Here’s my “take” on it.

To say , as one story did, that a refrigerator, even at the outside estimate of 500 kWh/year, uses 25% of a home’s energy is ridiculous on its face.

500 kWh/year is 60 kWh/month. How many homes use 240kWh/month? Maybe a small apartment with no AC?

It certainly pays to have an energy-efficient refrigerator (maintained internally at 35-38 degrees F for the cold compartment and 0-to negative 1 degree F for freezer). But the three largest consumers of energy are furnaces, air conditioners, and water heaters. Those three pieces of equipment together consume about 3/4 of all the energy in your home. (I’m not distinguishing between gas and electric here, but these devices are increasingly all electric.)

Almost everything else combined, while not trivial, amounts to saving energy at the edges.

LED light bulbs don’t only save electricity for lighting. They also save money on air conditioning because less efficient bulbs generate waste heat. The same is true for a well-insulated oven. Keeping heat in the oven more efficiently not only puts more of the energy into cooking and less into air conditioning, but also keeps the kitchen more comfortable by not emitting waste heat into the room.

If you want to figure out how much energy an appliance uses per month, there’s a fairly simple way to do it.

First, you want to estimate how many kilowatt hours (kWh) your device uses per month, so figure out how much time it takes to use one kWh for a given device.

As an example, say you have a 15-watt high-efficiency light bulb. Maybe you use it for 8 hours/day. That calculation would be:

15 watts x 8 hours x 30 days = 3600 watts / 1000 = 3.6 kWh.

At a fairly high cost of about 18¢/kWh, that light bulb will cost you about 64.8¢ to burn for a whole month.

Appliances like HVAC (Heat, Ventilation, Air Conditioning), water heaters, refrigerators, ovens, etc. are harder to calculate because they are running for varied times and/or varied consumptions depending on need. (Examples: An oven uses more power at higher temps than lower temps, and a refrigerator will run more in a hot environment than in a cool environment.) But when they are running, they are high energy consumers.

How many watts does a TV use?

According to Energy Sage, a modern TV uses between 50-200 watts per hour. This no doubt depends on the size and overall energy efficiency of the TV, but let’s use the maximum of 200 watts for an example. If that TV is on for 8 hours/day, it uses:

200 watts x 8 hours x 30 days = 48,000 watts/month / 1000 = 48 kWh/month.

At 18¢/kWh, that comes to about $8.64/month.

It certainly pays to be conscious of what energy you are using and when you are using it, but caring about the power consumption of some devices is just nibbling around the edges. Others add up to actual dollars, and some become real money.

It pays to know the difference, and not drive yourself crazy over a few pennies per month here and there.

As for the article that prompted this whole dissertation, if they’re going to publish an article of this nature, it’s vital they get they’re facts straight.

———————————————————————————

Here’s the device that’s skyrocketing your electricity bill (and no, it’s not the oven) https://dailygalaxy.com/2024/10/heres-the-device-thats-skyrocketing-your-electricity-bill-and-no-its-not-the-oven/

Mike Honig sold various appliances and electronics from 1996 to 2008, He was trained in these products and their use, and has remained interested in them to this current time.