On Aug 26, 8:55*pm, wrote:
"Clot" wrote:
I suspect that the
overall impact is minute compared to actually opening the door and keeping
it unduly open!

I know.... you are right

I'm just an "optimizer" by nature and cant help myself!

But....... if there are 400 million people in the USA
and say 100 million homes.... and if we save just ONE
watt in the fridge bulb.... that is 100 million watts
saved!!

You know there is a chance, a very remote one perhaps, that
inefficient incandescent bulbs used inside a fridge (a mere convenince
any way) are a wasteful use of electricty?
After all the heat from the bulb has to pumped out of the fridge
interior to restore the temperature each time after the door has been
opened and the light has operated for a few seconds.
IF one watt per bulb could be saved some calculations
show ..................
Fridge opened say twice per hour for 12 hours per day = 24 openings.
Average length of each door open = 15 seconds.
Daily total door open and light on time = 24 x 15 seconds = 6 minutes.
Use of bulb using one watt less power
Kilowatt hours saved 1 x 6/60 (one tenth of one hour) divided by 1000
= 0.0001 kilowatt hours/day.
Per year 365 x 0.0001 = 0.0365 kilowatt hours per year.
If electricity costs 10 cents per kw.hr electrcity cost saved per year
= 0.0365 x 0.1 = one third of one cent per year.
Ah yes but we have to pump that much less heat out of the fridge, so
halve the saving?
And the light goes off, or so we are told, when the door closes?
And every time the fridge door opens cold air spills out and some
warmer air enters that has to be re-chilled.
Hey! This seems to getting rather pointless?
There MUST be other reductions in electrcity consumption that make
more sense nation wide etc. and are more effective.
For example I left the light on over the front door for over a hour
longer this morning (just forgot about it!) that probably cost me
(electrcity consumption) one half a cent; tut tut.
I suppose I could install a light sensitive fixture and have it turn
itself off. But that fixture would cost me around $15 to $20. And that
can buy a lot of relatively clean hydro powered electrcity! And such
fixtures do involve electronics that may or not be recycled safely
when the fixture breaks down which it will inevitably do?
And hydro power is pretty reliable; provided climate change doesn't
bugger up water flows.
Burning say coal doesn't make any sense at all.
Big additional hydro development in Labrador Canada (if and when it
gets off the ground, in a manner of speaking) that will be capable of
providing clean power to New England states etc.