Tom Chalko | A Fridge That Takes Only 0.1 kWh?
This article is about converting a chest freezer into a refrigerator by adding a thermostat to cut off power to the freezer when it reaches the desired temperature, but before it can satisfy it’s own thermostat which is still set below freezing.
We just bought a small chest freezer for $220 at Lowes and I added a $60 thermostat to turn it into a refrigerator. It’s not the most efficient freezer out there, but we needed it in a hurry so we went for convenience. The Energy Star label says will use 280 kWh/year (as a freezer). An efficient refrigerator uses more like 400 kWh/year. A typical refrigerator uses 800-1100 kWh/year.
Today it was sitting on the front porch in the shade with a high temperature of about 80 degrees outside. According to my Kill-A-Watt meter, in 10 hours the new fridge used 0.10 kWh. That would be 0.24 kWh/day or 88 kWh/year. The results aren’t as good as the article, but still really good.
Update: I bought a line voltage remote bulb thermostat from Grainger. Then I cut an old powerstrip cord in half and wired the thermostat into it like a switch. That worked fine, but this thermostat looks like it does the same thing without having do anything but plug it in.
