Hi All,
We've got two big beer fridges in our hostel (well, one for soft drinks and the other for beer). Last month, the beer fridge packed up and so we had to leave it turned off for 3 weeks or so before the guy could come and fix it.
When the power bill finally arrived, I was shocked to see our bill had dropped by 10% - just with the beer fridge out of action. I'm now keen to investigate how to keep this bill down and so I'd like to hear whether anyone has had any success.
I'm thinking of buying a timer which turns off the fridges at about 11pm and turns them back on again at 11am the following day - some say that this won't actually save much energy as the fridge has to work 'hell for leather' to cool everything down again but it appears to me that the fridge is well enough insulated to keep the beers cold.
Any tips?
15 years
I'd try a couple of scenarios over the next couple of months.
Would using a timer cause more stress on the fridge? ie more $ in maintenance/shortening the lifetime of the fridge. Worth considering.
Could you leave one fridge off and have beer and soft drink in the one fridge? If you restocked as needed it would still use a bit more power but less than two fridges.
15 years
I don't think switching the fridges off for half the day will save you much money, for the reasons you suggest - it has to do a lot of work cooling the air down again after its warmed up overnight.
Three things to consider:
Shop around to find the most energy efficient fridge that you can.
Adjust the temperature control so its no colder than it needs to be
If possible, get a chest fridge (i.e. one with the door on the top) instead of a door-on-the-front cabinet one. The reason is that cold air sinks, so when you open a chest, the cold air stays where it is. When you open a cabinet, the cold air flows out of the door and you have to cool the warm air that replaces it. It's an effect that's more marked in freezers than fridges, but worth noting anyway.
15 years
I don't think switching the fridges off for half the day will save you much money, for the reasons you suggest - it has to do a lot of work cooling the air down again after its warmed up overnight.
Three things to consider:
Shop around to find the most energy efficient fridge that you can.
Adjust the temperature control so its no colder than it needs to be
If possible, get a chest fridge (i.e. one with the door on the top) instead of a door-on-the-front cabinet one. The reason is that cold air sinks, so when you open a chest, the cold air stays where it is. When you open a cabinet, the cold air flows out of the door and you have to cool the warm air that replaces it. It's an effect that's more marked in freezers than fridges, but worth noting anyway.
Excellent option !! :D
15 years
Thanks for all the tips. The beer company and soft drink company supply us with the fridges so we're kinda stuck with them and also we can't decant them all into just one fridge.
People have also mentioned that if you keep the fridges well stocked then the drinks actually help to slow the warming process (since liquids and glass will retain the cool much longer than just cold air alone).
I've bought a timer (for about 25USD) to see if the experiments make an impact on the power bill.
Excellent point about the chest freezer - I'd never really thought about it that way but it makes perfect sense!!!
15 years
We have a glass door beer fridge, and we have used a timer which shuts the fridge off from Midnight until 9 AMm and it has made a significant impact in our bill. The amount of energy to cool it when it's started up doesn't really come close to the amount used to keep it cool for 9 hours.
We also use an auto shutdown program to turn off our public PC's for internet use. These we shut down from 1 AM to 5 AM, although if someone is using the pc, they can override the shutdown if they're sitting there, so it's not like you're just flipping off the computer on your guests. Works pretty well for us. After our electric rates increased by 72% earlier this year, we really had to find creative ways to save energy.
15 years
Yeah, I've got that program for the computers too (or a similar one). Ours is called "Switch off" (imaginative eh!) The only problem is that if someone leaves a window open, it doesn't switch off properly. There is an option to "terminate all programs and shutdown" but it automatically unchecks on every restart.
Which program do you use out of interest?
13 years
Make sure you keeping the cooling fins on the compressor clean. They become inefficient and expensive to run when dirty. Clean them at least every month.
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