Can someone help me work out my fridge’s energy consumption

beckstar1975

Hello 

looking at our energy Bill it turns out we’re on track to use over 6kwh of electricity this year, 5 people in a 3 bed house with one console. We do however have a 20+ year old fridge, which I think doesn’t help. 

I’ve taken this photo of its label. Does anything point to how much energy it uses? 

Sorry if I’m being dense!

pS can you use a smart plug with a multi gang extension? Want to turn tv/sky box/ps off during day and when we sleep.

 

Ebe_Scrooge

beckstar1975 said:

we’re on track to use over 6kwh of electricity this year,

 

I think you've either misunderstood your usage, or that's a typo

beckstar1975 said:

I’ve taken this photo of its label. Does anything point to how much energy it uses?
 

Can't see your photo.  But hopefully there's something on there that says something like "input" or "consumption", expressed in KWh.  That will be how much it uses - approximately.  If it says 1KWH, that means it consumes 1 KW for each hour that it's running.  But it will actually consume less than 1KW per hour, as the motor/compressor won't (at least, shouldn't) be running constantly - it'll switch itself on and off as necessary to maintain the preset temperature.  Depending on a host of factors - temperature of the room it's located in, efficiency of the seals and compressor, temperature you've got it set to, how often you open the door - a rough guess might be to expect the compressor to be running for half the time.  So every hour, the compressor will run for half an hour - if that were the case, then divide the rated consumption figure by two.

It's difficult to make any sort of accurate guess - if you really want to know then you could sit by the fridge for an hour and make a note of when the compressor starts and stops, that'll give you a more accurate estimate.

Here's a website that gives some useful information, and some "average" estimates.

https://mixrepairs.co.uk/how-many-watts-does-a-fridge-use/

Tiexen

beckstar1975 said:

Hello 

looking at our energy Bill it turns out we’re on track to use over 6kwh of electricity this year, 5 people in a 3 bed house with one console. We do however have a 20+ year old fridge, which I think doesn’t help. 

I’ve taken this photo of its label. Does anything point to how much energy it uses? 

Sorry if I’m being dense!

pS can you use a smart plug with a multi gang extension? Want to turn tv/sky box/ps off during day and when we sleep.

 

I have a smart plug down below my TV (out of reach) linked to my Echo smart speaker so just have to say "Alexa TV On/Off) that turns off TV Amp PS4 DVD etc but not the PVR box as it updates overnight.

droopsnoot

You could get yourself a power consumption monitor and see what it's using over a period of time. These plug into the mains socket, then the fridge (or whatever) plugs into that, and the readout usually shows instant and cumulative power usage. Loads available on Amazon, I just got one from a local car boot sale which is showing me some interesting things - such as my PC consumes 12w even when it's switched off, not on stand-by. 

beckstar1975

Sorry 6000kwh!

Ebe_Scrooge

OK, so that says 90W - so for every hour it's running, it'll consume 90 W.  So roughly 1 KW for every 11 hours of running time.  As previously mentioned though, it'll not be running constantly - to work out how much it runs in a given time period, you'll have to either put some sort of meter on it, or just sit there and monitor it manually (you'll be able to hear when the motor starts and stops).  But let's say as a wet-finger-in-the-air guesstimate that the motor runs for half the time, that'd be very roughly 1KWH per day.  If the motor only runs for quarter of the time it's 0.5 KWH per day.

Rodders53

Label says 90 Watts.... So 0.09 kWh for every hour it's running.  24/365 =0.09*24*365 = 788.4kWh per annum.  Likely though much less than half that.  Say on 40:60 off = 315 kWh per annum (but will it really be on that much??).
An energy monitor plug would allow accurate measurement over a period of a day or two.

Modern 160 litre fridges F-rated for energy would quote around 120 kWh per annum under a standardised test methodology.  That number may not be accurate in real life use, though.

beckstar1975

Thanks - that's really helpful - so even at full whack it's not contributing. I just don't understand how we use so much electrcity - all lights are led attached to smart plugs, don't use tumble dryer, rarely use oven as main oven is broken and top oven is a pain - I'm going to go through the bill and see if it's estimated that high as we had unusual use last year - we did buy oil filled radiators as thought would be cheaper to heat a room than the house - that was clearly wrong!

Am getting a few more smart plugs so I can turn whole gangs off and on - we run 2 monitors, 2 laptops and an old imac every day, turning those off at night would clearly help too

Ebe_Scrooge

beckstar1975 said:

we did buy oil filled radiators as thought would be cheaper to heat a room than the house - that was clearly wrong!

What fuel does your central heating use - gas, oil, electricity?  Electricity is the most expensive fuel for heating there is - unless you have storage heaters and can make use of an E7 or similar off-peak tariff, don't use electric heaters if you can avoid it.

The other thing to watch.  Assuming your boiler is either oil or gas, does that heat your hot water as well - or are you using an immersion heater in your hot water tank (or are you possibly leaving it switched on without realising it)?  For a "standard" heating setup, the boiler should heat both the central heating and the hot water, the immersion is just there as a backup if the boiler goes wrong.

beckstar1975 said:

Am getting a few more smart plugs so I can turn whole gangs off and on - we run 2 monitors, 2 laptops and an old imac every day, turning those off at night would clearly help too

Yep, definitely turn stuff off overnight that you don't need.  Especially stuff like PCs and laptops, there's no reason to leave them on and burning leccy all night.

HumberFlyer

beckstar1975 said:

Thanks - that's really helpful - so even at full whack it's not contributing. I just don't understand how we use so much electrcity - all lights are led attached to smart plugs, don't use tumble dryer, rarely use oven as main oven is broken and top oven is a pain - I'm going to go through the bill and see if it's estimated that high as we had unusual use last year - we did buy oil filled radiators as thought would be cheaper to heat a room than the house - that was clearly wrong!

Am getting a few more smart plugs so I can turn whole gangs off and on - we run 2 monitors, 2 laptops and an old imac every day, turning those off at night would clearly help too

If you are going to purchase more smart plugs, I suggest you go for the power monitering ones.... cheap enough. Such as the Tapo 110 at less than a tenner each

Norman_Castle

The 90w rating is given to prevent socket overloading.

My 30+ year old fridge is rated at 110w though uses 100 to 134w when the compressor is running (it drops slowly through each compressor cycle), and has used 3.831 kWh in 3 days, 16 hours. Roughly 1 kw per day.