Your refrigerator uses the most electricity of all your kitchen appliances. It can account for as much as 15 percent of a home's total energy usage. A typical refrigerator costs about $1,140 to operate over its lifetime. And the older the model, the more electricity it's using. If your present refrigerator is more than 15 years old, you'll save money on your electric bills if you replace it with a new, more efficient unit. New models can be as much as 50 percent more energy efficient than older refrigerators.
Refrigerators made to meet the DOE standards (which took effect in 2001) have cut consumers' energy costs by 30 percent compared to the previous (1993) standards. And a family replacing a 1972-vintage model with a product that meets the new standard will see their utility bills drop by over $120 a year. There are super-efficient refrigerators currently on the market that save even more. If every household in the United States had the most efficient refrigerators available, the electricity savings would eliminate the need for more than 20 large power plants.
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