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> My chest fridge [...] consumes about 0.1 kWh a day. This fridge is 10 to 20 times more energy efficient than typical household fridges on the market today. A

• kleiba 4y ago
  Your fridge is probably half the size of an average American fridge.
  • goodpoint 4y ago
    • nobrains 4y ago
      good point goodpoint
    • Mountain_Skies 4y ago
      Western Europeans are rapidly gaining on Americans but it's funny to see how much in denial they are about it even though it's impossible to miss when leaving the house.
    • mihaaly 4y ago
      The movie In Bruges comes to mind, the scene at the tower between Colin Farrell and the American tourists. (... also a bar in SF where I was on the smaller end of males with 1.9m and 102kg)
  • thaumasiotes 4y ago
    > half the size This made me think. I would kind of expect the energy consumption of a fridge to be related to the surface area of the cooled volume rather than the volume itself. It's not necessary to spend any energy cooling air that is already surrounded by equally cold air. Assuming all fridges are cubes, doubling the volume of the fridge will increase the surface area by a factor of 2^{2/3} = 59%. This will also be true if the fridge has any rectangular dimensions and you double the volume by scaling it up evenly in all three dimensions. Things are more complicated if you scale the dimensions of the fridge unevenly.
    • hiq 4y ago
      > I would kind of expect the energy consumption of a fridge to be related to the surface area of the cooled volume rather than the volume itself. I'd expect that for a fridge that's permanently closed, but what if you open it regularly? I'd expect a lot of the cold air inside (so volume) to mix with the room-temperature air once you open it..?
    • ktta 4y ago
      The energy consumption of a fridge depends on what it takes to cool the entire contents within a fridge, because heat from center of the food will travel to the surface when the surface cools down. Till the temperature of the entire food item matches the set temperature of the fridge, the fridge will be running. When you open the fridge, warm air enters the fridge, and the contents of the fridge gain heat. Then there's variability depending on thermal conductivity and specific heat capacity of various foods. So what you're trying to calculate is heavily dependent on the actual contents, not just surface area. Of course, fridges have cycling behavior similar to an AC that turns on as soon as temp dips below a set temp, but has a window of sorts. Making the above math even more complicated.
      • airbreather 4y ago
        Biggest factor for many people is that the fridge is wedged in an alcove with insufficient gaps for air flow, so it drowns in it's own waste heat and efficiency plummets.
        • scarby2 4y ago
          If you're putting the fridge in an alcove you need a built in friendly model which vents to the front.
        • Scoundreller 4y ago
          I always laugh when hotels have a tiny ice-machine room that’s sweltering. Swing and a miss by the designers.
      • thaumasiotes 4y ago
  • querez 4y ago
    Oh, that's a good point! Indeed, from what I can see American fridges are indeed larger. Mine has a volume of ~250 liters (of which 180L are fridge and 70L are freezer).
    • kube-system 4y ago
      Those sizes exist in the US, often called compact refrigerators or apartment refrigerators. (although these days most apartments have the full size American-style fridges too)
      • Scoundreller 4y ago
        A Nice benefit of not having to move your fridge and other appliances around when you move between properties.
  • Markoff 4y ago
    These are becoming more popular in Europe, my mother for instance bought it, which I can't comprehend since she lives just with her husband. On top of that she bought also chest freezer for effin 2 people household. Meanwhile my family of 4 has no issues to use ~210cm regular Whirpool fridge with bottom freezer. I don't like the idea of American fridges, they waste lot of space on the separator middle wall, I think the best compromise who is not fine with regular fridge are now a bit wider fridges but with single vertical door. My Chinese in-laws have vertical fridge which has 3 sections, top regular door fridge, middle drawer which goes directly outside (not sure whether it's chilled or frozen), no need to open anything and bottom freezer with door.
    • frosted-flakes 4y ago
      American refrigerators have the freezer on top and the refrigerator section on the bottom. There are other configurations available, but freezer on top is the default and most efficient. Otherwise there are freezer bottom, freezer bottom with a drawer, side-by-side (this is probably the one you're referring to, and they don't seem to be very popular anymore in my experience), french door with freezer bottom, as well as custom shapes (counter depth, narrow, built-in, etc.). But a cheap basic fridge is always freezer top.
      • vel0city 4y ago
        > American refrigerators have the freezer on top and the refrigerator section on the bottom. This was probably true up until the 90s. At that point side by sides became pretty popular with the left side being a freezer and the right side being a fridge, full height. See: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/ge-25-1-cu-ft-side-by-side-refrigerator-with-external-ice-water-dispenser-stainless-steel/6330674.p?skuId=6330674 https://www.bestbuy.com/site/ge-25-1-cu-ft-side-by-side-refr... After these broke the trend of the top freezer, other styles became more popular. These days one of the most popular style is the "french door" where there are two side by side doors for the fridge compartment up top with a drawer below for the freezer. https://www.bestbuy.com/site/lg-26-5-cu-ft-french-door-counter-depth-smart-refrigerator-with-internal-water-and-ice-stainless-steel/6511564.p?skuId=6511564 https://www.bestbuy.com/site/lg-26-5-cu-ft-french-door-count... Top freezer fridges these days are often seen as a very outdated and out of fashion style of fridge usually only relegated to the bottom tier models of fridges. If you go into most appliance stores you'll see row after row of french door, several side by sides, and then a couple of super basic top freezers. Personally, IDGAF about "style" for a fridge when it comes to door arrangements. I like my side by side the most as then I have both fridge and freezer items as convenient heights instead of only really having a freezer at eye level and having to duck down to grab anything in the fridge.
• kroeckx 4y ago
  I assume that he measured the power consumption himself. You can find a lot of cheap devices that you can plug between your wall socket and the device. They are not usable for measurement at low power. If you try to measure something in the 0 - 1 W range, most just show 0, others even show something like 30 W.
  • cl3misch 4y ago
    But that's not how a fridge works. It runs seldomly, but when it does run it consumes at least dozens of Watts.
    • frosted-flakes 4y ago
      I've heard that there are some fridges available now with variable-rate compressors that can run continuously, resulting in much lower noise levels without the noticeable cycling.
      • danans 4y ago
        This is true. My new Samsung fridge is like this. I can't tell when it's compressor is running because it seems to always be running at a low rate.
        • vel0city 4y ago
          LG was one of the first ones out there with their Linear Compressor series. https://youtu.be/1T3kaHjwMJU?t=28 https://youtu.be/1T3kaHjwMJU?t=28
• Cthulhu_ 4y ago
  The other factors will be how full it is, how frequently it's accessed, and whether it's got one of those ice makers. If you have an empty fridge or freezer, it's a good practice to put e.g. water bottles in there for cool thermal mass, ideally in the top (cold air flows downwards; old fashion fridges were cabinets with a compartiment in the top for blocks of ice they would store underground in winter).
• kohlerm 4y ago
  That probably very much depends how often you open it. If you open the vertical fridge often then the difference might be larger. Vertical fridges in supermarkets are a crime IMHO.
  • einpoklum 4y ago
    The figure quoted likely takes into account typical usage, not never-open storage.
    • StingyJelly 4y ago
      It likely doesn't. We have a relatively small (European-sized) fridge that, according to EU energy label, should consume 183kWh a year or 0.5kWh a day. I was surprised when the real consumption I measured during normal use, set at 2.5°C, was almost twice that. Even never-opened measurement over a weekend showed slightly more, trough within measurement error.
      • rjvs 4y ago
        2.5°C seems very cold for a fridge and is likely well below the standard that the EU energy label uses (for reference, FDA recommends 4°C). How warm do you keep the kitchen that it sits in?
  • bombcar 4y ago
    Supermarket fridges benefit from having the compressors outside which can help tremendously depending on the climate. A modern house conditions the air inside to a certain temperature (often heating it up) and then has a box inside that is conditioning the air (often cooling it back down to outside temperature).
• inferiorhuman 4y ago
  In the US (EnergyGuide) and Canada (EnerGuide) refrigerators are rated for expected energy consumption by the federal government. I've recently gone down the rabbit hole of new fridges (and am about to do so again) so this is all pretty fresh in my mind. In my case I was shopping for a fridge/freezer with about 19 cubic feet (or around 0.56 cubic meters) capacity – a rather average size, if a bit towards the small size in North America. The failed LG was rated at 387 kWh/year and its non-LG replacement was rated at 374–420 (depending on the specific build revision). So yeah about 10x tracks. At its core a refrigerator is a big insulated box with a heat pump and a heater. Manufacturers have optimized the living daylights out of these things. Big manufacturers (LG, Whirlpool, GE) have tried at various points to roll out more and more efficient compressors going back to the 80s. And they've all had a horrible time of it. There's not as much room for optimization with the heater, but most manufacturers have moved towards electronically controlled heaters that can run on demand instead of on a timer – works well until a thermistor fails. Samsung also tried to "optimize" the defrost heater by shrinking it (my impression is LG is that just as guilty of this) and you'll find plenty of complaints about problems with the evaporators icing up. Anyhow, out here, at least, smaller fridge/freezers including chest freezers are so-called manual defrost units and do not have a power hungry heater. If I had to guess I'd say the big difference consumption is due more towards running a giant heater in the back (a.k.a. auto defrost) than the overall size.
  • airbreather 4y ago
    In land of Oz: According to the government site responsible for energy ratings - energyrating.gov.au, ‘Refrigerators and freezers have been required to display an energy label since 1986 and to meet minimum energy efficiency levels since 1999. As a result, refrigerators and freezers are now 70 per cent more efficient than they were 30 years ago’. New technology also mean that internal sensors inside the fridge can regulate the temperature so that the fridge is always running efficiently. Other innovations include temperature warnings and electronic temperature controls, humidity controlled compartments, and different temperature zones within the fridge according to the food to be stored. There are also ‘vacation’ settings which lowers energy consumption for the duration of your trip - you just need to remember to switch the setting off when you get home. Today every new fridge carries a red-star energy-rating sticker, giving it an efficiency rating and telling you how many kilowatts (kW) of electricity it uses in a year, given average usage. While energy-efficient fridges might cost more they can save tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions and hundreds of dollars over their lifetime through lower energy use. For instance, a 400 litre family fridge with a maximum six-star energy rating can use as little as 250 kW per year and cost you about $40 a year to run. A less efficient 500 litre model, on the other hand, could use 650kW a year and cost you more than $100 a year to run. That's a saving of $60 a year or $600 over ten years. And with electricity prices set to rise substantially in coming years, savings are likely to be even greater. https://hipages.com.au/article/energy_efficient_fridges_and_freezers https://hipages.com.au/article/energy_efficient_fridges_and_...
• kaapipo 4y ago
  It'a a sure sign you're visiting an American site when the unit of energy used is kWh/day :)
  • savingsPossible 4y ago
    :P To be fair, prices come in kWh, so it makes sense in order to ask "how much do I spend in a day"