Tracking Our Everyday Energy Usage: #3 The Refrigerator

June has been very hot so far here in Texas, triple digit days and very warm nights, so it seemed only fitting that we track the energy usage of an item that helps keep our food and drinks cool, the refrigerator… We plugged in our trusty P3 Kill-A-Watt Wireless unit and started watching the numbers rack up.

Tracking Our Refrigerator Energy Usage with the P3 Kill-A-Watt Wireless

We collected eight days worth of energy usage including some worst case scenarios such as a full grocery shopping expedition, we realized that putting up our groceries was the event which required the refrigerator to be open the longest, it also introduces lots of warm food and drink which requires extra work to chill back down.

The Running Total for Our Refrigerator

Over the eight days that we monitored the P3 Kill-A-Watt tracked approximately 14.25 Kilowatt Hours of energy which cost us $1.62.

We recently switched to our current refrigerator and knew that it was energy star rated, the energy usage results certainly backed this up, the predicted total energy usage for an entire year was 613 Kilowatt Hours which would cost us $69.89;

The Predicted Total Energy Cost for 1 Year of Refrigerator Usage

We were pleasantly surprised that our refrigerator didn’t use too much energy, we also saw that if we want to save money we probably need to focus on another area of energy usage.

Our quest to track our electricity usage continues, to summarize the results so far;

• Electric Kettle (used to boil water for tea and coffee) = $7.45 per year
• Television (used for around 5-7 hrs per day) = $40 per year
• Refrigerator = $70 per year

Our next target for energy monitoring is going to be our garage door opener, check back soon for the results!

If you are interested in buying the Kill-A-Watt Wireless you can visit their store here;
P3 Kill-A-Watt Wireless