Anarchy In the AK

Refrigeration - Domestic Solutions by Celeste Salter

 

We decided it was time to get a new refrigerator. The old one was a 370L top mount fridge/freezer, 20 years old. So with a view to progressively improving our energy consumption we thought we'd see what we could buy with low energy usage and good enviro credentials.

 

 

The task seems simple enough.

 

In an ideal world you drop into the white goods shop, the assistant directs you to the fridge with low energy consumption, and good coolant features and you buy the fridge. After a little bit of net surfing and we came up with a energy efficient model, and so we went to the shop to check it out. The fridge we thought that would work for us, was far too big. It would have meant remodeling the kitchen. It was going to cost $1500 – $1700 and increase our cooling capacity from 370 to 420L. (for two people??).

 

Looking around the showroom we found fridges larger than my car, taller than me (over 6 foot), with internet access, the ability to make ice on demand (think about that for a moment), instant chillers, and as a result huge energy consumption requirements. For us spending this $1500+ means that we really want to get a product that fulfills all of our energy requirements and environmental specifications that we consider critical and essential. Otherwise what are we paying for?

 

The question how on earth as a community are we going to cut energy consumption, when it is so difficult to find good products that will use the minimum energy to cool and freeze our food? I say “so difficult” because to find a fridge/freezer combo that will operate <400kWh/year is a real challenge. The real issue is that the lower this number the lower the CO2 emissions for the fridge. It is so easy to get caught up with a star rating, its a guide but it confounds the education of the population to what it energy consumption really means. 6 stars covers a range of different energy consumption. The power usage of the product, usually stated as kWh/y is the key value that you want to look for, and in my opinion the lower this number the better because it directly translates into tonnes of CO2 per year. The star rating system just confuses the issue as it doesn't translate to anything meaningful for consumers except to generate a warm fuzzy glow that they have a 6 star appliance.

 

The government has a website Energy Rating that outlines all the models available in Australia and New Zealand, their capacity, their kWh/y consumption and the star rating (for the warm fuzzy glow). For fridges and freezer options that don't use 240VAC power you can search RENEW (ATA) and the Rainbow Power Company to engage with the world of DC power refrigeration options.

 

So after walking around the stainless steel monoliths, we went home and decided to look at the problem of refrigeration laterally. Mostly fridge/freezer units have poor energy consumption for several reasons, including that running the freezer takes a lot of power, the overall design of the fridge causes energy losses, and insulation properties of materials used are not as good as they could be. Logic dictates that if you separate out the fridge and freezer you potentially can get a better energy outcome. So we started to look at stand alone fridges and freezers.

 

Prior to selecting a model though we needed to get clear about what size of fridge we actually needed. We had been living with a 280L fridge section for nearly 20 years. Sometimes it would get really full, when people would stay over, mostly though it was only 2/3 to 3/4 full. Rowe Morrow suggests that you use the ground as your refrigerator, pick your vegetable when you want to eat them, so in that way you can maybe do without a fridge at all! We decided that we needed a fridge but could go for something smaller, closer to 200L.

 

Over to the energy site, and we find that we can get a Westinghouse WRM2400WC 239L fridge with energy rating of 272kWh/y rating. It is part of a new line that uses enviro friendly coolant, and it is made within 200kms of where we live (product miles are looking good). But is this the best fridge you can get, based on energy consumption and enviro factors?

 

No. The Danish make the best fridge, slightly larger at ~270L with consumption of 181kWh/y.

 

Consider : We have sent men to the moon, we have launched the Mars missions, the Hubble telescope operates and has been repaired. But in Australia, a fairly hot continent on our planet, where if you had the argue whether we need refrigeration or not, you'd probably come down on the side of “yes we do”, we cant make a small fridge energy efficient with the best enviro credentials. Do the Danish need refrigeration like we do in Australia? Probably not as it is a fairly cold climate. So there you have the first irony of refrigeration. We did find out that even if the fridge was available in Australia it would be “horrendously” expensive. Further irony, you can get the fridge in New Zealand (another fairly cold country), but the freight costs around $1000. You get the picture, somewhere along the line we had to give up the ideal fridge and settle for the second best.

 

So we have a fridge, but what about the freezer? If you go the energy site, prepare for a shock, getting an energy efficient freezer is almost impossible. Again the Danish make the best domestic freezers, but let's not go there, the costs are prohibitive. And again there is the issue of size. A standard freezer size in the old fashioned top mount fridge/freezer is around 80L, getting a stand alone chest freezer under 100L is a very tough call.

 

If you want to buy a small freezer, with minimal power consumption you are not going to find it in the white goods store.

 

We found a portable low energy consumption WAECO 110L chest cooler, that can be run from -18 – +10°C, popular with travelers and sailors, that runs off 12/24V DC or 240VAC power. At -14°C it uses around 90W while the compressor is running, and draws a very small amperage <0.1A. You can run it off a solar panel if you want. At the moment we run it off the mains, but plan to get a panel to run the freezer independently.

 

What has this all meant? The kitchen didn't need remodeling, in fact we have more space now as the fridge size has gone down. For us we put the freezer in the laundry in our house it is a cold room, which works well for us as we don't heat the laundry in winter. It means getting used to not going to the fridge to get something out of the freezer, which we might have done once a day if that. The fridge draws NO power at all when its compressor is not on. Its compressor comes on a lot less than the old fridge because it has no freezer. We draw less watts when both compressors are on than we did with the old fridge. The exercise has cost is $2100 with a lot of negotiation on price, so it wasn't the cheapest option for us in cash, but it is a better option for us in terms of CO2 emissions. I plan on calculating how many CO2 tonnes would have been saved using this option, and will update the article with this info shortly.