Gas refrigerators....

[mattl]

Had a customer come in today looking for a gas powered refrigerator.  Did a bit of research and came up with EZ-Freeze refrigerators.  Not inexpensive, the 21 cu/ft model he was looking at ran $2400+ and $140 in shipping.  They are made in Shipshewana, IN by what I believe is an Amish company.  In trying to track down info I called them and got who I think was one of the owners on the phone.  He directed me to a distributor who had an account setup with our store.  Called them and they indicated there was a production run in a few weeks and it could be shipped out soon after that.

 

My question is how economical are these units to run?  They are available in either Nat. gas or Propane, anyone have any experience with a modern model? I know gas refrigerators have been around for many years, but no idea on operating costs.

 

Here is a link to the manufacturer...

 

http://www.ezfreezerefrigerator.com/EZ21W.html

 

[rp2813]

Natural gas would probably be more economical than propane.  Per the information on the site, the fridge will go through 2 gallons of propane per week.  Using conservative round figures, at $4 per gallon you're looking at close to $30 per month to run the fridge. 

 

I can't tell you how to convert gallons into cubic feet for calculating natural gas costs, which can vary from state to state.

 

[arbilab]

Doesn't say "no frost", something to consider or inquire further.

Adds to indoor heat and humidity. May be a benefit in MI except July and August.

No gas burner is completely free of carbon monoxide. Ideally should be vented outside, but then you lose any benefit above. For comparison, electric exhausts its entire energy consumption into the room, minus of course the CO.

As a more or less one-off product, can it be serviced locally? "Ideally" none should be required. OTOH, you don't put a $2400 fridge on the curb and buy another one if it stops working.

I have 'met' one recent absorption fridge, in a motorhome. Worked very well. The 'hot' part and the CO are outside the living space in that application. No definitive observation on frost. Since no-frost typically uses electric heaters and this product has no electric, needs to be inquired further.

Natgas and electric rates vary greatly and we don't even have a baseline comparison. Here's the crudest possible: Modest electric, 800W, runs half the time. 720 hours in a month. Divide by 2 = 360 hours. 360 X 0.8kW = 288 kWh. Average price of electric is 12c/kWh. 288 X $0.12 = $34.56. Which makes it a wash using propane. What we don't have is the equivalent energy cost derived from natgas in your region. (almost) Surely the local gas utility can give you a BTU equivalency vs. propane.

For raw heat as in a dryer, natgas always wins cost effectiveness vs. electric. For making something else happen--like refrigeration--as a result of burning gas, a clear answer is a little harder to come by. And there's still the CO issue.

 

[fido]

Yes, the caravan fridges vent to outside but when I was a kid we had a gas fridge and the exhaust just vented into the room. I suppose in those days there was less awareness of carbon monoxide though, as a lot of gas water heaters were the same. In 1967 we moved to a rural location with no gas so the fridge was converted to electricity. Eventually the coolant gas (ammonia?) leaked out and ruined most of the food.

 

[goatfarmer]

I'm in the Shipshewana area about every day, didn't know they were around.

 

[mattl]

Hey, thanks for the quick info on cost of operation. Looks like it would be a bit pricier than I thought.

Not sure about the costs on electric, seems quite high to me. I put a kill-o-watt meter on my basement fridge and if I recall it was no where near that amount or it would be turned off. It's a 5-6 year old whirlpool top mount freezer, rarely opened, I think it came in I the $8-9/mo range. Have to take a look at that again. Only really using the freezer, and that stuff could go...

 

[epixstar128]

The reason they are more worried about co
These days is houses are built much tighter
Less air exchange.

 

[magic_clean]

Interesting

that the cabinet, control location, doors and shelves appear to quite similar to a current Frigidaire product.

 

[gizmo]

an ex-user's perspective

I don't know of this brand but I have lived with an LPG fridge for years. (Electrolux Dometic.)

- It won't be frost free. It will have to be defrosted occasionally. Ffrost free LPG fridges were attempted years ago (mine was one) but it doesn't work and they still frost up. The mechanism to make them defrost automatically was crude and pretty ineffective.

If you have the choice for an electric fridge, go with that. Gas fridges are for where you CAN'T have an electric fridge. Why? On hot days they use heaps more gas and still they slowly warm up inside, the absorption system is just way less efficient than compressor electric fridges.
As a comparison I have looked up stats for a Consul 220 litre gas fridge, made in Brazil. These were moderately popular here in Australia in solar powered homes. They were available with a "two way" gas or electric version. The electric version used 5.35 kwh of electricity a day. My electric fridge uses about 0.6 kwh a day, and is a very similar size. Also the Consul gas fridge sold here for about $2500 new, my Haier 217 litre fridge cost me $299 new. (New Years special, normally $399.)

When we first built out home, Solar panels cost about $10 per watt. They are now under $1 per watt. Gas fridges used to be viable for solar homes because the number of solar panels required to run an electric fridge was prohibitively expensive. Now as solar panel prices have fallen so far, and electric fridges have had dramatic gains in efficiency, so gas fridges no longer make economic sense. If you have a stand alone solar power system (not mains connected) as I do, then it is now cheaper to increase the size of your solar power system and have an efficient electric fridge, than it is to have an expensive gas fridge and feed it LPG.

We bought a very cheap 217 litre 2 door fridge, NOT frost free, about 3 years ago. We kept the gas fridge in the shed, in case the electric decision turned out to be a mistake. The gas fridge hasn't been used since. I believe being NOT frost free was a key reason our new fridge is so efficient. It still defrosts the fridge compartment daily, as during the "off cycle" when the compressor is no longer running, the evaporator in the fridge warms up enought to defrost. I have only defrosted the freezer twice in the three years we have owned it - frost growth is very slow. Also as we are in a cool climate, our kitchen is reasonably cool and thus our fridge uses way less than the energy label stated - in fact about half. That is because for the Australian standard, fridges are tested with an ambient room temperature of 32 degrees Celsius, where as my kitchen rarely exceeds 20 degrees C, and then only in summer when my solar panels are producing more power than I know what to do with.

Changing from LPG fridge to electric was a great decision for us and I would never even consider going back to gas. Gas fridges are a technical curiosity but they are very very inefficient and should only be used when you can't use an electric fridge.

 

[arbilab]

My fridge is a very modest size apartment Hotpoint self defrost. It is new enough to be running R134A. Plated at 6.6A which at 125V is 825W.

"Runs half the time" is of course an estimate, I don't sit there with a stopwatch while it cycles. It goes unopened ~12hrs a day and opened fairly regularly the other 12. Your basement is almost certainly colder than my 3rd floor kitchen, impacts run time.

What is your kWh cost?

 

[washer111]

Whilst the member did mention they run off the grid, I will "butt in" and mention the price of electricity is around about 22c/KWh. Of course, this can vary by your distributor, smart-meters (for Off-Peak) and locality.

We have a smart meter, but they haven't introduced Off-Peak/On-Peak here yet. In fact, unless you are lucky enough to have deregulated power supply in your locality, I don't think you can get it (Although someone may want to correct me there!). 

 

 

 

[mattl]

My electric cost is $.11/kwh, and looking at some of the new massive 32cu.ft. models today their estimated operating cost is $62/year  or ~$ 5/mo.

 

[arbilab]

Well I see that 134A is on its way out after 20 years, so this fridge at 15yo is not what you'd call 'modern high efficiency'. OTOH it probably has a swash compressor which can last 15-30 years and the new ones probably have a rotary which lasts 7-10 years. Not like one has a choice there, the industry does what it does.

I would like to know how the industry achieved a 10X (much bigger fridge using 2 months worth of 'small old fridge' power in a year) reduction in operating cost. I've got a small rotary window unit burning $40/month so rotary can't be THAT much cheaper to run. Insulation?? Something come along to beat styrofoam?

Anyhow, I didn't just make those numbers up. But I did use dated information. BTW, is the 11c number what the power company quotes you, or your actual bill total divided by kWh? My "quoted" rate is 6.4c but after surcharges, fees, taxes that all but doubles.

And BTBTW, do you believe the government's cost estimate?

 

[washer111]

I suppose if the government is testing their refrigerators at 32ºC (About 90ºF), then you may very well be able to believe their figures. Of course, if you live in a cold area like member "Gizmo," then those figures are obviously going to be skewed downwards given the temperature experienced where they are. 

As for trust, I am aware an LG SxS or French-Door model won the "Choice Shonky Awards" some years ago, as the government standards test had been completed with some key features switched off/on (Ice-Maker, Energy Save functions), and the resulting label was about 50-150KWh too low. 

 

Personally, I think its better the government test in hotter conditions, that way people have a better idea of operating costs. Not everyone in Australia live in the cooler areas of Victoria and Tasmania, and refrigerator energy consumption may exponentially rise with temperature. This gives people a very good approximation of running costs, unless of course they move to the Simpson desert - which may turn those numbers into very large $$$!

 

 

[brisnat81]

11c/kwh, we can only dream.

We're now paying 34c/kwh including the Daily supply charge. Without the Daily fixed charge is 29.5c/kwh

We're lucky that we only use 12kwh per day, but its still a huge amount of money.

It was only 7 or 8 years ago we also paid 13c/kwh. Its the price we pay for having an overly reliable redundant network now. Unfortunately its still all coal powered.

 

[docker]

Bar Fridge

My bar fridge is a 165 litre Gas fridge from a Sprite caravan. I helped one of my staff remove it & got it as a freebee. It takes about 8 hours on AC & 3 hours on gas to produce ice from initial start-up. The freezer box is a 4 star freezer, unlike the AC bar fridges which, at best, are 1 star.
I have never measured the kwh consumption, but the element is 120w so it only pulls 0.5A.

 

[philr]

Most newer electric fridges are very cheap to run. I have a 15 years old (1998) 18 cu-ft. GE profile bottom-freezer in the basement that I plugged to a watt-meter that also calculates energy consumption and it's very cheap to run compared to older fridges.

My 1963 16 Cu-Ft. Frigidaire bottom-freezer Frost-Proof fridge costs about 3 times more to operate but it's still not that bad for being 50 years old and self-defrosting twice a day.
I keep the freezer temp below 0°F on the 1963 Frigidaire and it has been connected to the watt-meter/calculator for 251 days. So far the meter says it spent $71.53 of electricity at $0.075/kWh which makes $104 a year... Of course, at a rate of $0.15/kWh it would cost $208 for a year but the 1998 GE would still be well below $100 at that rate!

 

[arbilab]

You pay 3x our average rate? Hardly seems fair does it? Even with the nickel devaluation vs. USD and considering we invented the stuff. What excuse did the PM give for tripling your rates? Must have been a whopper.

US power is fairly reliable, particularly given the extreme age of many of its components. Except when storms knock down the wiring, which they do. Many areas have yet to acknowledge that trees are not your friend if you like your lights on.

It's fairly diverse: coal, oil boiler, natgas boiler, natgas turbine, hydro, nuclear, wind, solar (very little), geo (very little). It tends to be fairly corrupt: TX public utility commission allowed our supplier to charge customers $300 each to upgrade THEIR meters to digital so they could layoff all the readers. Shouldn't that have paid for itself??

OTOH, you'll be well ahead of us in loadpoint generation/capture. Here, we know what it is but at 12c off the grid, loadpoint never pays for itself.

 

[gizmo]

Arbilab: your figures are based on a minor misunderstanding.

Your Hotpoint fridge may be plated at 6.6A but that will be the start winding. Fridge compressors have two windings in the motor, start and run. The Start winding uses from 7 to 10 times the power of the Run winding. So each time your fridge cycles on, it will give a blast of the Start winding for less than one second, then it will click over to the Run winding.
The plate is required to indicate the MAX current draw, not the average. In reality your fridge probably uses between 80 and 120 watts when running, and maybe 200 watts when defrosting.

So there hasn't been a 10X improvement over the years. But they have become about twice or three times as efficient as maybe ten years ago. Better refrigerant, bigger evaporators and condensers, lower power draw motors, much better seals and insulation. It all adds up.

When I was looking at fridges about 3 years ago, there was one model Westinghouse 220 litre, the identical looking model had been in production for several years, earlier versions were rated to use over 700kwh/year. New ones were rated at about 350 kwh/year.

 

[arbilab]

Thanks, yes I know LRA lasts a second and is twice (not 10x) FLA. It's when the lights dim slightly. 800W = ~1hp and yes that would be generous for a small fridge. 1/2hp sounds more like it. Does that conversion take into account motors in this class are under 80% efficient?

Again this is a SMALL fridge and the ones we're talking about are not small. They are also not 15yo.

If we put 0.5hp, 120V and 80% efficiency into Electric Motor Calculator, it comes back with 6FLA. 1/3 less if 3 phase, so if these new motors are electronically commutated there's a 33% saving right there.

Did I mention I wrote a patent speculation 8 years ago for an inverter-modulated HE HVAC condenser? Elements of it may have been patentable, but some elements were already in use (in laundry eqpt, who knew?) and it would have cost more than my net worth to find out if I had a claim.