Temperature and energy performance of domestic cold appliances in England

A paper¹ from A. Biglia et al.presents the results of a large-scale survey of domestic cold appliances in households in England, UK. Simultaneous measurements of the temperature inside and outside of the cold appliances, as well as the electricity consumption, were obtained over a period of seven days for 998 cold appliances from March to November 2015. The cold appliances monitored in the survey included fridge-freezers (52%), refrigerators with ice-box (6%), larder fridges (14%), chest freezers (9%) and upright freezers (19%). The mean ambient temperature was 18.5  °C. The mean refrigerator temperature was found to be 5.3°C, slightly higher than the recommended range of 0 to 5°C. The mean freezer temperature was -20.3  °C, lower than the recommended temperature of -18  °C.

The mean electricity consumption was 354 kWh per year. Significant differences between the electricity consumption of different types of cold appliance were determined from statistical analysis. The compressor operated continually in 27 cold appliances and, on average, these appliances used 81% more energy than the mean energy consumption of all cold appliances in the survey. Chest freezers were found to have the highest mean specific energy consumption (SEC) value (2997 kWh.m^-3.year), and larder fridges the lowest (1257 kWh.m^-3.year).

There is a clear difference observed in the mean SEC between all appliances over 11 years old (3660 kWh.m–3.year), and those less than 11 years old (1597 kWh.m–³.year). Such information could potentially be used to target the replacement of high consuming appliances.

¹ BIGLIA A., GEMMELL A. J., FOSTER H. J., et al. Temperature and energy performance of domestic cold appliances in households in England. International Journal of Refrigeration [online]. 2017, 13p.

Available in Fridoc: http://bit.ly/NL73-Biglia