Replacing an old appliance with a new efficient one?
I have
dealt with this question a few times in my house.
Our current referigerator is over 10 years old, works great. But I kept
wondering if I should buy a new energy efficient referigarator.
So I decided to run the numbers and see how much would I save if I upgrade.
To do this correctly, there are 3 steps:
- Shop around for your new appliance, write down the expected annual electrical consumption for that device.
It is usually written on a yellow tag that tells you how much it costs to run
that device. Don't put to much stock in the $ amount they quote, what you need
is the number for Kilowatt-Hour.
- Figure out the actual average cost per Kilowatt-Hour in your house. You can probably call
your electrical provider to get you your average cost for the last year,
or get your past utility bills, write down your total dollar amount for
electricity each month, and write down the total Kilowatt-Hour consumed each
month. Add up all dollars and divide it by all Kilowatt-Hour, now you have the
average cost per Kilowatt-Hour.
- Now you have to measure how many Kilowatt-Hour your existing appliance uses.
There a few ways to do this. Personally, I purchased a Kill-A-Watt (you can
purchase one here). You plug your appliance into this device and it will
display how much electricity it uses. Since a refrigerator continously while
cycling on and off, you can get the best numbers by getting total consumption
for a whole day.
Make sure you are comparing similar consumption periods. If the new appliance
has a quote for the whole year, then convert to per hour (/365 , /24). If
you measured your old appliance for a whole day, then divide it by 24.
Since getting the Kill-A-Watt, I have
found numerous uses for it. For example, I was able to see how much electricity
some appliances use while supposedly off. The biggest cluprit has been the DVR
which is not really off. But I also used it to calculate similar comparisons for
the washing machine, the TV, and my wine-fridge (which turned out to be using
more electricity than both large refrigerators in the house, so it had to go).
Notes (values between brackets are examples):
1- Average yearly cost per Kilowatt-hour (my 2008 average in California was
$0.205)
2- Total kWhr measured (3.31)
3- How many hours did you measure (24)
4- Consumption displayed on new yellow tag (407)
5- Hours for above #3 consumption (407 kWhr per month = 0.0807 kWhr/hr)
6- How many hours will you be using this appliance per day (for a fridge it
should be 24, for a washing machine, we use it about 1 load per day, takes half
an hour so use 0.5)