From what I can tell so far, our vintage fridge is actually slightly more energy efficient than our current fridge. And for those of you curious about exactly how much that is, I'll break it down.
Our current fridge is a 1998 GE that, according to a sticker on the inside, should average at 697 kWh per year. If you multiplied that by the price of $0.11 per kWh, you would get $76.67—the cost to run the fridge for an entire year.
Just to double check, I ran the GE fridge through the Kill-A-Watt meter too, and I ended up with a readout of 0.08 kWh. At that rate, the total comes to 700 kWh per year which is consistent with their 695 kWh per year claim. You will see from the numbers below that the Coldspot's compressor actually takes a little more energy, so I can only guess that maybe the auto defrost in the General Electric fridge must play a big role. Or maybe I need a longer period of time to get a more accurate average. Or maybe it does a better job of keeping things cold, so it doesn't need to run the compressor as often. Or maybe the Freon refrigerant is simply more efficient.
Some comparisons...
Vintage Coldspot Fridge - No auto defrost
- Kill-A-Watt reading: 0.06 kWh / 526 kWh per year
- With the door open and the compressor on, the fridge uses 184 watts.
- With the door closed and the compressor on, the fridge uses 142 watts.
- With the door open and the compressor off, the fridge uses 41.3 watts.
- With the door closed and the compressor off, the fridge uses 0 watts.
1998 General Electric Fridge - Yes auto defrost
- Kill-A-Watt reading: 0.08 kWh / 700 kWh per year
- With the door open and the compressor on, the fridge uses 170 watts.
- With the door closed and the compressor on, the fridge uses 133 watts.
- With the door open and the compressor off, the fridge uses 38 watts.
- With the door closed and the compressor off, the fridge uses 0 watts.
It was really cool (hehe, pun intended) to see the results first hand. I did a lot of reading with various opinions about energy costs, and now I have some hard facts to go on. Of course it's going to vary from fridge to fridge. And I heard that those made between the 60s and 80s will tend to have the worst energy efficiency, so beware of that. But I hope this can provide some helpful information for others considering an old fridge or even just curious about the cost.
What's also interesting is that we don't need to set the temperature as high as we thought. We wanted to be on the safe side so we put the dial right in the middle, but this morning our milk was partially frozen. I ordered a fridge thermometer that should get here in a few days and will help us figure out exactly where we need to set that.
Yeah, so we were lucky to get a fridge that still works really well and has a great seal on it. The only disadvantages are that the freezer space is really limited (so we may consider getting a small, separate freezer for our garage) and the lack of auto defrost means that every once in awhile we're going to have to let our freezer thaw out (I've heard using a hair dryer really helps, and gives you a good excuse to clean out your fridge anyway). But other than that, the energy cost looks good, food is staying cold, the fridge layout is great and this thing is a TANK. I slid it across the floor to get it into the kitchen and there wasn't a single scratch. I love the way it looks in our vintage kitchen. So for now, we're going to keep it and see how this goes!
If you'd like to see pictures of the fridge (she's a beauty), you can view my older post here.
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