It is approaching the time of year that many folks purchase a freezer to store goodies from the summer and fall harvests. I thought it would be appropriate to give some recommendations to help with your purchase if you are seeking one.

With freezers, there are not elaborate options available as there are for refrigerators, but there are a couple of things to be aware of that can affect the energy performance greatly. The first is whether the freezer has a manual or automatic defrost system. If you purchase a freezer with an automatic defrost system, plan on consuming approximately 45% more electricity. An automatic defrost cycle typically turns on an electric heating element to melt the ice from the freezer once every 6 hours, adding heat that must then be removed from the freezer by additional run time of the compressor. The manual defrost works by once or twice a year opening your freezer, removing the frozen food, and then allowing the ice to melt (we typically let it melt for 30 minutes or so and get almost all of the big ice pieces off).

The second thing to be aware of is freezer style, upright or chest. It used to be that upright freezers used considerably more power than a chest. Things have improved, but if you are seeking the most efficient model you will need to stick with a chest freezer. If we compare 16-cubic-foot freezers in chest and upright styles, we see that they consume 409 and 360 kWh's of electricity yearly respectively (keep in mind this is for the most efficient Energy Star make and model of that size). A kWh is the unit of electrical energy equal to 1 kilowatt or 1000 watts of power used for 1 hour. A 100-watt light bulb operated for 10 hours uses 1 kWh.

The final option to consider is size. Freezers come in sizes from 8 - 25+ cubic feet; 8 is about the size of a small apartment fridge and a 25 is one of those gargantuan chest freezers. Most people's refrigerators are about 19 cu. ft. We have a 12 cu. ft. chest freezer that suits us well and holds a surprising amount of food (a deer, frozen fruit, oil, fish and nuts). I think it is common to keep foods frozen for years on end that eventually end up getting tossed. In the end, the larger the freezer, the more energy it is going to use.

Can you modify your freezer to make it more efficient? It used to be that you could add additional insulation to the freezer, making it perform much better (I wrote an article about this in 2001 for the newsletter if you are interested). Most freezers now have the evaporator coils located underneath the outside skin, providing a path to get rid of heat. Adding insulation would keep this heat inside the freezer, damaging the compressor unit. There are typically no coils in the lid, so adding insulation there would be an option.

My recommendations:

1. Chest over upright if possible

1. Size: Smallest you can live with
2. No automatic defrost

There are two resources that help greatly in searching for specific models, www.aceee.org/consumerguide/food.htm and www.energystar.gov. Both sites have downloadable documents that list energy usage of particular models.

Finding and purchasing some of the more efficient freezers can take some pre-planning on your part. Most local retailers don't stock these models but can easily get them with a couple of weeks notice. All of the most efficient models are available through the distributors that serve our area.

Mike and his family enjoyed the 750 gallons of rain that fell into their water system today.