Refrigerator Energy Usage and cost to run

When looking at saving energy around the home, the devices which are running all the time are devices worth reviewing. I’ve estimated our refrigerator uses about 40W per hour. Plugging 40W into the Energy Cost Calculator shows our refrigerator is costing us around $80-$100 a year.

In this modern age it is almost impossible to live without a refrigerator and its convenience, so for me, there isn’t that much I can do about our refrigerator in terms of reducing energy.

However, many people have a second beer fridge in the garage, or in our case, we had a small freezer. After reviewing the small freezer electricity usage we reviewed what we were stocking and found we were keeping items in the small freezer for many weeks at a time, yet we go to the shops every week. So we decided why stockpile when there really isn’t any need to.

By turning off the small freezer we saved around $70 a year.

Using a power meter I was able to determine the power used by various devices around my home and other people’s homes. I now provide a section in MyAnswers for Electricity Power Usage which I’m happy to share with clients, family and friends. Once you have the knowledge a small change in how you do things can end up saving a considerable amount of money. I read the average daily usage for power is around 20kWh per day. We now use around 6.5-7kWh per day which means we save around $1,200 a year. That’s cash in our hands. Another way to look at it is you’d have to earn nearly $1,800 to pay for that extra electricity, or nearly two weeks of your working life each year. I know I’d personally prefer to use the money towards a holiday rather than give the money to the electricity company.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.JustLocal.com.au