refrigerator 5

INDEX to the series

I have a new refrigerator! Actually, a friend's three year old model since she was wanting to upgrade. I feel like it is a new fridge (new to me!)

It is like new clean, full of food, and has been working steadily (and hopefully efficiently!) for the last two weeks. It is quiet and seems to be using less energy.

We had some concern as we had to lay the fridge on its back for the short ride here (about 5km) but I let it sit overnight before plugging it in. There is lots written on the web about this question of how to safely transport a refrigerator.

Mine did trip out after reaching temperature and the temperature inside rose for several hours but it came back on by itself and rapidly got to the prescribed temperatures (about zero F for the freezer and about 40F for the refrigerator.) The control (actually there is only one!) is at mid point. I have big clunky heavy mechanical industrial thermometers that I know to be accurate inside each compartment.

Readers will know that I had been controlling the old fridge use of peak power with a timer. Basically the fridge was OFF during peak power billing periods. The fridge would come ON at the end of peak power.

Even with the old fridge, I was able to cruise through the hottest summer day without loosing any ice cream. I was surprised given the condition at the bottom of the old fridge door seal which was torn but not really visible until it got moved out.

With the old fridge, I had done an experiment to add insulation to the outside of the freezer compartment of the old fridge. The added insulation did not make as much of a difference as I had hoped. The graph is a quick look at the data for fridge performance with changing ambient temperature. The blue dots are the insulated fridge, the red dots are with insulation removed (on July 13). I would have expected two parallel best fit lines. I did not plot the best fit for the red. I don't think I have enough data for the uninsulated case but all the red dots clearly land to the left of the blue dot cluster so there was a difference, just not as much as I had hoped.

I will have to wait until the furnace is no longer required next Spring to gather date using the same method but I added a plug in energy meter to the fridge so I will have another way to know the energy use.

On Aug 1, I had installed a plug-in power meter in line with the fridge timer. So I have two plug in devices in line with my refrigerator. One to measure (the first one in the wall) and another to control run time. I also have the same two devices in line with the freezer. I have been reading and then resetting the power meters at the beginning of each month.

So today I got my first look at a comparison. There was no fridge at that outlet for three days and then the new fridge took over about Nov 10. I am pleased to see that the very first reading of energy used with the new fridge was about one third of the months previous. That is probably optimistic. The freezer also seems to have done better this month compared to the previous three. The ambient temperature of both the basement and the main floor has dropped significantly with November now hovering around 15-20C rather than 20-25C of October which was a warm month.

kWhr/mo	AUG	SEP	OCT	NOV	DEC
Fridge	40	39	40	14*	16 << GOOD NEWS!
Freezer	30	29	30	24	26

* Updated Jan 1: The November number for the fridge is mixed data. The first week is the old fridge. When the new fridge arrived, it was off for three days. The old fridge ran on another outlet until food was transferred and the old was unplugged. The new fridge usage was the balance of November from Nov 10.

That the new fridge uses MUCH less energy, LESS THAN HALF is shown with the December usage which was entirely on the new fridge.

This is a comparison of the old and new ENERGUIDE labels (the new is on the right) The new fridge is almost half the usage of the old. Close enough and nice to have this confirmed with my own data. The new fridge should make a big difference to lower my kWh use. The freezer has now become my highest usage refrigeration and my next target.

Thanks for your interest,

George Plhak
Lion's Head, Ontario, Canada

INDEX to the series