Kenmore “Energy Performance” to the rescue
After watching on Craigslist for a while, I found a decent 20.6cf Kenmore energy star refrigerator. I’ve come to the conclusion that you pay a big premium for a bottom freezer model or refrigerator sizes greater than 21cf. I don’t think either of them deliver much in the way of energy savings and aesthetics are not our goal. We settled on this one because it was energy star rated, relatively new and in good shape, and the price was fantastic: $250. Compare that with $800 for a new model at Home Depot.
Subtract from that $30 from the Energy Trust who is paying us to recycle our old refrigerator! I scheduled a date for them to come by the house. With little effort, the two guys got it out of the house and started downhill towards the parking lot since that was the easiest way out. I started trying to help the guys, carefully helping them move the refrigerator down the steep hill, but it was clear that they were a little annoyed with my attempts to help. Finally, one of them asked me to get out of the way and he just laid the refrigerator on the ground (dolly on the bottom) and shoved it down the hill like it was a toboggan run. It slid several feet into the street, but no worries, this thing is just going to be scrapped. The guys told me that almost everything is recycled – the freon, metal, glass, and even the foam insulation. I’m curious how much money the Energy Trust makes on scrap vs. how much it costs to haul the appliances and the $30 incentive. Undoubtedly it is a losing venture, but how much?
The big question that should be on your mind: how does the new refrigerator perform in the energy department? The answer: it pays for itself within 2 years. I’m thoroughly pleased.
| Device | Energy/month | Annual Cost ($0.12/KWh) |
|---|---|---|
| Kenmore “Energy Performance” | 35KWh | $50.46 |
| Amana “Energy Saver” (circa 1980) | 121KWh | $174.24 |
| Amana Side-by-Side (circa 2000) | 83KWh | $119.52 |
| Energy Star Rated “Bottom Freezer” 25cf Model | 39KWh | $56.16 |
If it pays for itself in 2 years, then are you comparing it to the 1980 Amana fridge? Was that what you guys had in your house until recently? Is this significantly smaller than the space your previous (current?) fridge takes up? I thought you had a lot more than 20.6cf. Heck, your condiment section alone might have taken up more than that!
For what it’s worth, we have a French-door, bottom-freezer fridge, 19.7cf, and it’s rated at 38kWh/mo. Pretty good on efficiency, but no, it wasn’t cheap when we got it new at Sears. And honestly, the main reason we got such a small fridge was because that’s the only space we have in our kitchen.
Finally, what the heck kind of unit is kWh/mo? Can’t we cancel some things out and just measure in Watts? So 35kWh/mo is, what, 48 Watts or so, on average? Or am I missing something?
Yeah, it pays for itself in 2 years compared to our old Amana energy hog. Certainly, the Kenmore isn’t the best energy performing refrigerator on the market, but I also think you pay a lot of money for those last few KWhs.
I agree with you on the strange KWh/month metric. When I was looking back at my old post, it threw me off as being the reference for KWh. Like you – wouldn’t watts or KWh/year make more sense? But I remembered what spawned this inquisition in the first place: my monthly electric bill was too high in the summer. So, by that metric, I just shaved off $10.
And by the way, there are 30.4167 days per month. On average, the refrigerator consumes 48W, although it is highly variable so to get any accuracy you need to collect data over a minimum of 100 hours.
30.4167?! Looks like someone forgot about Leap Day! (And thus begins another important nerd fight.) Myself, I calculated there being, on average, 30.4375 days/month. But Google, whose accuracy surpasses both of ours, says that 1 month = 30.4368499 days.
In my world, monthly energy consumption is modulated by year. I’m reporting in non-leap units.
I never knew there were 365.242199 days in a year!