On Saturday, July 26, 2014 9:46:03 AM UTC-4, Ed Pawlowski wrote:
On 7/26/2014 8:26 AM, Frank wrote:



Doubt it.

The heat capacity of anything you put in is bound to be greater than

air. I think water has over 1,000 times the heat capacity of air.

That means putting things in and cooling them down will probably use

more energy than that gained by the air volume loss.



OTOH, things that you normally cool down before using like bottled water

might best be stored in the refrigerator to take advantage of

maintaining cooling during a power failure.



You have a valid point about stuffing for the sake of stuffing, but if

you have a case of juice or beer, better to put it in to fill the space

rather than put a bottle at a time. You'll be using the same amount of

energy to get it down to temperature anyway, but get less air loss each

time the door is opened.

Even if it's not something that you need to cool anyway, once it's cooled
it can stay cooled for years. The air that would be there instead can
get changed out for warm air every time the door is open. Not that I
think it's worth worrying about. My fridge uses less than $100 a year
in electricity. I can't imagine this fussing around saving more than
a couple bucks a year, it's just not worth it. And who has free space
in their fridge to begin with? I don't have to add anything, it's
already full.