How Many Refrigerators Do People Have

This scenario could be familiar to you: You’re watching the Thanksgiving Day football game and you’re thirsty for a beer. So, what do you do now? Like many Americans, you’re unlikely to open the kitchen fridge, which is likely to be overflowing with unsalted food. If you want to use the second refrigerator, you’ll have to go to the basement or garage (aka, the “beer fridge”).

It’s true that it’s time-saving. A increasing trend of owning second refrigerators is a big national energy waste, and it may cost you hundreds of dollars in wasted electricity.

Second refrigerators are a waste of electricity. Why is this the case? These people tend to be quite old. About 15% of American households have a second refrigerator that is at least 20 years old, making it a sure bet that it will be an energy guzzler when compared to newer versions of the appliance.

Use Of Refrigerator in Recent Years

As a result of progressively stricter state and national energy requirements, most recently imposed by the Department of Energy, refrigerators have witnessed a tremendous increase in energy efficiency. Appliance Criteria Awareness Project’s Marianne DiMascio estimates that a fridge that only satisfies the new standards would consume $215 to $270 less power annually than a similar device that satisfied the initial state standards issued in 1978.” (ASAP).

Here’s a graph from the ASAP that illustrates how far we’ve come. Our refrigerators have grown in size, as seen by the blue line. It has become much cheaper and uses less energy, as seen by the dotted red and green lines.

What a remarkable success story, made possible by regulators as well as technological progress. Improved insulation, more energy-efficient compressors and motors, and better temperature controls have all contributed to increases in refrigerator efficiency.
Because of this, you’re losing a significant amount of progress if you just use an old fridge for beer.

Typically, a second refrigerator is 15 years old when it is relocated to a basement or garage, and it may live another five to ten years there, says Steve Nadel, executive director of the American Council for an Energy Efficient Market. Second refrigerators are usually kept on all year, however many are simply used for a few major events and to keep some additional beverages chilled. ”

To that, Nadel says that 15 to 25-year-old refrigerators have an annual energy consumption of 700 to 1,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh). It would cost roughly $97-130 per year at the national average electricity rate of about 13 cents per kWh,” he says.

There’s yet another issue. Because most second refrigerators were originally first refrigerators, it’s likely that they’ve been relegated to a less desirable location in the kitchen, such as the basement, garage, or even outside. As a result, the refrigerator will have to work more to keep food cold, which means it will use more electricity, particularly during the summer.

Buying An Old Refrigerator

Because of this, you’re losing a significant amount of progress if you just use an old fridge for beer.

Typically, a second refrigerator is 15 years old when it is relocated to a basement or garage, and it may live another five to ten years there, says Steven Nadel, executive director of the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy. Second refrigerators are usually kept on all year, however many are simply used for a few major events and to keep some additional beverages chilled. ”

To that, Nadel says that 15 to 25-year-old refrigerators have an annual energy consumption of 700 to 1,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh). It would cost roughly $97-130 per year at the national average electricity rate of about 13 cents per kWh,” he says.

There’s yet another issue. Because most second refrigerators were originally first refrigerators, it’s likely that they’ve been relegated to a less desirable location in the kitchen, such as the basement, garage, or even outside. As a result, the refrigerator will have to work more to keep food cold, which means it will use more electricity, particularly during the summer.

What’s more, maintaining an old one as a second refrigerator means you’re essentially erasing the savings that made when you upgraded to a newer, more energy-efficient one.

According to the EPA, substituting an old refrigerator with a new Energy Star appliance may save $ 50 per year and 400 kwh of electricity in energy usage. However, for every home that replaces its old refrigerator with an Energy Star model and then moves the old one to the basement, the energy footprint of that household has grown rather than decreased.

“One big refrigerator is cheaper to operate than two smaller ones,” notes the state of Florida’s Consumer Energy Center. The Center also observes that a refrigerator that is full of food is better at sustaining a chilly temperature than a refrigerator that is pretty empty — another feature that makes the sometimes loaded “beer fridge” problematic.
Nonetheless, second refrigerators appear to be extremely widespread, and may possibly be increasing more so.

Second refrigerators have just lately become more common in American homes, according to statistics from the Department of Energy’s 2011 Household Energy Consumption Survey (the most current instalment). From 1978 to 1997, their frequency in homes only grew by 1 percent, from 14 to 15 percent. But from 1997 to 2009, they further climbed to 23 percent, as demonstrated in this chart of evolving American appliance usage (second refrigerators are the purple line):

There may have been an increase in the number of second refrigerators since 2009. Another Department of Energy research estimated the incidence of second refrigerators in houses even higher — at 26 percent — and showed their penetration in households is expanding at 1 percent each year.
Nearly a third of all houses in the Midwest had a second refrigerator as recently as 2009, but this trend has spread throughout the country since 1997. Kansas, Nebraska, New Jersey, North Dakota, and Wisconsin are the states where they’re most popular.

Who has a second refrigerator? Young, well-off couples are more likely to possess older, less efficient refrigerators, according to the EPA. According to another research, the size of the home seems to be the most significant factor in determining whether or not a household has many refrigerators. When a new unit is installed, folks may just retain their old one since they’ve lived in the house for a long time.

So, what’s the alternative to this?? A number of utilities around the nation are encouraging customers to donate their old refrigerators in return for cash or a credit on their utility bill as part of the Energy Star programme. Energy Star estimates that properly recycling an older or second refrigerator may save you $300 to $700 over five years and save up to 20,000 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions.

Consider whether or not you truly need a second refrigerator for the sake of the environment and your personal energy costs (especially an older one). Buy your beer in six-packs just for the benefit of your stomach.