10-year payback.
Think I'll keep this one till it craps out.
I probably oughta vacum the coils, and maybe turn off the icemaker, since I never use the ice, though.
A significant amount compared to the bogus Energy Star efficiency ratings, butat about $1/day total to run a real refrigerator in a real household environment, I don't know that it is enough to justify the nuisance. I do know it is enough to demonstrate the absurdity of Energy Star.
The tested refrigerators are not the refrigerators people want. The doors stay closed, they have nothing in them, then make no ice. The refrigerators people want (with doors, actual food contents, and making ice) just do not perform anything like the tests. It's like the government-industry promotion of "efficiency" in cars, where the fleet mileage is based on subcompacts nobody wants and driven like nobody drives, versus the reality of SUVs with optional engines and leadfooted lady drivers.
Polyethylene bags, by the way, are not very effective vapor barriers, which is why they're aren't used for things like potato chips that are sensitive to humidity instrusion.
Just go to Harbor Freight, or Ebay, and buy what is called the "Kill A Watt Meter"
It plugs into the wall, you plug the fridge into it, and it will calculate the power consumption/wattage/amps used over how ever long you want to leave in connected.
Now you know how much your fridge uses in say, three days.
Buy a new fridge that claims a certain amount of power consumption. Use it, plug in the watt meter, and if it doesn't meet the claim, take it back and tell them to stuff it.
The meter is about $30, and will tell you a lot about your energy usage throughout the house, and help you keep your costs down.
Government guidelines are as unreliable as the government itself.
That's a totally invalid comparison. If anything, it refutes your argument. Everyone knows that the actual mileage one gets can be somewhat different than the official EPA city/highway ratings on any given car. But the tests are still a useful tool and allow a basic mileage comparison to be made. Or do you think a Ferrari gets about the same mileage as a Honda Civic?
The methods may not be "real life" but as long as they test all brands the same way, it is a way of noting that Brand A is half the cost to operate compared to Brand B.
I needed a new window AC this past summer. In our state, there is no sales tax on Energy Star models so I set out to find one. Found them I did. They were about $300 more than the non-compliant. Guess what I bought for $199?
Of course. What I said was that the *fleet averages* are nonsense, because they don't even include the cars that people want to drive, by calling them SUVs instead of passenger cars and leaving them out of the counting. Like most technical analysis provided by the government, the information is not the plain truth, but what promotes political and commercial expedience.
You and I have no way to know that, because the tests don't cover the actual duties that use most of the energy--opening doors, chilling warm things, freezing thawed things and ice.
Quite plausibly the opposite could be true, that Energy Star comparisons are invalid. Say one machine keeps an empty box of air cold more efficiently (about all the Energy Star test really tests). Another is more efficient at making ice (absolutely unmeasured by the Energy Star test).. Since you spend a lot more energy on the latter, the Energy Star "loser" is really the better one.
The DOE refrigerator test is like testing gas mileage while rolling downhill.
Look, Energy Star exists for basically two reasons.
One, to allow the government to claim concrete progress on energy conservation, with (false) statements like "twice as efficient as ten years ago". They've said that for decades, and pretty soon we can expect refrigerators to not just use no electricity whatsoever, but that they will emit 93 octane unleaded gasoline as a waste product.
Two, to let manufacturers make absolutely absurd claims about energy consumption ($36/year to run, twich as efficient ...) with immunity from lawsuits for misrepresented sales.
Three, to benefit manufacturers by suckering consumers into believing their old units are NO GOOD, when they're typically just fine. This seems to work very well on people, because we all enjoy any excuse to buy a new one anyway, and the Great White Father has spoken.
Why do you think ASHRAE has co-opted the DOE and dictates the tests now?
My ice cube trays hold 0.796 pounds of water. Freezing one from 60 F takes (60-32+144)0.796 = 137 Btu, ie 0.04 kWh of heat. A fridge with a COP of 3 could move that with 0.013 kWh worth 1.3 cents at 10 cents/kWh. Know anyone who freezes 1/0.013 = 75 ice cube trays per day? :-) The trays have about 4"x10" of ice surface. Over a month, they might lose
1/4" of depth in my frost-free freezer. How much does that cost?
Foil helps, aluminum helps, but
formatting link
says 100 in^2 of "low-density polyethylene" loses about 0.4 grams of water per day per mil (0.001") of thickness at 40 C (104 F), with 0% RH on one side and 35% on the other. A graph shows how this decreases linearly with inverse (1000/T(K)) temperature. How much would that cost?
EERE/DOE say a 6 mil poly film vapor barrier has 0.06 perms, ie 1 ft^2 transmits 0.06 grains of water vapor per hour (out of 7000 grains per pound) with a 1" Hg differential pressure at 73.4 F. How much would that cost?
Read how the tests are done, they simulate a family of four I think with alot of use, how you use your frige or how much the door is open is alot of it, my cost was at 0.125 kwh with a kill a watt meter with a Sears unit that was when I bought it the most efficent I could find from EnergyStar charts. Now my rate is near .14kwh so costs are up.
1$ a day! not for a new unit, Get a Kill a watt meter and test one, I bet your local apliance shop would let you, I know I was paying under
5$ a month for a 19.5 cu ft unit.
Grin, I had to get 2 windows and a patio door replaced due to rental damage and now just found another big window that has to go. I went energy star.
2 reasons: 1- calculated heat loss best I could and the difference in cost should pay for itself in 4 years (these are picture windows and a double sliding glass patio door so significant when looking at a 7ft window-wall).
2- I get also a tax write off which gives back a little bit more.
I assure you, doing my taxes this year was interesting! I'm getting 2/3's back though so that's paid for most of the sunroom addition (repair of old 'enclosed porch, rated as 'sun room' in my area). Next year, the sun room can be written off as an energy star deduction because it's a repair to an existing structure to a more energy efficient one. Neat huh!
It may sound silly at first to pay more for a window or a patio door, but I watched my neighbors pay double the heating cost this past winter. Part of that is they havent got a fireplace (or if they do, they arent aware of how to use one effectively to augment heat) and part is they keep the temp at 75 or higher but a portion is also those same windows and patio doors where they have actual drafts and some are not even double paned! I have one window remaining that isnt double paned but this is in the garage. I have 3 remaining windows that are not energy star but were decent double paned efficiency units of their day.
My combined electric/gas bill was 200$ a month less than my neighbors except for one. That one fellow? He's had all of his windows done (uses same fellow I do for this) and had his attic reinsulated. He has no fireplace but ran 50$ cheaper than me. I'm highly considering rolling out an extra layer of insulation up there.
Hehe there is a trueism there. So far, I have replaced things as needed with more efficient units.
My chest freezer is energy star. My old unit was just fine though over sized for our needs. It was an almost antique commercial grade and sized unit perfect for farm and now working at a local church as the main one for the soup kitchen. They tested it and told me it's running at about 7$ a month which for their needs, is very good. (This keep in mind is a monster big thing, you can put a whole cow in there and have room for other stuff. It's the biggest thing I've seen short of a walk in freezer). We only replaced that old unit because we had left it here stateside when we moved to Japan, then in Japan got another.
It would be silly though to replace my refridgerator before it subsumes to age. It may be costing me 17$ or more a month, but thats fine. A new unit of the size and quality we find acceptable will run us close to 1,000$ and the savings if even 10$ a month on the electric won't pay off before that unit bites the dust through age.
We were gettting a new fridge to replace an old one that was about
10-15 years old (I don't know the exact age because the previous homeowners bought it.) Shortly before the new fridge was to be delivered, we plugged the old one into a kill-a-watt meter, and recorded the usage over a 1 week period. Result was 2.5 kWh per day electrical usage. After the new one was delivered, we plugged in the same kill-a-watt meter and recorded the usage over another 1 week period. Usage was 1.0 kWh per day. So the old fridge used 2.5 times as much electrical energy to run. This was measured with a similar load of contents in the two fridges, with similar door opening and closing frequencies, same time of year, so the house interior temp was about the same between the two measurements, same kill-a-watt meter used, so any meter calibration bias would cancel out. New fridge is somewhat smaller than the old fridge, old one was something like 21 cu ft, new one 19 cu ft. I think, so that could explain part of the energy use reduction.
When we bought the new fridge (this was about a year ago), we were told by the salesman (so take this for what it's worth ;-) ), that fridges had recently gone through a redesign to make them much more efficient, but lower reliability. He said manufacturers had reduced their compressor warranty periods from 5 years to 1 year.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.