Agree with the others here that this is absolutely not a fair comparison. Most likely the door of the old one was not sealing well, hence the continuous running and frost buildup. I have a late 30s Frigidaire that I restored a few years ago which has been taking around 200kWh/y (70W compressor, ~33% duty cycle.)
> not a fair comparison. Most likely the door of the old one was not sealing well, hence the continuous running and frost buildup
That's an expected cost of old fridges, so I don't know that it's unfair. A major reason old machines are less efficient is accumulated defects (people too!). If I said comparing a new car's fuel efficiency to my old one was unfair, because my old one has a lot of problems, you might say that's very fair.
Yeah, I too am unsure why anyone would think comparing a 30 year old fridge in the worst condition for testing is somehow a useful comparison in any meaningful way.
Is it really normal to want an off the line 2025 Tesla and a 1985 Lincoln Towncar with 376k miles on its second motor with a missing cat that was stolen last month for a quarter mile comparison?
I would say it would be fair to compare a new fridge with a 30 year old fridge in good working condition. And a fridge that has one of its two compressors running all the time is obviously not in good working condition.
Unless you have a fridge assembler from that same factory with the same materials also on ice, modern tools, techniques, and methods would make this an exercise in futility with regards to an apples-to-apples like-new comparison. We don’t even use CFCs anymore, for one.
You're sidestepping the point with valid re-herrings.
If the old refrigerator's compressor hardware were left unchanged, possibly repairing the thermostat or contactor causing the malfunction, cleaning the air exchanges, and replacing the seal: based on the OPs own usage chart would have consumed equal if not less energy noting it was a dual compressor model.
Are we making an accurate comparison considering the internal cooled space of older fridges versus newer ones? Many older refrigerators were smaller, so the same power consumption for a smaller internal volume isn’t telling the whole story, but I digress.
>If I said comparing a new car's fuel efficiency to my old one was unfair, because my old one has a lot of problems, you might say that's very fair.
If it's a simple as not driving the old one with punctured tires and replacing those first to get a dramatically different comparison then no i'd say it's unfair.
Replacing a broken thermostat or fixing a rubber seal isn't a huge thing. Why else make the comparison? Who cares about this broken one?
If you're comparing technologies, then you want to eliminate the variable of condition.
If you are comparing the values or efficiency of actual old fridges and new fridges - for example, to decide whether to replace the old ones - then it's false data to assume the old fridges are in the same condition as new ones.
I am not even sure there's anything wrong with the old fridge.
Ice buildup on the cooling element is normal in old fridges - you need to melt them down occasionally - we used to do this once a year, as ice insulates the element from the inside of the fridge and prevents it from working properly.
It's also possible that the thermostat inside was broken. For a 30 year old appliance it was probably impossible to find a replacement, but if you can replace it and it doesn't cost as much as a new fridge, that would fix it.
I'm 99% confident that freezer thermostats are cheap and generic components that haven't changed much in the past decades, however, finding and installing it is a whole other matter.
Honestly given how many compromises there are in refrigerants sold now, it wouldn't surprise me with new seals and a good compressor motor if the old stuff did better.
For sure, the base tech in a freezer hasn't changed in the past 50 years. Different refrigerant maybe (CFCs are bad mkay), maybe different insulation material, but the rest has just been adding smart features and buttons that really are secondary to the main function of a freezer.
And, sadly, moving to cheaper, thinner materials with a lesser lifespan.
I’ve personally seen it in the appliances I’ve bought where I’ll run an appliance for 15-20 years, but the same model. They will largely look identical but when disassembled, the newer model trades metal part for plastic or the material is thinner.
Yeah, the title is misleading. The article says that one of the compressors on the old one was running constantly - if you applied the same failure mode to the new refrigerator, the difference would be significantly less.
I would expect a refrigerator that has EC motors running the compressor(s) and fan(s) to be around 2-2.5x as efficient as one with fixed speed motors, based on what I know about variable frequency drives and three-phase induction motors. For those, 80% speed uses 50% of the power, 63% uses 25% of the power. For an 1800 rpm motor that is 1440 rpm and 1134 rpm. VFDs work well for most applications with variable torque (fans and pumps), but applications requiring constant torque (saws, grinders, etc) are better served by fixed speed starters.
> variable frequency drives and three-phase induction motors. For those, 80% speed uses 50% of the power, 63% uses 25% of the power.
You’re presumably thinking of the “Affinity Laws”, which, according to Wikipedia (and plenty of other sources), “apply to pumps, fans, and hydraulic turbines. In these rotary implements, the affinity laws apply both to centrifugal and axial flows.”
This is, IMO, one of the worst kinds of science writing. Wikipedia, and plenty of other sources, make little mention of when the do and don’t apply or, relatedly, why they’re true and why they can’t always be true.
They generally apply to situations where a pump is pumping fluid through something like a filter or a long pipe where the pipe is a closed loop or at least the ends are at the same elevation (e.g. a swimming pool pump, except when pumping from a pool into a higher hot tub). So you have no actual work being done by moving fluid, and you can run the pump slower, and thus move less fluid per unit time, thus reducing friction in a manner that the pressure that the pump needs to overcome goes all the way to zero as the flow rate approaches zero.
But the affinity laws are not really anything fundamental about pumps, and they certainly do not override conservation of energy.
Now consider a refrigerator. The compressor is pumping refrigerant from an (approximately) fixed low pressure to a fixed high pressure. (The fluid goes back from high pressure to low pressure via a capillary tube or expansion valve or similar lossy device -- it gets its pressure increased in the gas phase and decreased in the liquid phase.) There's some friction, but after subtracting friction, the pressure is independent of flow rate, and thus the work done per unit flow is independent of flow rate, and the pump power scales linearly with flow as opposed to super-linearly as the affinity laws suggest.
Also, the compressor is a positive-displacement pump, and the affinity laws don't even pretend to apply to these.
(A well pump is another common system where the affinity laws will lead to nonsensical results. If you want to size a well pump properly, you need to know the height that you're raising the water, the output pressure you need, and the range of flows that you want. And then you look at the actual measured performance curves of the pumps (and their drives) that you are considering, and you pick something appropriate.)
All that being said, variable-speed fridges exist, and they're kind of nice in that they try to run continuously and quietly instead of alternating between full-power (and loud) and all the way off. And they are probably a bit more efficient because there's less friction and because the motors are likely to be more efficient three-phase designs instead of the not-actually-amazing single-phase motors you'll find in older fridges.
> variable-speed fridges exist, and they're kind of nice in that they try to run continuously and quietly instead of alternating between full-power (and loud) and all the way off.
Modern continuous variable speed compressor fridges drive me absolutely crazy. They sound like two ceramic plate rubbing together with some maddening flutter.
Some also add incredibly annoying high pitch whines. That seemingly nobody seems to notice but me. In the same vein as coils whine from power supplies and other modern electronic.
Old bang bang fridges are loud, on lower frequency, and with a sound that is more consistent and stable. Not varying one second to the next, which I find easier to ignore.
I have started looking at how reasonable it is to move the compressor of my expensive and low quality 2025 fridge across the wall into the garage (refrigerant capture and refill, brazing new lines etc).
It's not just modern electronics. I used to be able to know, the minute I walked in, if there were any CRT TVs on in someones house. Flyback coil whine was a constant presence.
Same. Sometimes I'd be sitting in a different room not exactly "hearing" anything except a vague sense of heightened perception and unease, and eventually decide to get up to check the TV room on the other side of the house and sure enough, someone left the TV on. The feeling of utter blissful silence afterwards in comparison was incredibly relaxing though, I do kinda miss that part...
VFDs need really good grounding. Make sure you have a solid earth ground or you can get arcing across the motor bearings. This makes a sound that’s often described as “fluting,” and I think that might be your problem. If it is, you need to fix that before your bearings are trashed and you have to replace the motor.
Wait, the compressor and drive is a device or a pair of devices right next to each other, assembled in a factory, and made out of metal. Why does the quality of the connection between the hunks of metal and the planet have any effect?
VFDs can produce nasty waveforms, and there are cases where “grounding” could be a big deal, but I think that the wiring of the ground terminal of the power supply is only relevant at all when it’s involved in the connection between the drive and the motor. So, for example, if you have a VFD that is far away from a motor, then you would want to make sure the VFD and the motor’s grounds are connected to each other and maybe even that the VFD’s supply neutral (average of the phases) is reasonably close in voltage to ground, keeping in mind that there may not be an actual neutral wire connected to the VFD, and that the motor’s ground is well connected to the VFD’s ground. By modern standards one should use actual VFD cable and terminate it properly.
The outlet are grounded with a thin non insulated copper wire secured to the nearest water copper pipe, itself also bounded to the iron gas pipe (this is 1950 electrical). I am not sure I can call this a solid earth ground.
It isn't bonded at the panel. The panel ground is not used on any of the 1950 circuits. Neutral is bonded to the panel ground. And yes this does means neutral and ground pins at the outlet have a few volts across, since the path between them goes through the literal earth. The water and gas piping coming out of the earth at the opposite side of the house from where the electrical panel is located.
> Some also add incredibly annoying high pitch whines. That seemingly nobody seems to notice but me.
That drove me crazy for about a week trying to figure out what the noise was coming from... Pinhole water pipe leak? Cat stuck in the flue? Once I realized what it was, I didn't mind it much. It is better than loud old compressors suddenly kicking on and burrr'ing away then stopping.
I hate fridge noise, any kind. I’d like to prioritize quiet running when buying, but for the last two purchases I haven’t had confidence in the research I did. In the end, one was decent and the other was fair.
However, in preparation for writing this comment I discovered Quiet Mark, which seems promising. https://www.quietmark.com/
> I have started looking at how reasonable it is to move the compressor of my expensive and low quality 2025 fridge across the wall into the garage (refrigerant capture and refill, brazing new lines etc).
It would be worth looking into commercial refrigeration as well, you can get a refrigerator with a remote condenser and I’m sure you could find used equipment. Either way you’re going to have to run refrigerant piping and plumb in condensate drains.
Variable-compressor fridges will be more thermodynamically efficient, as the heat transfer happens more gradually, so temperature differences across the heat pump will be lower (e.g. because the condenser will have more time to gradually transfer heat to the room, it won't get as hot). And coefficient of performance for a heat pump is higher if the temperature difference is smaller. Another way to achieve this might be with a variable-displacement compressor (which is how modern car AC systems work, rather than cycling on/off).
Unlikely. The thermal timescales are long enough that the fridge turning on and off doesn't mean the temperatures vary wildly. That's why they can do it in the first place!
Central heating on the other hand... I'm definitely never buying a boiler without opentherm.
I think the comment you’re replying to is referring to steady state performance. At lower refrigerant flow, the temperature difference produced by the system will be lower and thus the thermodynamic efficiency will be higher.
(A fridge is producing a temperature difference between the hot gas exiting the compressor and the cold liquid/gas mixture coming out of the expansion valve. The former will be quite a bit hotter than the outside air and the latter will be quite a bit colder than the air inside the fridge. The smaller the value of “quite a bit” the higher the Carnot efficiency would be.)
This reply is amazing, thank you! This gives me a much better understanding of the work done by a chilled water pump in a closed loop vs a refrigerant pump with an expansion valve in the loop and in which situations the affinity laws apply to.
I’m just a dumb electrical PM who knows enough to be dangerous, and I only know how things like heat exchangers, pumps, and fans work on a very basic level so this is illuminating.
VFDs and inverters are nice, but have you ever looked inside of an AC unit with an inverter and asked what it would cost if the electronics has a problem? Simple dumb single speed stuff looks like it costs more to run, until you have a problem, which you will. On simple single speed fridges and AC that don't do anything special maybe you need a motor cap or motor or something every parts house has for little money and easy to swap; the moment you introduce more complexity is the moment you bend over for GE or Mitsubishi or Samsung to gouge you for basically any part.
VFDs also fail about 2x to 2.5x as often as anything else in the system. In small commercial applications they often end up bypassed within a few years of installation of that equipment. They're also unusually good at catching fire due to the design requirements of the part.
Properly sized multistage A/C systems are a much better idea.
You do see drive failures, but they’re less common than they used to be, almost every drive my guys install is an ABB drive and they’re pretty reliable.
You are correct about soft-starters being a lot simpler and requiring less maintenance, as it’s more or less just another contactor inside a regular across-the-line starter with some extra control wiring to handle the extra contactor. Adding an inverter, rectifier, and solid state electronics does make the complexity much higher.
Given modern minimalistic build standards, the modern compressor would probably overheat and fail if run continuously 24/7. I am reminded of the old simpsons bit where they make a tent in front of the refrigerator.
Coincidentally, that episode is also 30 years old, and right before the clip starts, the fridge has just broken. So a fridge of that era cannot run 24/7 either.
It's still functional though, the point is comparing 'keep running the old tired one' vs 'replace with new', not 'how well were they made then vs now'.
I feel like a more appropriate - or at least a more interesting - comparison would be “fix the old one” vs “replace with new.” Replacing an old broken product with a new unbroken one is changing two variables, not one.
Now, if the author would like to break their New refrigerator and report back, I’ll take it as an interesting result.
Totally fine to choose as the author did, but for others who might face a similar choice: repairing a thermostat in a fridge is dramatically easier than fixing almost anything in a dishwasher. I did that with my fridge - cost <$20 for the part and maybe 30 minutes of work. Your (EU) kilometrage may vary.
I suspect the power savings would be much less dramatic with a fixed thermostat.
Indeed, been there. Just getting the dishwasher out of its cubby hole is a major effort, and involves dealing with not just the wiring but the hoses too. And if it's an older house, chances are good that the dishwasher had to be crammed in with a certain amount of hacking, cussing, and persuasion.
The fridge rolls out into the room on its own wheels.
Many dishwashers are supposed to be wood-screwed into the surrounding cabinets! Recently installed one for a friend and was surprised to see that instruction.
Meanwhile, with the exception of ice makers/water dispensers (1/4 PEX), fridges don't have to deal with hoses for the most part. So much easier IME.
This must be dependent on your country's customs, I suppose. I've taken out dishwashers quite a few times and it was actually fairly easy. No wheels, true, but cables and hoses were never much of a problem in my case.
Nah, dishwashers are pretty light too. With a muscle mass of 1% I usually just flip it over to work on it. This is just peak HN, PhDs still phased by something requiring an 8th grade level of education. In the US, the supply is usually a screw on, the drain a clamp and if the wiring isn’t already a quick connect just throw some Wagos on.
Dishwashers are ok, depending on flooring - if you want to get it out and guarantee no scratches on the floor, it may be simpler to get some kind of "dolly" mechanical assistance.
Washing machines, on the other hand, tend to have a brick in the bottom to stop them from walking around on their own.
(periodic recommendation: if you buy a Miele, you will pay twice as much for several times the expected lifespan of a cheaper machine. My parents have a Miele dishwasher that's over 30 years old.)
We're talking like a couple hundred pounds. Push back on the top, pop in two 2x4's (one under each side, lengthwise, not across), then let it down and walk it forward.
I just changed the casters on my 42U rack, without moving (or shutting down) any of the machines. Now that required some deliberateness.
Amen. I put my dishwasher in myself so I get to curse myself for that hacking.
Worst was sourcing the parts though. Getting the thing out, effectively getting it up on blocks to run it and see the issue was hard work. Getting the specific totally non-standard o-ring size out of the manufacturer was impossible. In the end I resorted to siliconing but I just cannot dump something like that over a 5c part.
My partners bought a house with a dishwasher. Apparently it was installed, then a new floor put in raising it about an inch effectively locking the dishwasher in place. Removing it involved removing the counter above (it needed replacing..) but your comment brought back some memories(lots of cussing)
I just replaced the drain pump and motherboard on my GE dishwasher and it was super easy. Everything was easy to access and all the major parts had a QR code on them making parts lookup idiot proof.
When the parts showed up they came with all the clamps and other replacement hardware that I didn’t even know I needed.
I've found cheap after-market thermostats to have short lifetimes... Original lasted 20 years... Replacement started misbehaving in just 2 years.
So now my policy is to retrofit all old refrigerators with digital STC-1000 thermostats. A bit more work to cut out some plastic, split the hot wire and tap into a neutral wire (easy enough to follow the bulb) but cheaper, super reliable, and gives very consistent and highly controllable results.
Two such upgraded refrigerators are still working without an issue several years later. Though both required replacing the relay (with a solid state relay/capacitor unit) at about the same time, and one after replacement of the evaporator fan motor due to noise issues.
Electrically, you just need to: 1) connect both wires from the old mechanical thermostat to the "Cooling" terminal block (polarity doesn't matter). Or if your model doesn't have separate heat/cool the "relay" and configure settings for cooling mode rather than heating. 2) Tap into hot and neutral wires (going to the light bulb but BEFORE the door switch) and connect that to the STC-1000 power input (polarity doesn't matter).
Then configure the STC-1000, set a temperature to maybe 4C and set the "compressor delay" to at least 4 min, though I'm happy with 10. The default difference of 3C should be fine.
The plastic cutting varies by refrigerator design, but shouldn't be too confusing.
Also: if you find ice forming in your fridge, or uneven cooling inside, it may be due to a clogged drain tube. This was the root cause of my fridge breaking: tube in the back clogged -> condensation backed up around the evaporator coils -> froze solid -> blocked circulation fan -> incorrect thermal readings, warm/frozen spots in fridge.
I've found US dishwashers pretty easy to fix, but Korean and German ones can be a bit more of a pain, and these are the ones built for the US market. I've heard that European models often have water softeners built in.
All German ones have water softeners I think, also most modern ones have a large flat water tank at the side that acts as a heat exchanger and condensation surface, and also saves water from the last rinse cycle to use in the first wash cycle the next time it's turned on.
Yeah I was wondering if there was perhaps some regional differences. The one time I did a DIY fix of my dishwasher I was pleasantly surprised with how easy it was. They're largely very simple devices, and aside from a couple screws to keep them from tipping, they slide right out of the opening they're in.
> [...] German ones can be a bit more of a pain
I did replace my dishwasher a few years ago with a Bosch. Uh-oh!
Not sure about dishwasher but our Bosch washing machine was fixed with little real fuss other than needing to have torx screw-bits. I quite admired the engineering.
We too have a Bosch dishwasher so - like you - we'll see how that goes...
Looking at their designs, this seems to be the case with other white goods too; I suspect it's because US designs are relatively old and simple since they were among the first, while foreign designs are more highly space- and cost-optimised at the expense of repairability and possibly robustness.
Depends. My last fridge the thermostat went bad and it couldn’t be fixed because they embedded the entire thing into the foam. Terrible design. Was a whirlpool.
That's similar to what sent my last Samsung fridge to its next home. Samsung apparently had some problems with wire movement in the door hinge, so they changed the design and embedded the wires in glue/foam/whatever. So now if you have a problem with those wires, which happens because it's a hinge ... you get to replace the whole door at least. Turns out to be an expensive pain in the ass if the fridge is more than a few years old, it was more time- and cost-effective to get a new fridge at that point.
It takes a long time getting to know your dishwasher but my 2014 model was actually not that hard to debug and fix. Need to be able to source the parts of course. I was surprised how repairable it was. Will watch out for it when I need to buy another one.
One thing that catches my eye here is the use of a smart plug on the refrigerator for current monitoring. I've tried a ton of different ones including the "good" ones like Shelly, and they all seem to use shunt resistors to gauge power draw. It would make me really nervous to use something like that to measure power draw on a big inductive load like a fridge. It's a shame, I've never seen a current clamp in plug form with no on/off switch, so you've basically gotta do some fab work, but that's basically really the only safe way to collect current data for anything that pulls a non-trivial amount of power.
Can you elaborate a bit further on what you’d need to do and why? It’s been a while since my electrical courses.
I’ve been trying to measure home power consumption with these plugs (and the ones from IKEA) but I’ve been getting suspicious readings for inductive loads.
I wouldn't bother using a smart plug. The other thing that's real dangerous about them that I didn't really elaborate on is the relay. There's a reason on something like a pump, fridge, AC unit, etc. you'd see a real contactor instead of a relay, and it's because relays are inappropriate and have dangerous failure modes for big loads like that and are typically way too small.
In most real non-resi situations, you'd probably isolate the hot leg and put a good CT (current clamp) on it and read that. The great thing about that is you haven't added anything in the power path for the device, like a shunt which is what most smart plugs use. Current clamps are good for a lot more current (though I guess a proper shunt could do it too). The easiest way to do this in your setting is to find a good UL-listed electrical box with cable glands, a short piece of DIN rail, a male and female plug pigtail, some proper THHN wire and wirenets and a Shelly 50A EM Pro, and just graft the EM Pro into the box and wire it up with it's CT. You've now got something signficantly more durable and probably safer (and correctly specced for the load). I've done other things like using an HV Labjack and some good CTs or other one or few off designs. There's lots of stuff in the commercial/industrial space that does this well but it tends to be $$$. Again, for the sake of my own family, I wouldn't use non-UL stuff (most plugs and things that go in gangboxes that are "smart" aren't UL listed, and MAYBE are ETL) as you who knows how much or how well it's tested.
The IKEA plugs have a tidbit in the manual that says a "motor load" is limited to 300W while a resistive load can reach the full 3680W (at 230V, probably less if you're in a lower voltage country).
Should be fine for modern fridges but older fridges may overwhelm the circuitry.
Yeah, but you don't get do the sizing, it's done by whatever the engineer that designed the plug wanted. I don't know why you'd do hall effect for an AC circuit, a good regular old current clamp should get you as much accuracy as you'd ever want.
That's what I'm say, but I've never ever seen one. I would love to buy one with a current clamp integrated, as it would save me from needing to fab a box and build something, but I don't know of any that exist today.
A 21 kWh/month it's 252 kwh/annum (I guess?), which is around energy label E in the new EU energy labels.
If you go for energy label A, some fridges have 101 kWh/annum, which is more than half less! I haven't seen many, and they are usually very tall, but hopefully we can see more and more in the future.
They're freaking expensive, though. I just replaced a (probably) 25 year old fridge by one with a D label. The difference with a C or E label is small in energy use. I do notice that the exterior gets really less warm than the old model. I don't think it would have qualified as an E.
BTW, if I'm not mistaken, the energy label depends on the function. So 250kWh/yr could be (much) lower than E when the volume is smaller.
The article mentions ice building up in that old fridge, and this reminded me what I was told by a man who was fixing these things- that the condition of rubber seal and fridge not being leveled correctly can also lead to the ice buildup (if thermostat is not broken). He did not explain in deep technical details why, but said that when the fridge door is not sealing fully then the room air enters the fridge and due to different condensation point it causes moisture buildup at the coldest part. I am not sure how factual this was, since after hearing this I adjusted the fridge so the doors were always closing themselves thanks to gravity, and the ice still kept building up. I did not replace the seal though :)
>Five if he lives in an area prone to electrical surges.
Many fridges have DC compressors and decent enough input filtering, that should be no issue. However, the electronics themselves are another matter.
Most fridges nowadays have defrost cycles controlled by the said processors, with the latter being prone to even software issues. Some fans may not need a replacement, while the fans are cheap and ubiquitous reaching them is another story.
Todays appliances are built, by design, to break fast these days. So whether old (operating costs) or new (foreshortened lifespan) your appliances cost you more.
There are still some repairable brands. GE'a basic appliances (and their budget subbrands like Hotpoint) are a standout with excellent availability of parts and service data. A hotpoint electric range can be fixed by any homeowner with a screwdriver.
As I recall GE is also one of the few/only brands that operates its own service business.
I will also point out that the way inflation has tended to work is that you can still buy high quality appliances and other consumer products (e.g., tailored clothes and built-to-last leather shoes), but when you do the inflation math you have to spend a lot to get the equivalent product from decades ago.
In other words, the same quality products generally still exist, the real issue is that a bunch of low price products that didn’t used to exist now do, and average people didn’t own as much stuff as they do now.
If you buy a $2500 Speed Queen or a $10,000 Sub-Zero you’re getting the kind of quality and repairability that used to exist in more appliances.
But when it comes to a $500 washing machine or dryer, when you adjust for inflation that product did not exist 40 years ago.
The other thing I’ve heard about this issue is that the mid-range consumer luxury type stuff is the segment to avoid: built cheaply but with a lot of features that fail and a high cost. E.g., Samsung refrigerators with touch screens on them. You’ll notice that most true luxury built-in brands don’t have a laundry list of gimmick features.
I bought more or less the same dryer as the one from 1997 that it replaced. There's cost reductions in some of the parts, but the overall design is more or less the same (for example, the timer is a cheaper design, there's no little door on the lint catcher, the adjustable feet are plastic instead of metal). I expect many parts are directly interchangeable.
I guess I'm not sure what the 1997 price was, so can't really make a comparison.
Fun story with the plastic feet, the delivery drivers either didn't know that they screwed into the dryer or pretended not to know. They left them barely inserted into the bottom and then put a shim under one of them to level it. I was standing there and kind of mumbled "can't you screw the others in" but dropped it and did it myself after they left.
Yes GE is owned by Haier, which worried me when I was researching fridges a couple years ago. But apparently most of the GE appliances are still manufactured in the U.S. and haven’t really changed much despite the change in ownership.
My GE fridge has been a disappointment. It is OK at its main function: cooling. However I've had to replace the main control board and the freezer defrost heater. The built-in water dispenser never really worked because the water line is routed too close to the freezer compartment and it freezes up. The ice maker is disconnected because its water line developed a leak and damaged my laminate floor before I noticed it. I don't think I'll be buying GE again.
The trick with fridges: Don't but ones with ice makers or water dispensers built in. There's a reason the rich install dedicated ice makers and filtered sinks.
Well, they do that because they have so much square footage that it makes sense. You need physical space to have your fridge and freezer and ice machine and cold/sparkling/filtered water dispenser separate. And of course money for lots of appliances.
I would say that it’s best to get a fridge that has a simple ice maker that’s in the freezer and water dispenser that is in the fridge interior with no weird rerouting like having the ice/water dispensed from the door (which also reduces efficiency because there’s essentially a hole in your fridge).
As an example the Sub-Zero refrigerator lineup has a simple ice maker in the freezer and then the water dispenser is optional, and it’s accessed from inside the refrigerator.
> but when you do the inflation math you have to spend a lot to get the equivalent product from decades ago.
But this is usually deceptively explained as being because they are far more expensive to make, when it is really 1) because of economies of scale when they are made in smaller runs often by smaller companies, or 2) intentionally segmented at that price by the same companies that sell the disposable stuff as a high-margin luxury option.
If large companies were forced into a traditional quality standard, the cost increase wouldn't be 5x, it would be more like 1.5x. It might creep up after a while, as the runs became shorter because the products weren't built to fail anymore.
Was not immediately apparent in article but I did not read the whole thing. Beyond general repairability the other issue to me is the cost of labor. In Vietnam I can get near anything repaired because the cost of labor is so darn cheap. In America it makes no sense to be paying $100/hour usually minimum two hour repair plus the cost of the part.
I am ok with generally with having less ability to repair but I do wish more cities and companies and trade in programs for proper recycling.
Neither the article nor the linked sources even attempt to prove that modern appliances are less durable or having more issues than old appliances.
It seems to be just complaining about "computer circuit boards" in appliances, much the way people did about electronic ignition in cars, despite actually resulting in a huge increase in engine reliability because solid state has so very little to fail.
I mean, maybe people throw out a perfectly working toaster when it can't connect to Wi-Fi anymore, (or take their car to the dealer when their entertainment system acts-up) but that's not an actual reliability issue, IMHO.
New ones break quickly and then consume zero energy. So then you buy an even newer one without caring at all about the emissions to buy the new one and to get rid of the old one. And then feel good to be "saving the planet" because you have a super efficient fridge and repeat the cycle.
Depends on what kind of fridge you buy. If you buy one for the price of a fridge in the "good old times" that doesn't come loaded with useless features, they last just fine.
A lot of degrading quality in household appliances is the result of consumers buying the cheapest products that'll get the job done. Many people would rather risk having to buy two €600 fridges rather than buying one €1200 fridge (freezer sold separately of course).
I can get a full fridge+freezer combination delivered to my home for €380. Of course that won't last as long as the €1200 equivalent from forty years ago, back when that was the normal price for a fridge.
Yet the service into my home and each individual circuit has a maximum on received power so the Watt is usually more pertinent anyways. Taking an average Watt usage value and extrapolating that into kWh/month is both incredibly easy and completely standardized.
I've had this thought before, when seeing labels that talk about kWh/day. The answer is very simple: you pay per kWh. When people want to know power efficiency, what they really want to know is "how much will this cost me to run?". That answer is most easily expressed in kWh per unit time.
Also giving an averaged power drain would be misleading. If the device uses 2.4kW but only for half an hour per day, that's not a 50W device as far as cabling, fuses and other electrical considerations.
In the US, at least, there are some utilities that charge based on maximum kW (demand) and total kWh used (energy). ComEd in Chicago is a utility with a demand rate plan option.
That tends to be commercial rates since businesses can have larger spikes in consumption, so the "pipe" needs to be larger. Industrial rates are similar.
There are some like ComEd that you call out that can apply the model to residential rates, though my (now dated) experience is that they are rarer.
Knowing the average of 108 W wouldn't help with knowing your peak demand, as fridges vary significantly from off to startup to running, so knowing the average isn't useful in that situation either.
It would be completely wrong for peak demand. I had to learn this the hard way. While the small fridge I bought only uses 80 W while running the compressor uses 800W+ for a second on startup which was too much for my off the grid inverter.
That strain does not seem to be reflected in the usage, which has been in a shallow decline since the 90s. Maybe they could consider using smart demand management, which is becoming popular with a lot of utilities to move usage away from peaks and into the quieter times.
I think these tariffs are meant to encourage exactly that. Note also that there are many levels of bottlenecks. One could be in your neighborhood, if all your neighbours have EVs.
Perhaps it will work. I'm just a bit skeptical because it seems unlikely to be a widespread problem. The average driver in Sweden will only need perhaps 6 kWh per day, which at L2 means charging for 35-40 minutes. A bit of demand management from the utility and everyone in the neighborhood can get what they need without stressing the local grid. Or just knock down the rate to something inconsequential and let it trickle all night.
Although this is totally informal, in a normal conversation if somebody gives me the wattage of a device, I assume they are peak power draw. For kWh/day, I assume they’ve accounted for some reasonable duty-factor.
Possibly because it gives better intuition for the approximate cost per unit of time. Similar to how fuel consumption can be written as volume/length = area, but is still usually presented in the former way, since that shows the actual amount of resource being consumed.
I thought watt is a DC unit, so often avoided for AC measurements, since it is ambiguous which watt you are talking about, and the device is always consuming more or less than the average, and very rarely consuming that actual amount. Often the alternate unit is called VA, even though that too seems like a watt
Watts work fine for AC - multiply your RMS voltage by current. The RMS takes care of the fact that AC isn't steady like DC.
VA (takes power factor into account) is relevant for sizing transformers, breakers, wiring, etc but usually only affects your bill if you are a large industrial customer.
That is just what I said: that is the formula for VA, not P, even though both have the same dimensional units: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volt-ampere and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_power#Apparent_power. And they'd be roughly the same for something like a toaster, but if you happen to be interested in, say, the billed power consumption of a 30 year old fridge with a motor
Because that's not what they're interested in! Really what they care about is that the fridge is consuming about 9.36 MJ/day, because really kWh is just a convenience unit for joules. But since everyone gets charged in kWh that's the unit they use.
It is bit too derived unit. But on other hand it does make calculations pretty simple. Say 0.14 per kWh and then cost in month is simple multiplication 2.6300.14 . Or a year is 2.63650.14...
My gas bill each month lists the correction factor used for that month to compensate the meter reading to the volume consumed (and thus billed) based on the average weather.
The old fridges that didn't self-defrost are probably the most reliable. The only moving part is the compressor. No fans, no heaters, and fairly quiet. But the freezer compartment will ice up especially in humid climates and must be periodically defrosted which is a bit of a PITA.
Defrosting sucks profoundly, also the frost build=up makes opening drawers hard and prone to damage. Additionally it takes another fridge to store the contents.
have there been improvements to the insulation? given how good high-end coolers are now, i'd assume that there's been something with the non-mechanical parts that could have improved
Ultimately, not much. The polyurethane insulation of 1995 is pretty comparable with the polyurethane insulation of 2025.
There are better insulations out there, but they cost money and are harder to work with. For example, we could theoretically vacuum seal a fridge, but that'd require an airtight seal and likely a stainless steel structure around the fridge.
I think a lot of coolers used to have some parts like lid or even sides that were simply double-walled with an air gap and no real insulation. I remember old internet posts about people enhancing theirs by drilling into these spaces and injecting them with a minimally expanding foam from the hardware store.
Maybe somewhat better insulation and then I have noticed with combined units that there is more of it. That is usable volume is smaller due to larger amount of insulation.
Is that true though? Better coolants, inverters / variable speed / scroll /swing compressors, insulation and mfg, etc. maybe for residential it’s less impactful, but refrigeration in general has better efficiency than 30 years ago.
The Montreal protocol (1987) put us back into the dark ages with coolants for a while (both with CFC ban and later phase outs of HFCs). I suspect if you tested a refrigerator from 40 years ago they would give modern ones a run for their money...
It was obviously a worthwhile sacrifice for the ozone layer though.
The author is in Estonia. Appliances in the European Union have different energy standards and labels, and run on different voltages, so you don’t ever see Energy Star fridges there.
Estonia joined the EU in 2004, and I don’t know what the energy labelling on appliances was like before then.
"Eliminate energy efficiency standards for appliances. Pursuant to
the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975 as amended, the agency
is required to set and periodically tighten energy and/or water efficiency
standards for nearly all kinds of commercial and household appliances,
including air conditioners, furnaces, water heaters, stoves, clothes washers
and dryers, refrigerators, dishwashers, light bulbs, and showerheads.
Current law and regulations reduce consumer choice, drive up costs for
consumer appliances, and emphasize energy efficiency to the exclusion of
other important factors such as cycle time and reparability."
The dramatic things with refrigerators is that in most countries people will install them in the kitchen for obvious practicality reasons, which is often also the hottest room of the house/appartment due to ovens, stoves and spending a significant amount of time there. If you think of it, it is bonkers that we put a device meant to keep stuff cold in what is a heated place in northern countries. Some hold houses and building used to have non heated dedicated rooms meant to keep food at a lower temperature naturally in winter but this has pretty much disappeared.
OTOH I live in a coastal city in south of Spain and every time I read a label that said food shouldn't be in a fridge but kept in a fresh and dry storage I ask myself where the eff should I store it there is no place like that unless I am running aircon 24/7 which I certainly won't do.
The ambient temperature differential between the kitchen and other rooms in a house is minimal on average. There’s nothing bonkers about putting the refrigerator in that space. Even a hypothetical 20F temperature rise during an hour long cooking session is basically negligible for the efficiency of a refrigerator that is cooling 24/7.
Putting the refrigerator in an unconditioned space wouldn’t be as big of a win as you think because every time you open the door to the unconditioned space you’re letting cold air into the house. Twice per refrigerator visit all day long adds up.
In the winter you actually benefit from having the refrigerator in your conditioned space because the waste heat goes toward heating your house. It would be lose-lose to put it outside of the house in a cold location.
I Suppose heating fuel is cheaper, or household heat pumps are more efficient, but all of the energy consumed by running the refrigerator becomes waste heat in the same room you are trying to heat. That seems superior to the refrigerator heating a room where the waste heat isn’t useful.
well I don't have one, I rarely ever drink wine at home, but there are dedicated devices for that, I think they are called wine cabinets in english? They could be used to store other things indeed. I have never looked at the energy consumption of these things.
The fridge box is fairly insulated. Temps in my home are consistent all over plus or minus a couple degrees. I think you've overstating the case a lot here. Even with the oven running it doesnt seem to affect the fridge too much. Heck in a lot of warmer climates people leave a spare fridge outside where its battling non-climate controlled air.
In the winter your fridge's waste heat is warming up your kitchen, so if anything, its a bit of a bonus those months.
The only thing I think we could do with fridges is put in a system that pulls cold air in during the winter but that's sawing holes into brick and yet another thing to worry about in regards to mold, critters, moisture, filters, fans, etc. Its just not worth the effort or cost.
I (well, my landlord) replaced a similarly old refrigerator last year. The thermostat was fine, it had developed a very slow gas leak and the charge had dropped enough that it was freezing rather than cooling.
It was using around 29kWh/month before the leak was noticeable, the new one uses 12kWh/month. The new one is slightly larger than the old. The old model was freezer-on-top style, the new one is a less efficient freezer below model.
The last time I bought a brand new freezer... it died in under 5 years... can't remember the brand... some asian import to Canada here.
I went out and bought a used kenmore I think it was off of Marketplace... >15 years old and it lasted longer than the brand new one did... at 1/4 the price!
These were both chest freezers and besides it's compressor being slightly louder, I doubt it used much more energy at all. If anything, it was probably insulated better, and used less I would imagine. It was much heavier, at least.
Since after 3 years you're beyond the break-even point due to energy use, the old refrigerator should be disposed of rather than given away.
By keeping it in service, it's making somebody poorer. Especially since the person receiving the free 30 year old power hungry refrigerator and keeping it for a decade is the least likely to afford a replacement.
Somebody already disadvantaged will eventually be stuck with structurally higher bills and find it harder to save due to this.
Those that's not your problem it's more a government policy problem.
Poor people can make their own decisions about whether to use an old fridge or not. They know much more about their own situation than you do. You are not well situated to make these sorts of decisions for them.
There's an old expression that I actually lived out: "Poor people have poor ways."
When I was living well below the poverty level, I used whatever resource that was available as long as it was legal. I was given a chest type freezer that was made somewhere in the early 60's, but was in good working order, since it was owned by a person in the HVAC field. It wasn't very efficient, but I needed the freezer space. (Since we didn't have air conditioning, I could afford the electric usage.) Most poor people make decisions based on whatever works, not if it's the best option, because of the lack of money.
But do they? Does the person taking on that broken refrigerator know that it has a flaw that makes it consume so much electricity that in 3 years the power use alone would cost more than buying a brand new refrigerator?
(ok, in this case they gave it to someone that needs a temporary 'fridge during renovations, so it's kind of a moot point, they aren't just giving it to "poor people")
Probably not any better than the last two LG fridges which both broke due to compressor issues, causing me to lose $1k of food each time.
In one case, during the high summer, I didn't notice one was slowly getting warmer. I had constant bowel problems, because I was eating rotten mayonnaise. This was compounded by the fact that I bought fancy spicy mayonnaise, which I'd never tasted before, which masked the rotten flavour.
So -- my lessons learned, never by LG horrible fridges again, and keep an analog thermometer, which I bought for $5, in the fridge.
(General FYI, LG has had more than one class action law suit because of their compressors, and, they even make it very hard to obtain replacements. Evil bastards.)
My point is, you should take care with any fridge, new or old.
Canadian dollars, so 1.45x USD, and some expensive meats.
Lamb is 3x the price of beef, for example. Name brand bacon is not too bulky and thin, 10 bucks for 500g. Some fish is expensive too. It adds up surprisingly fast.
I plan on putting some LoRaWAN temp sensors in my fridges/freezers to alert me if the temp goes out of spec for very long. (As soon as YoLink has their Local Hub available and functioning with Home Assistant.)
I doubt you'd be able to get a signal through from inside the fridge. I made a Home Assistant "food safety" dashboard and alerts. I found two challenges:
* Connecting to the outside world. I didn't go wireless because a fridge/freezer cavity is basically a Faraday cage, because I didn't want to deal with replacing batteries, and because high humidity + low temp = wet, sad microcontroller. And even a "flat" 4-conductor telephone cord disturbed the magnetic seal enough that there was a noticeable gap. I ended up buying a 4-contact, 1mm pitch, 200mm flat flexible cable to run across the seal. I separated the contacts with a utility knife, soldering them to other cables on both sides. I also heatshrinked the conductors individually and the whole junction together for strain relief. Then I superglued it into place. And 4 conductors is enough for ground, supply voltage, and either TX/RX or 1-Wire+unused.
* Getting a reading that matches what foods actually experience rather than the air temperature. The latter fluctuates a lot more when you open/close the door or depending on what the defrost/compressor is doing. I ended up buying waterproof 1-Wire temperature sensors (elecrow sells them for $1.20 each + reasonable shipping), 4 oz plastic bottles, cable glands, and propylene glycol (relatively safe antifreeze, though I wouldn't chug it). I drilled holes in the lids for the glands to run the sensors in, then closed the bottles up while immersed in the solution. Cheap DIY buffered temperature probe.
I currently measure buffered temperature, air temperature, and humidity, but really only the buffered temperature matters.
For the readings, I only really care about catching compressor failure within hours, as opposed to say, days, so for a freezer that's normally set to -18, I figure I'll just do something like "alert if temperature remains above -14 for >2 hours." Of my 4 fridges/freezers, only one has auto-defrost, so I guess I'll have to take that into account there.
The YoLink system works great! I was able to spot an issue causing my chest freezer to very slowly increase in temp (roughly -10 to +10 F in a month) and move the contents before losing the food. Across 5 temperature sensors, I've needed to replace batteries on 2 in 16 months.
There are loads of 'put them in the fridge/freezer' temp sensors out there, made just for this. I did buy lithium AA batteries (which work down to -40C even) for the sensor end.
My thoughts are, these things are special built, and only wake every few minutes or so to burst send. Batteries tend to last a couple of years (but with the lithium ones!), and I get beeeeps from the receiver if it dies.
(Not knocking your solution, it gives you more flexibility)
I saw a few that were wired with cords that seemed more intrusive than the telephone cord I tried, so I went my own way. And most of them didn't seem to be something I could connect to Home Assistant.
Well amazon has endless examples of wireless working fine. However, as I said, you get more flexibility with your own solution (like using Home Assistant)
My z-wave temperature sensor works inside my refrigerator. It's a stainless steel refrigerator with no window or icemaker in the door. Not sure how the signal gets out but it works.
Stainless is not a very good conductor. If it were aluminum or copper there’d be a problem but you can literally bury a bluetooth transmitter in a 16-gauge steel box with very little attenuation. I’ve done so at work.
Good news for you, their local hub is available and I currently have fridge and freezer (and a few other sensors) hooked up to home assistant via it right now.
Please. I've definitely smelled off food, and of course don't eat it. The mayo in question was some weird spicy stuff, and it didn't smell or taste bad.
You can borrow a watt meter at my local public library. I'm not saying the average person would have the knowledge to think of doing this, but it's not out of reach.
As another person has noted, this wasn't quite the scenario - they had renovations, but you know that now.
I had to renovate a kitchen a while ago and I got into the habit of living without a fridge or a freezer. It came as a surprise that this was possible, and the article is interesting because I now know how much money is saved. I can compare this to food wasted due to a lack of refrigeration, and, I am still seeing the advantages of no fridge. Such heresy!
It depends on what you eat, but I don't have time for most things that need to go in the fridge. If it isn't in the fridge at the supermarket then it doesn't need to be in the fridge at home is the general rule. Oddly I have lower food waste with no fridge, but there are annoyances such as not being able to buy a big bag of (say) carrots, and having to resupply twice a week. On the whole though, my food is a lot fresher than when I had a fridge, plus I have upped my nutrition game to not have this food morgue of things that 'want to kill me'. I joke, but there were a lot of ready meals, sticky puddings and much else that might as well been 'raw trans fats'. I went from this to a jute bag, which seems to keep most vegetables fresh enough for long enough.
What is also interesting about fridges is how quickly they turn into some cave of mold even if they are kept nice and clean. Turn that electricity off, take everything out, and, unless you keep the door open, some true horrors will be found in there a week later.
In the article this was not a like for like efficiency test by any stretch of the imagination. Over time it is the door seal that goes and, if that isn't tight then it will just be sucking moisture out of the air to make a huge ice block, hence compressor on the whole time.
The next problem is that some fridges have vents with fans in them, sometimes forward facing at the base. These get to collect lots of dust, hair and other debris, making them ineffective.
Despite these test methodology issues, in the real world people will be replacing an old fridge that has a dodgy seal with a new fridge that works as the manufacturer intended.
Regarding your point of the poor, do you have any idea how many people in the UK do not have a fridge, or access to one? Allegedly it is in the millions, which I find hard to believe, but have not dismissed out of hand. There are so many people living in sub-standard rented accommodation in a shoebox sized 'studio flat' (or worse). Proper housing is required before these people can get a fridge. The UK is allegedly a first world country, but with huge inequalities when it comes to property and income.
I suspect that in much of the world not having a fridge is no big deal, if you are living off the land rather than processed foods and processed animal products then why would no fridge be hardship?
It is amazing how many assumptions there are regarding fridges, the need for them and whether life is 'disadvantaged' without one. Until relatively recent times nobody had fridges yet we somehow survived, albeit with some mortality issues.
It is a commonly used abbreviation for "the f...ine article". On discussion sites of the Internet of yore, people would tell you to RTFA — "read the fucking article" — when it appeared you were chiming in without having first read the item under discussion. This is an extraction from that.
If you have to buy 5+ refrigerators in the time the old one you are likely doing more harm to the environment than marginally more electricity consumption
Nobody talking about the refrigerators in Europe. They work differently. The ice forms inside the fridge part not just the freezer part. I don't know why and have not looked into it but it is in every fridge, including brand new ones.
Ice forming inside of the fridge is a result of moisture making its way into the fridge and staying in contact with the cooling elements.
The cause can be a lot of things, from broken drain pipes to damaged door seals. A well-functioning fridge shouldn't have (much) ice buildup unless you live in a hot and humid area.
Some modern fridges (usually the luxury models) also have features to defrost themselves if they detect that there may be frost buildup, but many fridges still have you do it manually.
The comments are well done and I am impressed. I would add the maker of the new one, partly as a tribute to them as well as gathering feedback from others.
The fact that one compressors runs 24/7 might indicate it has failed to on 24/7 - also the ice block also says this? Thus a replacement thermostat might well reduce the KwHr used by the 24/7 operation. Looking up the model on youtube for thermostat repairs might help the new owner repair it and get a few more years, although an older less efficient unit, with a repaired thermostat it might not run 24/7 and use fewer KwHr?
years ago we were renting a property that came with a fridge.. and our electricity bills where huge.
I turned it off and our power bills more than halved. It was enough for us to buy a new fridge and barely notice the powerbills change after that
Regardless of efficiency, it is very difficult to find a newer refrigerator whose compressor doesn't emit a very irritating high pitched whine almost continuously.
Personal pet level is that it’s so hard to get information on the noise level of appliances.
We’ve recently moved, and our new house’s crawl space has a Santa Fe dehumidifier in it that seems SO LOUD at night. I don’t think it’s broken - it’s just a compressor and fan with no engineering put into keeping them quiet. If I could get one that was as efficient and well built, but I knew would be quiet, I’d replace it in a heartbeat - but manufacturers don’t advertise noise levels.
Surely I can’t be the only one who’d pay substantially more for an appliance that was guaranteed to be quiet?
The newer compressors are smaller so they cost less, but are run faster to pump at the same rate. Many old hermetic compressors used a 4-pole 1500/1800RPM motor, then they became a 2-pole 3000/3600RPM, and the newest VFD/inverter motors can go even faster.
I would try plugging a simple induction motor into the refrigerator circuit to see if it also makes a weird noise. It's possible you have a problem with the wiring itself (loose neutral, etc.).
I've never had issues with HF noise out of a refrigerator. It's always been the opposite kind of noise that has been a problem.
Electricity is so cheap (8-9 cents per kWh), it doesn't even make sense to invest in saving it. I would any day choose a cheaper product over 20% more expensive one that uses 10% less power.
There are huge differences between generation types, infrastructure requirements, regulatory environments, subsidies and ownership of electrical generation and supply equipment's before you even get into conspiratorial thinking.
Globally, most electricity is not generated via oil anyway. China has cheap energy in part because they have a planned economy and a large usage of cheap energy sources such as solar and coal.
Then one need to do the calculations and decide based on that. One should also remember that the product might break so if it repays it cost over many years, there is a chance it breaks long before that.
However, LED light bulbs are worth buying, the cheap ones (less than $3) repay their price in several months even with our electricity pricing.
Agree with the others here that this is absolutely not a fair comparison. Most likely the door of the old one was not sealing well, hence the continuous running and frost buildup. I have a late 30s Frigidaire that I restored a few years ago which has been taking around 200kWh/y (70W compressor, ~33% duty cycle.)
> not a fair comparison. Most likely the door of the old one was not sealing well, hence the continuous running and frost buildup
That's an expected cost of old fridges, so I don't know that it's unfair. A major reason old machines are less efficient is accumulated defects (people too!). If I said comparing a new car's fuel efficiency to my old one was unfair, because my old one has a lot of problems, you might say that's very fair.
it depends on why and exact purpose of said comparison.
If the comparison is meant to show the drop in efficiency as part of age and usage, then yes.
However, if you wanted to _only_ compare design upgrades, you don't want wear and tear to confound the results.
Yeah, I too am unsure why anyone would think comparing a 30 year old fridge in the worst condition for testing is somehow a useful comparison in any meaningful way.
Is it really normal to want an off the line 2025 Tesla and a 1985 Lincoln Towncar with 376k miles on its second motor with a missing cat that was stolen last month for a quarter mile comparison?
but you cant compare only design ???? there is no one selling an 30 year old fridge "new"
I would say it would be fair to compare a new fridge with a 30 year old fridge in good working condition. And a fridge that has one of its two compressors running all the time is obviously not in good working condition.
You can restore the old fridge
Unless you have a fridge assembler from that same factory with the same materials also on ice, modern tools, techniques, and methods would make this an exercise in futility with regards to an apples-to-apples like-new comparison. We don’t even use CFCs anymore, for one.
You're sidestepping the point with valid re-herrings. If the old refrigerator's compressor hardware were left unchanged, possibly repairing the thermostat or contactor causing the malfunction, cleaning the air exchanges, and replacing the seal: based on the OPs own usage chart would have consumed equal if not less energy noting it was a dual compressor model.
Are we making an accurate comparison considering the internal cooled space of older fridges versus newer ones? Many older refrigerators were smaller, so the same power consumption for a smaller internal volume isn’t telling the whole story, but I digress.
>If I said comparing a new car's fuel efficiency to my old one was unfair, because my old one has a lot of problems, you might say that's very fair.
If it's a simple as not driving the old one with punctured tires and replacing those first to get a dramatically different comparison then no i'd say it's unfair.
Replacing a broken thermostat or fixing a rubber seal isn't a huge thing. Why else make the comparison? Who cares about this broken one?
It depends what you are comparing:
If you're comparing technologies, then you want to eliminate the variable of condition.
If you are comparing the values or efficiency of actual old fridges and new fridges - for example, to decide whether to replace the old ones - then it's false data to assume the old fridges are in the same condition as new ones.
I am not even sure there's anything wrong with the old fridge.
Ice buildup on the cooling element is normal in old fridges - you need to melt them down occasionally - we used to do this once a year, as ice insulates the element from the inside of the fridge and prevents it from working properly.
I thought this was common knowledge.
It's also possible that the thermostat inside was broken. For a 30 year old appliance it was probably impossible to find a replacement, but if you can replace it and it doesn't cost as much as a new fridge, that would fix it.
I'm 99% confident that freezer thermostats are cheap and generic components that haven't changed much in the past decades, however, finding and installing it is a whole other matter.
> I have a late 30s Frigidaire that I restored a few years ago
Did I read that right with 30s, as in 1930s?
Not sure of the exact year, but it should be around 1936-1940.
Honestly given how many compromises there are in refrigerants sold now, it wouldn't surprise me with new seals and a good compressor motor if the old stuff did better.
For sure, the base tech in a freezer hasn't changed in the past 50 years. Different refrigerant maybe (CFCs are bad mkay), maybe different insulation material, but the rest has just been adding smart features and buttons that really are secondary to the main function of a freezer.
And, sadly, moving to cheaper, thinner materials with a lesser lifespan.
I’ve personally seen it in the appliances I’ve bought where I’ll run an appliance for 15-20 years, but the same model. They will largely look identical but when disassembled, the newer model trades metal part for plastic or the material is thinner.
> Comparing the power consumption of a [broken] 30 year old refrigerator to a brand new one
Yeah, the title is misleading. The article says that one of the compressors on the old one was running constantly - if you applied the same failure mode to the new refrigerator, the difference would be significantly less.
I would expect a refrigerator that has EC motors running the compressor(s) and fan(s) to be around 2-2.5x as efficient as one with fixed speed motors, based on what I know about variable frequency drives and three-phase induction motors. For those, 80% speed uses 50% of the power, 63% uses 25% of the power. For an 1800 rpm motor that is 1440 rpm and 1134 rpm. VFDs work well for most applications with variable torque (fans and pumps), but applications requiring constant torque (saws, grinders, etc) are better served by fixed speed starters.
> variable frequency drives and three-phase induction motors. For those, 80% speed uses 50% of the power, 63% uses 25% of the power.
You’re presumably thinking of the “Affinity Laws”, which, according to Wikipedia (and plenty of other sources), “apply to pumps, fans, and hydraulic turbines. In these rotary implements, the affinity laws apply both to centrifugal and axial flows.”
This is, IMO, one of the worst kinds of science writing. Wikipedia, and plenty of other sources, make little mention of when the do and don’t apply or, relatedly, why they’re true and why they can’t always be true.
They generally apply to situations where a pump is pumping fluid through something like a filter or a long pipe where the pipe is a closed loop or at least the ends are at the same elevation (e.g. a swimming pool pump, except when pumping from a pool into a higher hot tub). So you have no actual work being done by moving fluid, and you can run the pump slower, and thus move less fluid per unit time, thus reducing friction in a manner that the pressure that the pump needs to overcome goes all the way to zero as the flow rate approaches zero.
But the affinity laws are not really anything fundamental about pumps, and they certainly do not override conservation of energy.
Now consider a refrigerator. The compressor is pumping refrigerant from an (approximately) fixed low pressure to a fixed high pressure. (The fluid goes back from high pressure to low pressure via a capillary tube or expansion valve or similar lossy device -- it gets its pressure increased in the gas phase and decreased in the liquid phase.) There's some friction, but after subtracting friction, the pressure is independent of flow rate, and thus the work done per unit flow is independent of flow rate, and the pump power scales linearly with flow as opposed to super-linearly as the affinity laws suggest.
Also, the compressor is a positive-displacement pump, and the affinity laws don't even pretend to apply to these.
(A well pump is another common system where the affinity laws will lead to nonsensical results. If you want to size a well pump properly, you need to know the height that you're raising the water, the output pressure you need, and the range of flows that you want. And then you look at the actual measured performance curves of the pumps (and their drives) that you are considering, and you pick something appropriate.)
All that being said, variable-speed fridges exist, and they're kind of nice in that they try to run continuously and quietly instead of alternating between full-power (and loud) and all the way off. And they are probably a bit more efficient because there's less friction and because the motors are likely to be more efficient three-phase designs instead of the not-actually-amazing single-phase motors you'll find in older fridges.
> variable-speed fridges exist, and they're kind of nice in that they try to run continuously and quietly instead of alternating between full-power (and loud) and all the way off.
Modern continuous variable speed compressor fridges drive me absolutely crazy. They sound like two ceramic plate rubbing together with some maddening flutter.
Some also add incredibly annoying high pitch whines. That seemingly nobody seems to notice but me. In the same vein as coils whine from power supplies and other modern electronic.
Old bang bang fridges are loud, on lower frequency, and with a sound that is more consistent and stable. Not varying one second to the next, which I find easier to ignore.
I have started looking at how reasonable it is to move the compressor of my expensive and low quality 2025 fridge across the wall into the garage (refrigerant capture and refill, brazing new lines etc).
It's not just modern electronics. I used to be able to know, the minute I walked in, if there were any CRT TVs on in someones house. Flyback coil whine was a constant presence.
Same. Sometimes I'd be sitting in a different room not exactly "hearing" anything except a vague sense of heightened perception and unease, and eventually decide to get up to check the TV room on the other side of the house and sure enough, someone left the TV on. The feeling of utter blissful silence afterwards in comparison was incredibly relaxing though, I do kinda miss that part...
VFDs need really good grounding. Make sure you have a solid earth ground or you can get arcing across the motor bearings. This makes a sound that’s often described as “fluting,” and I think that might be your problem. If it is, you need to fix that before your bearings are trashed and you have to replace the motor.
Wait, the compressor and drive is a device or a pair of devices right next to each other, assembled in a factory, and made out of metal. Why does the quality of the connection between the hunks of metal and the planet have any effect?
VFDs can produce nasty waveforms, and there are cases where “grounding” could be a big deal, but I think that the wiring of the ground terminal of the power supply is only relevant at all when it’s involved in the connection between the drive and the motor. So, for example, if you have a VFD that is far away from a motor, then you would want to make sure the VFD and the motor’s grounds are connected to each other and maybe even that the VFD’s supply neutral (average of the phases) is reasonably close in voltage to ground, keeping in mind that there may not be an actual neutral wire connected to the VFD, and that the motor’s ground is well connected to the VFD’s ground. By modern standards one should use actual VFD cable and terminate it properly.
https://www.southwire.com/medias/sys_master/related-pdfs/rel...
Fascinating, I will investigate.
The outlet are grounded with a thin non insulated copper wire secured to the nearest water copper pipe, itself also bounded to the iron gas pipe (this is 1950 electrical). I am not sure I can call this a solid earth ground.
Thank you for the info!
If your electrical service is also bonded to the gas and water pipes (it likely is), that grounding arrangement for the receptacle is fine.
It isn't bonded at the panel. The panel ground is not used on any of the 1950 circuits. Neutral is bonded to the panel ground. And yes this does means neutral and ground pins at the outlet have a few volts across, since the path between them goes through the literal earth. The water and gas piping coming out of the earth at the opposite side of the house from where the electrical panel is located.
> Some also add incredibly annoying high pitch whines. That seemingly nobody seems to notice but me.
That drove me crazy for about a week trying to figure out what the noise was coming from... Pinhole water pipe leak? Cat stuck in the flue? Once I realized what it was, I didn't mind it much. It is better than loud old compressors suddenly kicking on and burrr'ing away then stopping.
I hate fridge noise, any kind. I’d like to prioritize quiet running when buying, but for the last two purchases I haven’t had confidence in the research I did. In the end, one was decent and the other was fair.
However, in preparation for writing this comment I discovered Quiet Mark, which seems promising. https://www.quietmark.com/
> I have started looking at how reasonable it is to move the compressor of my expensive and low quality 2025 fridge across the wall into the garage (refrigerant capture and refill, brazing new lines etc).
It would be worth looking into commercial refrigeration as well, you can get a refrigerator with a remote condenser and I’m sure you could find used equipment. Either way you’re going to have to run refrigerant piping and plumb in condensate drains.
Variable-compressor fridges will be more thermodynamically efficient, as the heat transfer happens more gradually, so temperature differences across the heat pump will be lower (e.g. because the condenser will have more time to gradually transfer heat to the room, it won't get as hot). And coefficient of performance for a heat pump is higher if the temperature difference is smaller. Another way to achieve this might be with a variable-displacement compressor (which is how modern car AC systems work, rather than cycling on/off).
Unlikely. The thermal timescales are long enough that the fridge turning on and off doesn't mean the temperatures vary wildly. That's why they can do it in the first place!
Central heating on the other hand... I'm definitely never buying a boiler without opentherm.
I think the comment you’re replying to is referring to steady state performance. At lower refrigerant flow, the temperature difference produced by the system will be lower and thus the thermodynamic efficiency will be higher.
(A fridge is producing a temperature difference between the hot gas exiting the compressor and the cold liquid/gas mixture coming out of the expansion valve. The former will be quite a bit hotter than the outside air and the latter will be quite a bit colder than the air inside the fridge. The smaller the value of “quite a bit” the higher the Carnot efficiency would be.)
This is the kind of comment that makes HN special and precious. Thank you.
This reply is amazing, thank you! This gives me a much better understanding of the work done by a chilled water pump in a closed loop vs a refrigerant pump with an expansion valve in the loop and in which situations the affinity laws apply to.
I’m just a dumb electrical PM who knows enough to be dangerous, and I only know how things like heat exchangers, pumps, and fans work on a very basic level so this is illuminating.
VFDs and inverters are nice, but have you ever looked inside of an AC unit with an inverter and asked what it would cost if the electronics has a problem? Simple dumb single speed stuff looks like it costs more to run, until you have a problem, which you will. On simple single speed fridges and AC that don't do anything special maybe you need a motor cap or motor or something every parts house has for little money and easy to swap; the moment you introduce more complexity is the moment you bend over for GE or Mitsubishi or Samsung to gouge you for basically any part.
VFDs also fail about 2x to 2.5x as often as anything else in the system. In small commercial applications they often end up bypassed within a few years of installation of that equipment. They're also unusually good at catching fire due to the design requirements of the part.
Properly sized multistage A/C systems are a much better idea.
You do see drive failures, but they’re less common than they used to be, almost every drive my guys install is an ABB drive and they’re pretty reliable.
You are correct about soft-starters being a lot simpler and requiring less maintenance, as it’s more or less just another contactor inside a regular across-the-line starter with some extra control wiring to handle the extra contactor. Adding an inverter, rectifier, and solid state electronics does make the complexity much higher.
I suspect a cheap fridge is still a fixed speed compressor. Same with AC units - only the nicer ones are “inverter”
Given modern minimalistic build standards, the modern compressor would probably overheat and fail if run continuously 24/7. I am reminded of the old simpsons bit where they make a tent in front of the refrigerator.
https://youtu.be/1t9BdMuzV64
Coincidentally, that episode is also 30 years old, and right before the clip starts, the fridge has just broken. So a fridge of that era cannot run 24/7 either.
Here's the full clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioyU_sZufC8
It broke because they had the door open, causing it to run 24/7, much like the fridge in the op. I couldnt find the whole clip.
It's still functional though, the point is comparing 'keep running the old tired one' vs 'replace with new', not 'how well were they made then vs now'.
I feel like a more appropriate - or at least a more interesting - comparison would be “fix the old one” vs “replace with new.” Replacing an old broken product with a new unbroken one is changing two variables, not one.
Now, if the author would like to break their New refrigerator and report back, I’ll take it as an interesting result.
Can you even fix the 30 year old one... that's still '95 when these things weren't very fixable.
But at the end of the day the question is what is the likelihood the old fridge will be in a semi-broken state.
Usually the older ones are easier to fix. It's never going to be new of course, and even stuff like the insulation will be degrading with time.
I'd argue that in general, refrigerators are one of the few devices that came out of the energy efficiency mandates as better products.
"Broken"? It kept things cold.
Save us dang
Totally fine to choose as the author did, but for others who might face a similar choice: repairing a thermostat in a fridge is dramatically easier than fixing almost anything in a dishwasher. I did that with my fridge - cost <$20 for the part and maybe 30 minutes of work. Your (EU) kilometrage may vary.
I suspect the power savings would be much less dramatic with a fixed thermostat.
Indeed, been there. Just getting the dishwasher out of its cubby hole is a major effort, and involves dealing with not just the wiring but the hoses too. And if it's an older house, chances are good that the dishwasher had to be crammed in with a certain amount of hacking, cussing, and persuasion.
The fridge rolls out into the room on its own wheels.
Many dishwashers are supposed to be wood-screwed into the surrounding cabinets! Recently installed one for a friend and was surprised to see that instruction.
Meanwhile, with the exception of ice makers/water dispensers (1/4 PEX), fridges don't have to deal with hoses for the most part. So much easier IME.
> Many dishwashers are supposed to be wood-screwed into the surrounding cabinets!
That's so they don't tip forward when a rack loaded with dishes is pulled out. There's a fair bit of forward leverage in that weight distribution.
Hum. The countertop will prevent that. No need to be screwed.
A lot of fridges in Europe are integrated into the kitchen cabinets, similar to dishwashers.
So I'd say they face the same kind of issues.
This must be dependent on your country's customs, I suppose. I've taken out dishwashers quite a few times and it was actually fairly easy. No wheels, true, but cables and hoses were never much of a problem in my case.
Nah, dishwashers are pretty light too. With a muscle mass of 1% I usually just flip it over to work on it. This is just peak HN, PhDs still phased by something requiring an 8th grade level of education. In the US, the supply is usually a screw on, the drain a clamp and if the wiring isn’t already a quick connect just throw some Wagos on.
Dishwashers are ok, depending on flooring - if you want to get it out and guarantee no scratches on the floor, it may be simpler to get some kind of "dolly" mechanical assistance.
Washing machines, on the other hand, tend to have a brick in the bottom to stop them from walking around on their own.
(periodic recommendation: if you buy a Miele, you will pay twice as much for several times the expected lifespan of a cheaper machine. My parents have a Miele dishwasher that's over 30 years old.)
Unless the fridge is sitting on the subfloor/slab and a floor was built around the fridge, blocking it in.
We're talking like a couple hundred pounds. Push back on the top, pop in two 2x4's (one under each side, lengthwise, not across), then let it down and walk it forward.
I just changed the casters on my 42U rack, without moving (or shutting down) any of the machines. Now that required some deliberateness.
Amen. I put my dishwasher in myself so I get to curse myself for that hacking.
Worst was sourcing the parts though. Getting the thing out, effectively getting it up on blocks to run it and see the issue was hard work. Getting the specific totally non-standard o-ring size out of the manufacturer was impossible. In the end I resorted to siliconing but I just cannot dump something like that over a 5c part.
My partners bought a house with a dishwasher. Apparently it was installed, then a new floor put in raising it about an inch effectively locking the dishwasher in place. Removing it involved removing the counter above (it needed replacing..) but your comment brought back some memories(lots of cussing)
I just replaced the drain pump and motherboard on my GE dishwasher and it was super easy. Everything was easy to access and all the major parts had a QR code on them making parts lookup idiot proof.
When the parts showed up they came with all the clamps and other replacement hardware that I didn’t even know I needed.
I've found cheap after-market thermostats to have short lifetimes... Original lasted 20 years... Replacement started misbehaving in just 2 years.
So now my policy is to retrofit all old refrigerators with digital STC-1000 thermostats. A bit more work to cut out some plastic, split the hot wire and tap into a neutral wire (easy enough to follow the bulb) but cheaper, super reliable, and gives very consistent and highly controllable results.
Two such upgraded refrigerators are still working without an issue several years later. Though both required replacing the relay (with a solid state relay/capacitor unit) at about the same time, and one after replacement of the evaporator fan motor due to noise issues.
Do you have a guide or reference to follow?
Sorry, I did not write-up a guide.
Electrically, you just need to: 1) connect both wires from the old mechanical thermostat to the "Cooling" terminal block (polarity doesn't matter). Or if your model doesn't have separate heat/cool the "relay" and configure settings for cooling mode rather than heating. 2) Tap into hot and neutral wires (going to the light bulb but BEFORE the door switch) and connect that to the STC-1000 power input (polarity doesn't matter).
Then configure the STC-1000, set a temperature to maybe 4C and set the "compressor delay" to at least 4 min, though I'm happy with 10. The default difference of 3C should be fine.
The plastic cutting varies by refrigerator design, but shouldn't be too confusing.
There is a wiring diagram for the STC-1000 in the manual: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71VSFdFfszL...
...and right on the unit: https://wiringandcircuit.blogspot.com/2025/04/temperature-co...
There are videos of it being installed (not a refrigerator retrofit): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30TvX1Zz1-Y
...and being configured: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQjicdtDVrQ
Also: if you find ice forming in your fridge, or uneven cooling inside, it may be due to a clogged drain tube. This was the root cause of my fridge breaking: tube in the back clogged -> condensation backed up around the evaporator coils -> froze solid -> blocked circulation fan -> incorrect thermal readings, warm/frozen spots in fridge.
I had one with a fan inside it that died, to similar effect. I didn't even know it used a fan to recirculate the air, until it didn't.
I've found US dishwashers pretty easy to fix, but Korean and German ones can be a bit more of a pain, and these are the ones built for the US market. I've heard that European models often have water softeners built in.
All German ones have water softeners I think, also most modern ones have a large flat water tank at the side that acts as a heat exchanger and condensation surface, and also saves water from the last rinse cycle to use in the first wash cycle the next time it's turned on.
Yeah I was wondering if there was perhaps some regional differences. The one time I did a DIY fix of my dishwasher I was pleasantly surprised with how easy it was. They're largely very simple devices, and aside from a couple screws to keep them from tipping, they slide right out of the opening they're in.
> [...] German ones can be a bit more of a pain
I did replace my dishwasher a few years ago with a Bosch. Uh-oh!
Not sure about dishwasher but our Bosch washing machine was fixed with little real fuss other than needing to have torx screw-bits. I quite admired the engineering.
We too have a Bosch dishwasher so - like you - we'll see how that goes...
Looking at their designs, this seems to be the case with other white goods too; I suspect it's because US designs are relatively old and simple since they were among the first, while foreign designs are more highly space- and cost-optimised at the expense of repairability and possibly robustness.
Depends. My last fridge the thermostat went bad and it couldn’t be fixed because they embedded the entire thing into the foam. Terrible design. Was a whirlpool.
That's similar to what sent my last Samsung fridge to its next home. Samsung apparently had some problems with wire movement in the door hinge, so they changed the design and embedded the wires in glue/foam/whatever. So now if you have a problem with those wires, which happens because it's a hinge ... you get to replace the whole door at least. Turns out to be an expensive pain in the ass if the fridge is more than a few years old, it was more time- and cost-effective to get a new fridge at that point.
It takes a long time getting to know your dishwasher but my 2014 model was actually not that hard to debug and fix. Need to be able to source the parts of course. I was surprised how repairable it was. Will watch out for it when I need to buy another one.
One thing that catches my eye here is the use of a smart plug on the refrigerator for current monitoring. I've tried a ton of different ones including the "good" ones like Shelly, and they all seem to use shunt resistors to gauge power draw. It would make me really nervous to use something like that to measure power draw on a big inductive load like a fridge. It's a shame, I've never seen a current clamp in plug form with no on/off switch, so you've basically gotta do some fab work, but that's basically really the only safe way to collect current data for anything that pulls a non-trivial amount of power.
Can you elaborate a bit further on what you’d need to do and why? It’s been a while since my electrical courses.
I’ve been trying to measure home power consumption with these plugs (and the ones from IKEA) but I’ve been getting suspicious readings for inductive loads.
I wouldn't bother using a smart plug. The other thing that's real dangerous about them that I didn't really elaborate on is the relay. There's a reason on something like a pump, fridge, AC unit, etc. you'd see a real contactor instead of a relay, and it's because relays are inappropriate and have dangerous failure modes for big loads like that and are typically way too small.
In most real non-resi situations, you'd probably isolate the hot leg and put a good CT (current clamp) on it and read that. The great thing about that is you haven't added anything in the power path for the device, like a shunt which is what most smart plugs use. Current clamps are good for a lot more current (though I guess a proper shunt could do it too). The easiest way to do this in your setting is to find a good UL-listed electrical box with cable glands, a short piece of DIN rail, a male and female plug pigtail, some proper THHN wire and wirenets and a Shelly 50A EM Pro, and just graft the EM Pro into the box and wire it up with it's CT. You've now got something signficantly more durable and probably safer (and correctly specced for the load). I've done other things like using an HV Labjack and some good CTs or other one or few off designs. There's lots of stuff in the commercial/industrial space that does this well but it tends to be $$$. Again, for the sake of my own family, I wouldn't use non-UL stuff (most plugs and things that go in gangboxes that are "smart" aren't UL listed, and MAYBE are ETL) as you who knows how much or how well it's tested.
The IKEA plugs have a tidbit in the manual that says a "motor load" is limited to 300W while a resistive load can reach the full 3680W (at 230V, probably less if you're in a lower voltage country).
Should be fine for modern fridges but older fridges may overwhelm the circuitry.
Isn't this just a question of correctly sizing the shunt?
Hall effect would also be possible, but more expensive.
Yeah, but you don't get do the sizing, it's done by whatever the engineer that designed the plug wanted. I don't know why you'd do hall effect for an AC circuit, a good regular old current clamp should get you as much accuracy as you'd ever want.
Just to be pedantic, you could have a current meter where the clamp/hall sensor is internal and not clamped on the power cord.
That's what I'm say, but I've never ever seen one. I would love to buy one with a current clamp integrated, as it would save me from needing to fab a box and build something, but I don't know of any that exist today.
A 21 kWh/month it's 252 kwh/annum (I guess?), which is around energy label E in the new EU energy labels.
If you go for energy label A, some fridges have 101 kWh/annum, which is more than half less! I haven't seen many, and they are usually very tall, but hopefully we can see more and more in the future.
They're freaking expensive, though. I just replaced a (probably) 25 year old fridge by one with a D label. The difference with a C or E label is small in energy use. I do notice that the exterior gets really less warm than the old model. I don't think it would have qualified as an E.
BTW, if I'm not mistaken, the energy label depends on the function. So 250kWh/yr could be (much) lower than E when the volume is smaller.
I got a rated "A" for one year, this model (256 liter fridge + 122 liter freezer) :
https://eprel.ec.europa.eu/screen/product/refrigeratingappli...
Rated for 113 kWh/year
I left a powermeter on it for one year and got 130 kWh.
It's amazing that the average power consumption is less than 15 Watt.
The article mentions ice building up in that old fridge, and this reminded me what I was told by a man who was fixing these things- that the condition of rubber seal and fridge not being leveled correctly can also lead to the ice buildup (if thermostat is not broken). He did not explain in deep technical details why, but said that when the fridge door is not sealing fully then the room air enters the fridge and due to different condensation point it causes moisture buildup at the coldest part. I am not sure how factual this was, since after hearing this I adjusted the fridge so the doors were always closing themselves thanks to gravity, and the ice still kept building up. I did not replace the seal though :)
Since a fridge's compressor runs about 30% of the time, most of the energy savings of the new fridge are because of a new thermostat.
But the new fridge will not last thirty. Heck, he's lucky if it lasts ten. Five if he lives in an area prone to electrical surges.
>Five if he lives in an area prone to electrical surges.
Many fridges have DC compressors and decent enough input filtering, that should be no issue. However, the electronics themselves are another matter.
Most fridges nowadays have defrost cycles controlled by the said processors, with the latter being prone to even software issues. Some fans may not need a replacement, while the fans are cheap and ubiquitous reaching them is another story.
My new Bosch 2020 refrigerator broke down after 3 years of usage. Coolant leakage. Not repairable due to the foam direct injection.
Todays appliances are built, by design, to break fast these days. So whether old (operating costs) or new (foreshortened lifespan) your appliances cost you more.
https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/modern-appliances...
(https://ghostarchive.org/archive/KGf2Z)
There are still some repairable brands. GE'a basic appliances (and their budget subbrands like Hotpoint) are a standout with excellent availability of parts and service data. A hotpoint electric range can be fixed by any homeowner with a screwdriver.
While we're on this topic, kudos to "Sears Parts Direct" for carrying a bewildering array of spare parts for those appliances.
repairclinic.com is another good one. Not always the cheapest but very DIY-oriented.
The problem though is one of diminished durability by intent rather than repairability. Not to mention rising cost-of-repair.
As I recall GE is also one of the few/only brands that operates its own service business.
I will also point out that the way inflation has tended to work is that you can still buy high quality appliances and other consumer products (e.g., tailored clothes and built-to-last leather shoes), but when you do the inflation math you have to spend a lot to get the equivalent product from decades ago.
In other words, the same quality products generally still exist, the real issue is that a bunch of low price products that didn’t used to exist now do, and average people didn’t own as much stuff as they do now.
If you buy a $2500 Speed Queen or a $10,000 Sub-Zero you’re getting the kind of quality and repairability that used to exist in more appliances.
But when it comes to a $500 washing machine or dryer, when you adjust for inflation that product did not exist 40 years ago.
The other thing I’ve heard about this issue is that the mid-range consumer luxury type stuff is the segment to avoid: built cheaply but with a lot of features that fail and a high cost. E.g., Samsung refrigerators with touch screens on them. You’ll notice that most true luxury built-in brands don’t have a laundry list of gimmick features.
I bought more or less the same dryer as the one from 1997 that it replaced. There's cost reductions in some of the parts, but the overall design is more or less the same (for example, the timer is a cheaper design, there's no little door on the lint catcher, the adjustable feet are plastic instead of metal). I expect many parts are directly interchangeable.
I guess I'm not sure what the 1997 price was, so can't really make a comparison.
Fun story with the plastic feet, the delivery drivers either didn't know that they screwed into the dryer or pretended not to know. They left them barely inserted into the bottom and then put a shim under one of them to level it. I was standing there and kind of mumbled "can't you screw the others in" but dropped it and did it myself after they left.
GE was bought by Haier (a Chinese company) about ten years ago. I have a bunch of them and so far they are all pretty good.
Yes GE is owned by Haier, which worried me when I was researching fridges a couple years ago. But apparently most of the GE appliances are still manufactured in the U.S. and haven’t really changed much despite the change in ownership.
My GE fridge has been a disappointment. It is OK at its main function: cooling. However I've had to replace the main control board and the freezer defrost heater. The built-in water dispenser never really worked because the water line is routed too close to the freezer compartment and it freezes up. The ice maker is disconnected because its water line developed a leak and damaged my laminate floor before I noticed it. I don't think I'll be buying GE again.
The trick with fridges: Don't but ones with ice makers or water dispensers built in. There's a reason the rich install dedicated ice makers and filtered sinks.
Well, they do that because they have so much square footage that it makes sense. You need physical space to have your fridge and freezer and ice machine and cold/sparkling/filtered water dispenser separate. And of course money for lots of appliances.
I would say that it’s best to get a fridge that has a simple ice maker that’s in the freezer and water dispenser that is in the fridge interior with no weird rerouting like having the ice/water dispensed from the door (which also reduces efficiency because there’s essentially a hole in your fridge).
As an example the Sub-Zero refrigerator lineup has a simple ice maker in the freezer and then the water dispenser is optional, and it’s accessed from inside the refrigerator.
> but when you do the inflation math you have to spend a lot to get the equivalent product from decades ago.
But this is usually deceptively explained as being because they are far more expensive to make, when it is really 1) because of economies of scale when they are made in smaller runs often by smaller companies, or 2) intentionally segmented at that price by the same companies that sell the disposable stuff as a high-margin luxury option.
If large companies were forced into a traditional quality standard, the cost increase wouldn't be 5x, it would be more like 1.5x. It might creep up after a while, as the runs became shorter because the products weren't built to fail anymore.
While you are correct in many cases it highly depends on the market and product segment. The competitive health of each product market varies a lot.
Was not immediately apparent in article but I did not read the whole thing. Beyond general repairability the other issue to me is the cost of labor. In Vietnam I can get near anything repaired because the cost of labor is so darn cheap. In America it makes no sense to be paying $100/hour usually minimum two hour repair plus the cost of the part.
I am ok with generally with having less ability to repair but I do wish more cities and companies and trade in programs for proper recycling.
That article does not seem to support in any way the statement that appliances are intentionally designed for short lifespans.
Neither the article nor the linked sources even attempt to prove that modern appliances are less durable or having more issues than old appliances.
It seems to be just complaining about "computer circuit boards" in appliances, much the way people did about electronic ignition in cars, despite actually resulting in a huge increase in engine reliability because solid state has so very little to fail.
I mean, maybe people throw out a perfectly working toaster when it can't connect to Wi-Fi anymore, (or take their car to the dealer when their entertainment system acts-up) but that's not an actual reliability issue, IMHO.
My Samsung refrigerator runs still great after 12 years.
New ones break quickly and then consume zero energy. So then you buy an even newer one without caring at all about the emissions to buy the new one and to get rid of the old one. And then feel good to be "saving the planet" because you have a super efficient fridge and repeat the cycle.
Depends on what kind of fridge you buy. If you buy one for the price of a fridge in the "good old times" that doesn't come loaded with useless features, they last just fine.
A lot of degrading quality in household appliances is the result of consumers buying the cheapest products that'll get the job done. Many people would rather risk having to buy two €600 fridges rather than buying one €1200 fridge (freezer sold separately of course).
I can get a full fridge+freezer combination delivered to my home for €380. Of course that won't last as long as the €1200 equivalent from forty years ago, back when that was the normal price for a fridge.
Related item: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32462954
Why talk about 2.6 kWh/day (power*time/time = energy/time = power) when there is perfectly fine unit for that, namely the watt?
2.6 kWh/day = 2.6 kWh/24h = 108 W, on average.
Electric bills aren't calculated by the Watt, you pay per kWh. The expected cost of running the fridge is the salient information.
Yet the service into my home and each individual circuit has a maximum on received power so the Watt is usually more pertinent anyways. Taking an average Watt usage value and extrapolating that into kWh/month is both incredibly easy and completely standardized.
0.108 x 168 hours/wk x 4.4 wks/month gives a good approximation for kwh/month. Demand over time gives consumption just fine.
A 75% drop is nice and much improved.
I've had this thought before, when seeing labels that talk about kWh/day. The answer is very simple: you pay per kWh. When people want to know power efficiency, what they really want to know is "how much will this cost me to run?". That answer is most easily expressed in kWh per unit time.
Also giving an averaged power drain would be misleading. If the device uses 2.4kW but only for half an hour per day, that's not a 50W device as far as cabling, fuses and other electrical considerations.
> when seeing labels that talk about kWh/day
That's at least kinda reasonable. I'm always amused when I see TV energy labels that state
xx kWh/1000h
To.m be fair I want to know how much a fridge costs to run when it’s on 24/7, my tv not so much.
In the US, at least, there are some utilities that charge based on maximum kW (demand) and total kWh used (energy). ComEd in Chicago is a utility with a demand rate plan option.
That tends to be commercial rates since businesses can have larger spikes in consumption, so the "pipe" needs to be larger. Industrial rates are similar.
There are some like ComEd that you call out that can apply the model to residential rates, though my (now dated) experience is that they are rarer.
Knowing the average of 108 W wouldn't help with knowing your peak demand, as fridges vary significantly from off to startup to running, so knowing the average isn't useful in that situation either.
It would be completely wrong for peak demand. I had to learn this the hard way. While the small fridge I bought only uses 80 W while running the compressor uses 800W+ for a second on startup which was too much for my off the grid inverter.
Sweden just mandated kW prices along with the kWh. I think because we are starting to see the extra strain on the grid with EVs.
That strain does not seem to be reflected in the usage, which has been in a shallow decline since the 90s. Maybe they could consider using smart demand management, which is becoming popular with a lot of utilities to move usage away from peaks and into the quieter times.
I think these tariffs are meant to encourage exactly that. Note also that there are many levels of bottlenecks. One could be in your neighborhood, if all your neighbours have EVs.
Perhaps it will work. I'm just a bit skeptical because it seems unlikely to be a widespread problem. The average driver in Sweden will only need perhaps 6 kWh per day, which at L2 means charging for 35-40 minutes. A bit of demand management from the utility and everyone in the neighborhood can get what they need without stressing the local grid. Or just knock down the rate to something inconsequential and let it trickle all night.
Although this is totally informal, in a normal conversation if somebody gives me the wattage of a device, I assume they are peak power draw. For kWh/day, I assume they’ve accounted for some reasonable duty-factor.
Possibly because it gives better intuition for the approximate cost per unit of time. Similar to how fuel consumption can be written as volume/length = area, but is still usually presented in the former way, since that shows the actual amount of resource being consumed.
Because the most familiar anchor for scale is the monthly meter reading, which is in kWh.
I thought watt is a DC unit, so often avoided for AC measurements, since it is ambiguous which watt you are talking about, and the device is always consuming more or less than the average, and very rarely consuming that actual amount. Often the alternate unit is called VA, even though that too seems like a watt
Watts work fine for AC - multiply your RMS voltage by current. The RMS takes care of the fact that AC isn't steady like DC.
VA (takes power factor into account) is relevant for sizing transformers, breakers, wiring, etc but usually only affects your bill if you are a large industrial customer.
That is just what I said: that is the formula for VA, not P, even though both have the same dimensional units: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volt-ampere and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_power#Apparent_power. And they'd be roughly the same for something like a toaster, but if you happen to be interested in, say, the billed power consumption of a 30 year old fridge with a motor
Because that's not what they're interested in! Really what they care about is that the fridge is consuming about 9.36 MJ/day, because really kWh is just a convenience unit for joules. But since everyone gets charged in kWh that's the unit they use.
It is bit too derived unit. But on other hand it does make calculations pretty simple. Say 0.14 per kWh and then cost in month is simple multiplication 2.6300.14 . Or a year is 2.63650.14...
Watts measure power, kWh measure energy - and they are a more convenient unit than J.
If you have natural gas connection, you can be charged for both kWh and GJ on the same bill!
Or your utility may use freedom units like Therms
Ccf is also common because it's the directly measured quantity by your gas provider and you don't need silly charts like https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/sec12_5.pdf
Seems odd to sell a gas by volume though... are these understood to be at a standardized pressure/density?
My gas bill each month lists the correction factor used for that month to compensate the meter reading to the volume consumed (and thus billed) based on the average weather.
I really want to know the power usage of the old fridge after it was fixed. :(
My assumption, probably pretty close to the new fridge.
Very little has changed in fridge tech in 30 years besides them getting cheaper and breaking easier.
The old fridges that didn't self-defrost are probably the most reliable. The only moving part is the compressor. No fans, no heaters, and fairly quiet. But the freezer compartment will ice up especially in humid climates and must be periodically defrosted which is a bit of a PITA.
Defrosting sucks profoundly, also the frost build=up makes opening drawers hard and prone to damage. Additionally it takes another fridge to store the contents.
have there been improvements to the insulation? given how good high-end coolers are now, i'd assume that there's been something with the non-mechanical parts that could have improved
Ultimately, not much. The polyurethane insulation of 1995 is pretty comparable with the polyurethane insulation of 2025.
There are better insulations out there, but they cost money and are harder to work with. For example, we could theoretically vacuum seal a fridge, but that'd require an airtight seal and likely a stainless steel structure around the fridge.
I think a lot of coolers used to have some parts like lid or even sides that were simply double-walled with an air gap and no real insulation. I remember old internet posts about people enhancing theirs by drilling into these spaces and injecting them with a minimally expanding foam from the hardware store.
Maybe somewhat better insulation and then I have noticed with combined units that there is more of it. That is usable volume is smaller due to larger amount of insulation.
For a fair comparison, they should measure a modern fridge when it misbehaving and running its WiFi and GPU constantly
Is that true though? Better coolants, inverters / variable speed / scroll /swing compressors, insulation and mfg, etc. maybe for residential it’s less impactful, but refrigeration in general has better efficiency than 30 years ago.
> Better coolants
The Montreal protocol (1987) put us back into the dark ages with coolants for a while (both with CFC ban and later phase outs of HFCs). I suspect if you tested a refrigerator from 40 years ago they would give modern ones a run for their money...
It was obviously a worthwhile sacrifice for the ozone layer though.
Here is some general data: https://appliance-standards.org/blog/how-your-refrigerator-h... Data is shown only up to 2014, modern ones use more like 300-400 kWh/year.
Energy Star appliances started to show up circa 1995 so there may have been comparably efficient fridges back then.
The author is in Estonia. Appliances in the European Union have different energy standards and labels, and run on different voltages, so you don’t ever see Energy Star fridges there.
Estonia joined the EU in 2004, and I don’t know what the energy labelling on appliances was like before then.
According to Project 2025, we won't ever see them again.
https://static.heritage.org/project2025/2025_MandateForLeade...
"Eliminate energy efficiency standards for appliances. Pursuant to the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975 as amended, the agency is required to set and periodically tighten energy and/or water efficiency standards for nearly all kinds of commercial and household appliances, including air conditioners, furnaces, water heaters, stoves, clothes washers and dryers, refrigerators, dishwashers, light bulbs, and showerheads. Current law and regulations reduce consumer choice, drive up costs for consumer appliances, and emphasize energy efficiency to the exclusion of other important factors such as cycle time and reparability."
https://tonko.house.gov/uploadedfiles/project-2025-fact-shee...
The dramatic things with refrigerators is that in most countries people will install them in the kitchen for obvious practicality reasons, which is often also the hottest room of the house/appartment due to ovens, stoves and spending a significant amount of time there. If you think of it, it is bonkers that we put a device meant to keep stuff cold in what is a heated place in northern countries. Some hold houses and building used to have non heated dedicated rooms meant to keep food at a lower temperature naturally in winter but this has pretty much disappeared.
OTOH I live in a coastal city in south of Spain and every time I read a label that said food shouldn't be in a fridge but kept in a fresh and dry storage I ask myself where the eff should I store it there is no place like that unless I am running aircon 24/7 which I certainly won't do.
The ambient temperature differential between the kitchen and other rooms in a house is minimal on average. There’s nothing bonkers about putting the refrigerator in that space. Even a hypothetical 20F temperature rise during an hour long cooking session is basically negligible for the efficiency of a refrigerator that is cooling 24/7.
Putting the refrigerator in an unconditioned space wouldn’t be as big of a win as you think because every time you open the door to the unconditioned space you’re letting cold air into the house. Twice per refrigerator visit all day long adds up.
In the winter you actually benefit from having the refrigerator in your conditioned space because the waste heat goes toward heating your house. It would be lose-lose to put it outside of the house in a cold location.
I Suppose heating fuel is cheaper, or household heat pumps are more efficient, but all of the energy consumed by running the refrigerator becomes waste heat in the same room you are trying to heat. That seems superior to the refrigerator heating a room where the waste heat isn’t useful.
> kept in a fresh and dry storage I ask myself where the eff should I store it
Your mountain home. (I'd hazard a guess that many such products come from the interior versus humid coasts.)
Where do you store your wine? (Only half kidding, but I am sure you have solutions like this in Spain)
well I don't have one, I rarely ever drink wine at home, but there are dedicated devices for that, I think they are called wine cabinets in english? They could be used to store other things indeed. I have never looked at the energy consumption of these things.
I was thinking about more arcane solutions, like a basement in a stone house on the north face of the house.
Oh yes if you own the land that is the way but iy is not an option for me as I am in a 25y old appartment.
The fridge box is fairly insulated. Temps in my home are consistent all over plus or minus a couple degrees. I think you've overstating the case a lot here. Even with the oven running it doesnt seem to affect the fridge too much. Heck in a lot of warmer climates people leave a spare fridge outside where its battling non-climate controlled air.
In the winter your fridge's waste heat is warming up your kitchen, so if anything, its a bit of a bonus those months.
The only thing I think we could do with fridges is put in a system that pulls cold air in during the winter but that's sawing holes into brick and yet another thing to worry about in regards to mold, critters, moisture, filters, fans, etc. Its just not worth the effort or cost.
I (well, my landlord) replaced a similarly old refrigerator last year. The thermostat was fine, it had developed a very slow gas leak and the charge had dropped enough that it was freezing rather than cooling.
It was using around 29kWh/month before the leak was noticeable, the new one uses 12kWh/month. The new one is slightly larger than the old. The old model was freezer-on-top style, the new one is a less efficient freezer below model.
Hopefully the new one lasts as long as the old!
>assuming that it doesn’t break down.
Ha! Good luck with that.
The last time I bought a brand new freezer... it died in under 5 years... can't remember the brand... some asian import to Canada here.
I went out and bought a used kenmore I think it was off of Marketplace... >15 years old and it lasted longer than the brand new one did... at 1/4 the price!
These were both chest freezers and besides it's compressor being slightly louder, I doubt it used much more energy at all. If anything, it was probably insulated better, and used less I would imagine. It was much heavier, at least.
So can we project from the authors data that, under normal operation, both bridges roughly consume the same amount of power?
Since after 3 years you're beyond the break-even point due to energy use, the old refrigerator should be disposed of rather than given away.
By keeping it in service, it's making somebody poorer. Especially since the person receiving the free 30 year old power hungry refrigerator and keeping it for a decade is the least likely to afford a replacement.
Somebody already disadvantaged will eventually be stuck with structurally higher bills and find it harder to save due to this.
Those that's not your problem it's more a government policy problem.
Poor people can make their own decisions about whether to use an old fridge or not. They know much more about their own situation than you do. You are not well situated to make these sorts of decisions for them.
There's an old expression that I actually lived out: "Poor people have poor ways."
When I was living well below the poverty level, I used whatever resource that was available as long as it was legal. I was given a chest type freezer that was made somewhere in the early 60's, but was in good working order, since it was owned by a person in the HVAC field. It wasn't very efficient, but I needed the freezer space. (Since we didn't have air conditioning, I could afford the electric usage.) Most poor people make decisions based on whatever works, not if it's the best option, because of the lack of money.
When you have no options whatever works is the best choice.
But do they? Does the person taking on that broken refrigerator know that it has a flaw that makes it consume so much electricity that in 3 years the power use alone would cost more than buying a brand new refrigerator?
(ok, in this case they gave it to someone that needs a temporary 'fridge during renovations, so it's kind of a moot point, they aren't just giving it to "poor people")
Probably not any better than the last two LG fridges which both broke due to compressor issues, causing me to lose $1k of food each time.
In one case, during the high summer, I didn't notice one was slowly getting warmer. I had constant bowel problems, because I was eating rotten mayonnaise. This was compounded by the fact that I bought fancy spicy mayonnaise, which I'd never tasted before, which masked the rotten flavour.
So -- my lessons learned, never by LG horrible fridges again, and keep an analog thermometer, which I bought for $5, in the fridge.
(General FYI, LG has had more than one class action law suit because of their compressors, and, they even make it very hard to obtain replacements. Evil bastards.)
My point is, you should take care with any fridge, new or old.
(edit: some clarity on mayo)
> $1k of food each time
What, is it chock full of exclusively ribeye steaks and smoked salmon?
That feels like a crazy number. I keep a lot of nice vacuum-sealed protein in my freezer but even then I'd say the value is $300 max.
How do you get to $1K?
Canadian dollars, so 1.45x USD, and some expensive meats.
Lamb is 3x the price of beef, for example. Name brand bacon is not too bulky and thin, 10 bucks for 500g. Some fish is expensive too. It adds up surprisingly fast.
I plan on putting some LoRaWAN temp sensors in my fridges/freezers to alert me if the temp goes out of spec for very long. (As soon as YoLink has their Local Hub available and functioning with Home Assistant.)
I doubt you'd be able to get a signal through from inside the fridge. I made a Home Assistant "food safety" dashboard and alerts. I found two challenges:
* Connecting to the outside world. I didn't go wireless because a fridge/freezer cavity is basically a Faraday cage, because I didn't want to deal with replacing batteries, and because high humidity + low temp = wet, sad microcontroller. And even a "flat" 4-conductor telephone cord disturbed the magnetic seal enough that there was a noticeable gap. I ended up buying a 4-contact, 1mm pitch, 200mm flat flexible cable to run across the seal. I separated the contacts with a utility knife, soldering them to other cables on both sides. I also heatshrinked the conductors individually and the whole junction together for strain relief. Then I superglued it into place. And 4 conductors is enough for ground, supply voltage, and either TX/RX or 1-Wire+unused.
* Getting a reading that matches what foods actually experience rather than the air temperature. The latter fluctuates a lot more when you open/close the door or depending on what the defrost/compressor is doing. I ended up buying waterproof 1-Wire temperature sensors (elecrow sells them for $1.20 each + reasonable shipping), 4 oz plastic bottles, cable glands, and propylene glycol (relatively safe antifreeze, though I wouldn't chug it). I drilled holes in the lids for the glands to run the sensors in, then closed the bottles up while immersed in the solution. Cheap DIY buffered temperature probe.
I currently measure buffered temperature, air temperature, and humidity, but really only the buffered temperature matters.
I haven't tried yet, but YoLink specifically markets their LoRaWAN sensors as working in fridges: https://shop.yosmart.com/collections/smart-fridge
For the readings, I only really care about catching compressor failure within hours, as opposed to say, days, so for a freezer that's normally set to -18, I figure I'll just do something like "alert if temperature remains above -14 for >2 hours." Of my 4 fridges/freezers, only one has auto-defrost, so I guess I'll have to take that into account there.
The YoLink system works great! I was able to spot an issue causing my chest freezer to very slowly increase in temp (roughly -10 to +10 F in a month) and move the contents before losing the food. Across 5 temperature sensors, I've needed to replace batteries on 2 in 16 months.
Acurite fridge sensors + rtl433 dongle
There are loads of 'put them in the fridge/freezer' temp sensors out there, made just for this. I did buy lithium AA batteries (which work down to -40C even) for the sensor end.
My thoughts are, these things are special built, and only wake every few minutes or so to burst send. Batteries tend to last a couple of years (but with the lithium ones!), and I get beeeeps from the receiver if it dies.
(Not knocking your solution, it gives you more flexibility)
I saw a few that were wired with cords that seemed more intrusive than the telephone cord I tried, so I went my own way. And most of them didn't seem to be something I could connect to Home Assistant.
Well amazon has endless examples of wireless working fine. However, as I said, you get more flexibility with your own solution (like using Home Assistant)
My z-wave temperature sensor works inside my refrigerator. It's a stainless steel refrigerator with no window or icemaker in the door. Not sure how the signal gets out but it works.
Stainless is not a very good conductor. If it were aluminum or copper there’d be a problem but you can literally bury a bluetooth transmitter in a 16-gauge steel box with very little attenuation. I’ve done so at work.
Convenient too, or wireless relays and power meters within metal junction boxes wouldn't work.
I have remote gauges with alarms in my freezers, but I'm in my fridge every day, and nothing beats a simple analog gauge.
In the freezers I also employ either the "freeze some ice cubes and put them in a baggy" or "freeze a small jar and put a coin on top" methods.
If you see the ice cubes have melted and refroze, then trouble. If the coin is not on the top of the jar -- same thing. Fail proof methods.
Good news for you, their local hub is available and I currently have fridge and freezer (and a few other sensors) hooked up to home assistant via it right now.
> So -- my lessons learned, never by LG horrible fridges again
You'd need to be careful because many other manufacturers are using LG made compressors in their products.
LG and Samsung are the two that I think everyone should stay away from for major appliances.
GE and it's spinoff brands tend to do better.
You need to smell your food before you eat it. Trust your senses.
Please. I've definitely smelled off food, and of course don't eat it. The mayo in question was some weird spicy stuff, and it didn't smell or taste bad.
Note:
https://www.sciencealert.com/sniff-tests-wont-save-you-from-...
You cannot smell or taste all forms of bad food. At all.
You can borrow a watt meter at my local public library. I'm not saying the average person would have the knowledge to think of doing this, but it's not out of reach.
From the article:
> as a stopgap until they get further with renovation work
I assume they know what they are getting into.
It would be interesting to hear your comparison to counterarguments to this. Can you explain why these arguments are more important?
As another person has noted, this wasn't quite the scenario - they had renovations, but you know that now.
I had to renovate a kitchen a while ago and I got into the habit of living without a fridge or a freezer. It came as a surprise that this was possible, and the article is interesting because I now know how much money is saved. I can compare this to food wasted due to a lack of refrigeration, and, I am still seeing the advantages of no fridge. Such heresy!
It depends on what you eat, but I don't have time for most things that need to go in the fridge. If it isn't in the fridge at the supermarket then it doesn't need to be in the fridge at home is the general rule. Oddly I have lower food waste with no fridge, but there are annoyances such as not being able to buy a big bag of (say) carrots, and having to resupply twice a week. On the whole though, my food is a lot fresher than when I had a fridge, plus I have upped my nutrition game to not have this food morgue of things that 'want to kill me'. I joke, but there were a lot of ready meals, sticky puddings and much else that might as well been 'raw trans fats'. I went from this to a jute bag, which seems to keep most vegetables fresh enough for long enough.
What is also interesting about fridges is how quickly they turn into some cave of mold even if they are kept nice and clean. Turn that electricity off, take everything out, and, unless you keep the door open, some true horrors will be found in there a week later.
In the article this was not a like for like efficiency test by any stretch of the imagination. Over time it is the door seal that goes and, if that isn't tight then it will just be sucking moisture out of the air to make a huge ice block, hence compressor on the whole time.
The next problem is that some fridges have vents with fans in them, sometimes forward facing at the base. These get to collect lots of dust, hair and other debris, making them ineffective.
Despite these test methodology issues, in the real world people will be replacing an old fridge that has a dodgy seal with a new fridge that works as the manufacturer intended.
Regarding your point of the poor, do you have any idea how many people in the UK do not have a fridge, or access to one? Allegedly it is in the millions, which I find hard to believe, but have not dismissed out of hand. There are so many people living in sub-standard rented accommodation in a shoebox sized 'studio flat' (or worse). Proper housing is required before these people can get a fridge. The UK is allegedly a first world country, but with huge inequalities when it comes to property and income.
I suspect that in much of the world not having a fridge is no big deal, if you are living off the land rather than processed foods and processed animal products then why would no fridge be hardship?
It is amazing how many assumptions there are regarding fridges, the need for them and whether life is 'disadvantaged' without one. Until relatively recent times nobody had fridges yet we somehow survived, albeit with some mortality issues.
Anybody know how the author collected the energy consumption data?
From a link in TFA: https://ounapuu.ee/posts/2024/05/02/smartplugs/
Thank you for the link. May I ask what TFA means though?
It is a commonly used abbreviation for "the f...ine article". On discussion sites of the Internet of yore, people would tell you to RTFA — "read the fucking article" — when it appeared you were chiming in without having first read the item under discussion. This is an extraction from that.
If you have to buy 5+ refrigerators in the time the old one you are likely doing more harm to the environment than marginally more electricity consumption
Nobody talking about the refrigerators in Europe. They work differently. The ice forms inside the fridge part not just the freezer part. I don't know why and have not looked into it but it is in every fridge, including brand new ones.
Ice forming inside of the fridge is a result of moisture making its way into the fridge and staying in contact with the cooling elements.
The cause can be a lot of things, from broken drain pipes to damaged door seals. A well-functioning fridge shouldn't have (much) ice buildup unless you live in a hot and humid area.
Some modern fridges (usually the luxury models) also have features to defrost themselves if they detect that there may be frost buildup, but many fridges still have you do it manually.
The comments are well done and I am impressed. I would add the maker of the new one, partly as a tribute to them as well as gathering feedback from others. The fact that one compressors runs 24/7 might indicate it has failed to on 24/7 - also the ice block also says this? Thus a replacement thermostat might well reduce the KwHr used by the 24/7 operation. Looking up the model on youtube for thermostat repairs might help the new owner repair it and get a few more years, although an older less efficient unit, with a repaired thermostat it might not run 24/7 and use fewer KwHr?
years ago we were renting a property that came with a fridge.. and our electricity bills where huge. I turned it off and our power bills more than halved. It was enough for us to buy a new fridge and barely notice the powerbills change after that
Well, um, yeah. If you're comparing anything to crap it will be better than...crap.
Regardless of efficiency, it is very difficult to find a newer refrigerator whose compressor doesn't emit a very irritating high pitched whine almost continuously.
Personal pet level is that it’s so hard to get information on the noise level of appliances.
We’ve recently moved, and our new house’s crawl space has a Santa Fe dehumidifier in it that seems SO LOUD at night. I don’t think it’s broken - it’s just a compressor and fan with no engineering put into keeping them quiet. If I could get one that was as efficient and well built, but I knew would be quiet, I’d replace it in a heartbeat - but manufacturers don’t advertise noise levels.
Surely I can’t be the only one who’d pay substantially more for an appliance that was guaranteed to be quiet?
>it’s so hard to get information on the noise level of appliances
It's super easy if you live in the European Union, thanks to the Energy Label [1] which is mandatory on every appliance.
[1] https://energy-efficient-products.ec.europa.eu/ecodesign-and...
It says that’s ‘supplementary’ information that ‘can’ be provided. Is it actually done?
The newer compressors are smaller so they cost less, but are run faster to pump at the same rate. Many old hermetic compressors used a 4-pole 1500/1800RPM motor, then they became a 2-pole 3000/3600RPM, and the newest VFD/inverter motors can go even faster.
I would try plugging a simple induction motor into the refrigerator circuit to see if it also makes a weird noise. It's possible you have a problem with the wiring itself (loose neutral, etc.).
I've never had issues with HF noise out of a refrigerator. It's always been the opposite kind of noise that has been a problem.
My Miele hums with so low frequency that it sounds like a truck is passing by.
Electricity is so cheap (8-9 cents per kWh), it doesn't even make sense to invest in saving it. I would any day choose a cheaper product over 20% more expensive one that uses 10% less power.
Electricity prices varies a LOT depending where in the world you are: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/cost-of-e...
I wonder why it is so expensive (46 cents) in Italy when other EU countries have lower prices. Taxes? Monopoly? Corruption?
And why China has cheap electricity? They don't have much oil.
Could it be that electricity price is based not on real expenses, but simply on "how much they can pay" principle?
Anyway, Western Europe stands out as a dark spot on mostly light-colored map.
There are huge differences between generation types, infrastructure requirements, regulatory environments, subsidies and ownership of electrical generation and supply equipment's before you even get into conspiratorial thinking.
Globally, most electricity is not generated via oil anyway. China has cheap energy in part because they have a planned economy and a large usage of cheap energy sources such as solar and coal.
For the curious, world's electricity fuel sources: https://ourworldindata.org/electricity-mix
And if you didn't live in a place where it's cheap?
Then one need to do the calculations and decide based on that. One should also remember that the product might break so if it repays it cost over many years, there is a chance it breaks long before that.
However, LED light bulbs are worth buying, the cheap ones (less than $3) repay their price in several months even with our electricity pricing.
My delivered cost of electricity went up about 50% per kWh in the last few months and is therefore 3x what you mention and likely only going higher.
[AI driven] data center power consumption is real and as of right now, it seems like other consumers are subsidizing it.