The fridge has become a permanent part of our kitchen for its substantial role in keeping the food fresh and long-lasting for prolonged periods. Let it be any season, a fridge is one of the most indispensable kitchen essentials and is worth every bit of your hard-earned money.
The conflict arises when your monthly bill reaches the threshold and you feel crestfallen at seeing the huge electricity consumption of your fridge. This is the point where basic know-how would go a long way. We’ve sorted out some of the most generalized fridge electricity consumption values to give you a more precise outlook. With all this, below are also present some tips that can help you cut down on your electricity bills.
With no further ado, let’s get started.
How Many Watts Does A Fridge Use?
Let us start with breaking one of the most prevalent myths like your fridge consumes greater power than all other kitchen appliances. This seems true because the fridge is mostly working throughout the day, but what if we tell you that this energy expenditure is nothing when you compare it with your AC or water heater electricity consumption. Yes, a fridge comparatively costs lesser as compared to the other appliances and this is where our wattage formula comes in handy.
What Is A Wattage Formula?
The simplest hack is to look out for the wattage formula, the values for which you can find in several places inside your fridge. These places may include the back of your fridge, the space under the front kick plate, or the upper side of the manufacturer’s nameplate. Using these values, all you have to do is to find the product of volts x amps, and voila! That’s all it takes.
For instance, if your fridge consumes 114 volts and 6 amps, then this means that your fridge has 684 overall watts consumption. If you have an old fridge, it might cost 800 to 122 watts as the starting wattage and the running wattage of 150-watt hours per day.
This is why we mentioned in the first place that a fridge doesn’t consume as much power as the other modern appliances do. However, if you go for the modern fridges that have a plethora of features, then the price would rise for sure. Although the running wattage might increase, yet the central values remain constant most of the time.
The Ideal Monthly Cost Of A Fridge
We have got another trick for you that can help you estimate the monthly cost of your fridge. For this, you have to find out the actual kWh value of your appliance. As per the trending companies, a fridge’s cycle undergoes a pause after every eight hours. This means you can multiply the above-calculated value of 684 watts with the eight-hour duration to get 5472 watts per day. Lastly, divide it by 1000 to get the ideal 5.47 kWh consumption that can give you an optimum idea of how much money you have to separate for your fridge’s bill.
Best Ways To Prevent Energy Depletion
Now when we have shared with you all the primary mathematical tricks, this is the time to disclose some practices that can help prevent energy wastage in the long-run. Few of them are
Weekly Cleaning
Let us emphasize that cleaning has a direct impact on putting an end to excessive energy expenditure. It is because when you make it a habit to clean your fridge weekly and remove all the dust from the inner coils, your fridge has to deal with a lesser mess. This step also smoothens out the airflow so there’s no obstruction and the fridge doesn’t have to exert greater power. This is something that we often take for granted and go on without cleaning our fridge for ages. It doesn’t matter if there’s any spillage or not, weekly cleaning is the smartest way to save the budget that otherwise you would have spent on huge bills.
Accurate Temperature Settings
This is the time to confess something we all have been guilty of at some point in our lives. It is that we have this typical mindset that setting the temperature of your fridge to the lowest value can help cool down the food items in a shorter duration. It might be true but let us tell you that by doing so, you are increasing your monthly bill to multifold. The best way is to set your fridge’s thermostat at 37 degrees Fahrenheit that carries a quite balanced cooling mechanism. Moreover, if your fridge has an attached freezer, you can also set it at 0 degrees Fahrenheit so that there is no extra electricity consumption on either side.
Choose the Right Location
This is the mistake that you might be making by choosing a warmer place for your fridge. What happens is that the higher temperature surroundings increase the internal temperature of the fridge as well, to lower down which, it starts consuming greater power. This is the basic science that backs up the fact that placing your fridge in a cooler place can bring fruitful results. Most of the time, it is also preferable to leave the kitchen’s ceiling fan on even when you aren’t cooking. This can help regulate the temperature of your kitchen and fridge alike.
Cautious Approach
When you open your fridge’s door to find something good to eat, the sooner you make up your mind, the better it would be to save energy. It’s for the reason that people take minutes to decide, and during this, the cooling present inside finds its way out. The same goes for the ones who forget to close the fridge’s door properly. These habits have an essential role in casting a negative effect on your monthly electricity bill. Not only this, but such practices might lead you to go for the fridge’s maintenance sessions more often. This is why it is the peak time that you’d better do away with these detrimental ways.
No Hot Leftovers
Hot leftovers take a longer time to adapt to the fridge’s cold temperature. Here what you can do is place the leftovers outside first so that they reach the normal room temperature. After this, you might go ahead with putting them in the fridge.
Conclusion
This brings us to the end of our discussion. The crux of all this conversation is that knowing the formulas like the wattage formula or the kWh one can turn out to be rather advantageous in the long run. In the same way, following small but useful practices like closing the door without taking too long or keeping an eye on the thermostat may give a boost to your energy-saving plan.