I was watching a show last night called Invention Nation, and the episode New Cool caught my attention. One particular segment showed how this one company was adapting refrigerators to use cold outside air instead of the compressor during nights and cold days to save energy. Now, I’m not a very green person in general and don’t like going out of my way to be ‘Earth conscious’ but this idea seemed to make extremely perfect sense. I live in an area where it’s plenty cold enough to refrigerate food at least for half of the year.
But then I gave it a little more thought. On those same cold days we’re heating our houses. The condensor on the refridgerator is actually cutting money off of the heating bill. In fact, cutting a hole through the side of the house might actually hurt the heating costs since sealing holes can be quite tricky.
Of course, most of us have our fridges tucked away in to some wooden cubby hole where all that heat builds up and is ultimately wasted energy. In fact, our aesthetic will causes refridgerators to work harder than they have too since they’ll run inefficiently without proper cooling. A simple $5 fan is all that’s required to circulate that heat out from behind the cabinets and out in to the open air where it can be of more benefit to cold humans.
Refridgerators are pretty stupid all around when you think about it. They should be top loading, not side loading. Throw a retractable counter top or butcher block on the thing and it can be quite functional that way. The fact that it uses air for cooling food is quite inefficient. Some metal conductors and some reusable tinfoil packaging might work better. A little cold water bath for things like soda, milk, or other plastic containers would be nice as well. Think of a giant cooler at a picnic. That’s really the right design.
I’m not saying that using the cold winter air for the fridge is a bad idea. It certainly helps reduce your dependency on the stressed out grid. I’m not sure it’s the energy win they claim it to be. It’d be better to make use of the heat energy the fridge pumps to the condensor for heating rooms or water. Between wasted stove energy and fridge energy you could probably generate all the hot water you need. That’d be useful in the summer months where you don’t want the fridge dumping hot air in to the house. But you still take warm showers.
What I really want is a thermo-resonant cooling system that these guys make: http://www.cficinc.com/