TLDR> Yeah, you probably should.
My 15 year old fridge was pretty tired. Its seals were decayed and I considered just buying a new fridge. But would I save energy?
PhiSaver can tell us!
Typical Usage
My old normcore fridge used 2.1 kWh/day (770 kWh/year).
At typical rates that’s $230 a year.
Break it down
That’s 20% of my consumption:
It’s … a new fridge
Thanks to energyrating.gov.au I saw that same-size modern fridges can use 173kWh/year. So I bought a HiSense 410L 6 star monolith. It’s pretty. It has no bells.
Here’s the comparison of old and new:
On the left, the old fridge, using 175W about 50% of the time. That’s 770kWh/year.
On the right, the new fridge using 40W about 75% of the time. That’s 183kWh/year. Reasonably close to claimed consumption.
Was it worth it?
So the new fridge:
- uses 75% less energy, saving 580 kWh per year
- that saves half of a ton of carbon per year
- that saves $175 per year(4)
- that’s a simple payback of 5 years(1)
- that’s a NPV of $200 (3)
So yeah, if you’re reading this, probably buy a new efficient fridge.
(1) The new fridge cost $1000. There’s rebates available for upgrading fridges (not included).
(2) That odd spike is, I think, a once-off start-up mode thing. I’ll confirm.
(3) Net Present Value is “now much is this purchase worth to me overall”. I used a cost of $1000, 7.5% discount rate and 10 year life span.
(4) At a standard 30c a kilowatt hour