Freeaire Refrigeration System will Work for A Few Years Yet
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 03.17.07
It's reefer madness day at TreeHugger! *. Another great idea to save on refrigeration costs, as long as it is still cold outside, is the Freeaire system, which asks the question: why pay money to refrigerate when cold is free in winter? In a typical convenience store, half the energy consumed is used for refrigeration. The Freeaire can save 90% of the electricity for 150 days of the year; furthermore the fridge equipment lasts much longer as it is barely used throughout the winter. A microprocessor controls a fan and and damper to monitor the temperature of the cooler and the air, and bring in as much outside air as required to keep the temperature stable. The inventor acknowledges that there " may be still out on whether there will be less cold and snow in the future, but even if there might be less cold outside air around in fifty years, that's no reason to act in a way to make it happen! " ::Freeaire via ::The Ugliest Blog on the Intarweb
*(reefer is short for refrigerated van, its not what you think)
See also Justin's post on chest refrigerators.
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As I type this, I'm sitting in Kingston, Ontario where the outside temperature is -4 degrees. I wonder if it would be possible for new home developers to design an affordable home version of a system like this. In most of Canada, outside air could cool a refrigerator for 5+ months of the year. I always thought it was a complete waste of energy to refrigerate while heating our homes but we need a home-installable version of this technology!
Surely it wouldn't be that difficult, if a house could be designed with the refrigerator facing an outside wall?
I swear I thought of this idea years ago, but I did not have the technical background to do anything about it. Three cheers to the inventor of the Freeair system!
One idea I've had for cold countries; take a bunch of icepaks, put them in a bag outside. Once they are frozen solid, take them out of the bag and put them in your freezer or fridge. Basically taking the cold from outside and putting it in your freezer/fridge..
Not practical on the large scale, but on the small scale, it's a fun thing to do to save a bit of electricity :)
Yeah, I think of this every day when I hear the fridge running to compete with the heater, while I see ice all around just a few feet away, outside.
I would like to see a more passive system for home use, where blower fans are not as necessary. Maybe northern homes could have a built-in "cold box" in an exterior wall, with a simple louvred opening in the back to let in cold air when the exterior temperature is lower than the air in the box. Then you could unplug the fridge for the better part of the winter.
I think that in some places homes used to have little cubbies of this kind for keeping milk, because my uncle tells a story about falling off a ladder while painting a house, and the paint flying through an opening and into the kitchen.
It's a pity that better low-energy refrigeration ideas haven't emerged for those of us in places like Florida, where refrigeration is a very critical part of our energy use.
Ha-ha, You had me there for a minute.
The energy you lose when cooling you refrigerator you get back in heating for your house.
If you throw your refigerator out you have to run your heater more and gain nothing.
If you start to blow in cold air into your house you have to run your heater even more and lose energy that way.
I'm guessing that for most installations it would be easier to pump cold liquid to an interior fridge/freezer. Use non-toxic RV type antifreeze as the delivery method instead of ductwork to move actual air. This is probably cheaper, and more efficient.
Jonas, I don't think you get the picture. The cold air isn't blown into your home, its blown into your fridge. The same fridge that has a good insulative barrier between its interior and the exterior, to prevent the cold air from seeping out and raising your heating bill!
Jonas has a point though: extra heat generated by your refrigerator saves on your heating bill. Though IMHO we'd get more savings by moving to more deep-freeze-like refrigerators that don't dump all the cold air on the floor when you open them, but consumers don't seem interested.
It can make you save on your heating bill, but it is a non-controlled heat. I think it's much better to have deliberate system that heats just the right amount at the right times than something that dumps heat periodically. Better use the "free" cold air from outside when it's available..
Ultimately it depends on where you live. Do you have more degree-heating-days, or more degree-cooling-days? Then add in the amount of fuel needed to cool the fridge, or to heat the house, in the winter. My guess is that you save more energy by using this, in places where it gets cold enough often enough.
http://www5.ncdc.noaa.gov/climatenormals/hcs/HCS_52.pdf
http://www5.ncdc.noaa.gov/climatenormals/hcs/HCS_51.pdf
From EnergyGuide.com:
"Room Temperature -- Perhaps the greatest impact on energy consumption is room temperature. A 10°F increase in temperature can increase energy consumption by 40%! That’s why it is best to place second refrigerators in basements, garages, or other cool locations."
The basement in my Northern MN home is typically between 48F (winter) and 60F (summer). The temperature of my kitchen is around 70F in the winter and can be up to 80F+ in the summer. So my basement is almost always 20F+ degrees cooler than my kitchen.
I'm thinking of building an insulated box around the back of my fridge. The coils will be completely w/in this box. I'll then have a ducts and a small DC fan or two (maybe one pulling air from the basement and another blowing air into the basement) to move air from the basement into this box.
The effect will be, rather than having the coils of my fridge trying to vent heat into a 70F+ (80F+ in the summer) degree kitchen, they'll vent heat into the 48F-60F box.
The trick will be hooking the DC fan up such that it turns on when the compressor turns on therefore circulating the air when the fridge is running.
Alternatively, maybe I could pay a fridge repair man to simply move the coils into my unfinished basement. By popping the coils off the back and putting a 1 foot extension onto the coil, I could move the whole coil rack and mount them on the floor joists of my basement, requiring no fans or other components.