Refridgeration Expense

dhaughton99

Hi all, this month has been the highest it has been. Usually 20-22 a month for refrigeration. I have a stand alone fridge with a small freezer attached and a chest freezer.

The EI comparison chart says I am well above average.

Anyone with a real world comparison or ideas as to why before I go buy a new fridge? 10 year old fridge and new chest freezer.

Addmagnet

If you haven't done it already, I reckon the first step is to defrost and thoroughly clean all your fridges/freezers, and take the opportunity to inspect the door seals for damage. Check the seals make good contact all around the doors - a thin piece of paper (i.e. fag paper or tissue paper) should get trapped and you shouldn't be able to slide it around when the door is shut.

If you have easy access to the back of the appliances, check there for damage too, and again, take the chance to clean off any dust and grease and muck and hair from the radiator back there. A bent or dented pipe that the refrigerant runs through will reduce the efficiency.

Connect one of these smart plug energy monitoring jobbies (for e.g. https://limerickcomputers.ie/shop/uk-plug-monitor-power-energy-meter/ ) to see if you can narrow down which appliance is bumping up your bills.

Of course, fridges/freezers have to work harder when the ambient temperature is higher and everyone in the household should be encouraged to know what they're getting out of the fridge/freezer before opening the door, not standing gazing into it for 5 minutes with the door wide open, and making sure they close the door gently but firmly every time.

whizbang

When I see this I always think of something like; 'Please call our permium rate phone to get helpful hints to save money'

or some other glib sales pitch.

Where do these figures come from ? Do the numbers youself, dont trust these..

Hippodrome Song Owl

My house was vacant for 5 weeks with the fridge-freezer (a 50:50 model) the only thing plugged in. It used 0.85 units per day. Obviously that's without any opening/closing though.

Jim_Hodge

How can the usage for refrigeration alone be measured?

phormium

I have one of those plug in monitor things that I bought from a link on boards, anyway I discovered my very old chest freezer, fairly small model, was using way more than the upright freezer which is newer and much bigger. Got rid of chest freezer, to be fair it was ancient, I could see from the plate on the back of it the wattage and compared to newer ones it was using double. Might buy a newer one at some stage, it would pay for itself in less than two years at present electricity prices.

I just today worked out the usage for a friend on their two freezers, one small chest freezer and one under counter size. The chest freezer is costing nearly .95 c a day to run compared to .18c for the under counter type, again the chest freezer is quite old. I'm going to repeat the test just in case as the difference is huge.

10-10-20

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120770516#Comment_120770516

It's not. Smart meters don't have the level of granularity to provide device-based instantaneous analysis. They instead use a type of algorithm over the period of a day to identify appliance trends - ie - a 3kW spike at 18:00 must be a "cooking appliance", etc. They try to differentiate between "always on" devices and fridges on the basis of a ratio and an assumption that devices are typically off overnight. So it's all algorithmically generated and might work relatively well for 80% of houses.

On the other hand there was an Israeli company which had designed a commercial device which did whole-house power analysis. It worked off a probe which watched the voltage and current and used FFT (fast-fourier transform) to identify the electrical signatures of individual devices. It was interesting technology, it was supposed to be able to identify some devices down to the brand or model on the basis of how they sipped or gulped power when used.

Jim_Hodge

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120871264#Comment_120871264

That was my point. What they're looking at from EI is pointless.

10-10-20

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120871286#Comment_120871286

Yes, and hence why using a plug-in energy meter is the recommended way to tally the figures.