Enjoy Cool Energy Savings with Greener Refrigerators

What about using a smaller fridge? Our family of three uses less than half of the space a typical fridge provides, and with all of the wasted space, it seems like a smaller version would be more practical.

Living in a solar home has provided years of energy savings and environmental benefit, however the daytime temperatures in my kitchen and livingroom area during the winter months rise into the 80's due to the southern exposure. I developed a closed cell polyethylene foam mat that attaches to all sides of a refrigerator or freezer, a thickness of 1/2 inch reduces cabinet temperature up to 15 degrees and saves approximately 252 kilowatt hours of electricity per year or roughly 30%. This is based on a 25.5 cu.ft. side by side refrigerator. When applied to deep freezers and electric clothes dryers the savings are even greater.I am still refining the "Fridgecoat" for other applications , for now it can be covered with fabric or painted to match most appliances. Save energy reduce carbon.

Disappointed by the increased power bills brought by a new, smaller, "Energy Star" refrig., we used packing tape to attach 1" of foam insulation panels to the sides and front, and 2" more foam on the top.
We left the back clear, since heat exchange needs to happen there, that would be messed up if anything covered it.
Doing this cut the run-time of the refrigerator in half at least.
It saved ALL our food, including the frozen stuff, during a 3-day power outage when weather was in the 50's. We taped the doors shut, so no cool would be lost, and lived on canned stuff for that time.
At the end of that time, we did need to use the stuff all up.
But we didn't lose anything.
The added insulation, PLUS using a heavy duty timer during the night to shut it off, has saved us a chunk of money, and the food has done fine.

I've always heard refrigerators are among the most energy-sapping appliances in the home, but I never knew there was so much you could do about it.

I always try to minimize the time I spend staring into the refrigerator, but sometimes my indecisiveness keeps me there longer than I need to be. I've heard some people take pictures of what's in their refrigerator and tape it to the front so they know what's in it and where before they go fridge-diving. I haven't tried it, but I imagine it couldn't hurt.

The cleaning of the coils that reject heat from the inside of the refrigerator to the ambient air will improve the rate of heat transfer from the fridge to the ambient air. Therefore, one would surmise that rejection of more heat with the same amount of energy leads to increased refrigerator performance. IE your fridge operates for less time to remove a certain amount of heat. There is no doubt that this is correct. However, the effect of dirt and dust on heat rejection depends on the amount of build up. That being said recleaning the coil of an already relatively clean refrigerator coil will have negligible effect on efficiency.