I presume, since they are never made such that their coils are outside, like an air conditioner, that it’s not enough BTUs to worry about.
But for calculation’s sake there should be a number obtainable.
Is it fair to say that all the energy consumed ends up as heat, either from cooling the interior, or directly thrown off by the motor housing?
I have a Kill A Watt meter to tell how much power is consumed in a day.
Can I just say the amount of heat put into the room is equal to the amount removed by the same power on my air conditioner, measured with the same meter?
The result would tell me how many extra minutes I had to run the AC to overcome the fridge.
Has the EPA or some green site done this study?
And should I vent my fridge to the outside on AC days? Perhaps just roll it onto the screened porch?
And a rough worst case number is it takes your AC about that many watts to pump THAT heat from inside your house to outside. Its probably more like about 1/4 to 1/2 that.
So, figure out how much it cost to run that fridge, then go from there to decide if its an amount worth worrying about.
typical refrigerator 425 kWh / year = 1,450,000 BTU
According to this chart, the fridge competes with the A/C at a rate of 1 to 6. So if you run your fridge indoors in summer for 24 hours you add 4 more hours of A/C to even it out.
So, I’d use that porch.
I wonder why the big boy appliance manufacturers aren’t experimenting with outdoor coil options.
In fact I think I should invent an aftermarket retrofit kit to place a diversion coil outside, with a way to divert back inside in the heating season.
Not exactly. Once the refrigerator reaches an equilibrium, the heat leaving the condenser is equal to the heat leaking back into the refrigerator. The net heat going into the house is whatever the motor and compressor is putting out.
It’s not clear to me that that’s a win. Pumping the heat from the inside of the refrigerator to the warmer outdoors takes more electricity than pumping it to the cooler indoors. Thermodynamically it doesn’t help to put the refrigerator coils outside.
No it would. Because of the energy to remove heat from the frig would be added to the heat load inside the house. And the AC then has to remove that heat from the house to the outside, and the AC units condencer qould be outside.
You can get frigs with the condencing unit out side. The problem is they are more expensive by I would guess double or triple. Also you would not be able to go to the appliance store buy one and bring it home and place it in your kitchen. You could the box and bring it home. Then unless you have a epa card you would need the installer to buy the condensing unit. Then after the condensing unit has been installed, you would need the installing company to conect the lines and adjust to a proper charge.
Nope. Some energy is converted into chemical bonds. This is called “cooking” and in the case of the refrigerator, “aging” of the rubber parts, making them brittle.
Yeah, 1 Bazillionth of the energy going into the refrigerator ends up as potential energy in chemical bonds. And that infinitesimal energy will be released eventually, too.
The “heat pumper efficiency” of the refrig is significantly/way worse than that of the AC unit.
Having said that, from the OP’s data, its only costing a couple bucks a month to run the fridge. Having the AC pump THAT heat out is at best costing a couple more.
Unless its no big deal to put the refrig in the garage or the porch, it aint worth bothering with IMO. And even then I am not sure its worth it.
If you’re going to be picky, I can be too. That energy “released eventually” will not be released in the house but in the landfill a thousand years from now.
