The refrigerator is an essential appliance in our homes that by its nature needs to be On 24 hours a day to preserve food, whether we are at home or not. And although its electricity consumption is not very high, this continued use makes us consider turning it off when we are going to go away on vacation for a few days.
If we are going out for a long period of time, for example more than a week, the usual recommendation is that we spend all the perishable food we can and that let’s turn off the fridge completely.
However, in Easter unlike other festive seasons like summer vacations you will most likely we’re only gone for a few days, so perhaps turning off the fridge is something too drastic and is not going to save us a significant amount of money either. What should I do and how much can I save?
How to prepare the refrigerator if we are going to leave it on
If we are going to go out of the house for a few days, we can take a series of measures to adapt our refrigerators to this period of absence. Thus, one of those that we can carry out consists of change the temperature of the refrigerator (not from the freezer) to select a higher one that consumes less energy and that is located around 10 degrees.
This is something that some models already have provided with a special mode of operation called “vacation” a characteristic that we already saw in depth in this article and that do not include all refrigerators (it is convenient to consult the instruction manual to see if ours has it) but that can be very useful.
The idea behind this functionality is that when activated, the fridge (not freezer) temperature rises a few degrees going from the between 3 or 5 habitual which would correspond to the ideal temperature at between 10 and 17 degrees, depending on the manufacturer. Thus electricity consumption is reduced of the apparatus.
In general activate this mode affects only the fridge part on combi models or side by sidebut not in the freezerwhich allows us to transfer to it everything that we want to continue preserving in perfect cold conditions and leave food that does not need refrigeration in the other part.
Raise the temperature of the refrigerator by activating this mode logically it will keep food worse that we store in it. Therefore, it is an interesting measure if we are only going to leave things not likely to break easily at that temperature drinks, breads, fruits, vegetables, sausages and the likebut not if we want to keep fresh meat or fish.
It is also convenient that if we are thinking of leaving it connected, having a higher temperature than normal let’s clean the fridge inside to avoid the proliferation of bacteria that could spoil food or cause bad odors on our return.
We must not forget either adapt the kitchen to our period away from home so that the refrigerator works as little as possible but keeps the food very cool.
For example, if we have awnings and blinds it is convenient to leave them lowered so that the sun does not shine, make sure that the window is closed and even the door too so that a microclimate is created where the temperature of the kitchen does not rise excessively and thus the fridge will work less.
How much can I save if I leave it on
Very good, maybe in our case we do not want to completely turn off the fridge for various reasons, such as because we are not going to be away for many days, because we have food that we want to keep in it or simply because we want to have food ready to cook when we return.
In this case we can try to find out how much will it cost us to leave it on all these days taking into account that the consumption of the device in general will be lower than usual, whether we have set the vacation mode or not. The reason is simple: we are not going to open the door and the cold will remain much longer inside.
However, we are going to consider the consumption of an average refrigerator that is between 100-200 watt hours, depending on the size, features and temperature that we have set. But this data is not the same throughout the day, since there are times when the compressor is turned on at maximum and quieter periods where the expense is zero.
For this reason we can take as data for the calculations the average consumption throughout the daywhich is between 500 and 1,100 watts per day, although this data depends a lot on the size of the refrigerator, the load it has and the environmental area where we live.
So, if we assume that we will be gone seven days that will imply a consumption of between 3,500 and 7,700 watts. Considering average PVPC electricity rates that have recently been around 0.20 euros per kilowatt hourthen the cost will be between 0.7 and 1.54 euros for that week vacation.
As we can see, it is not a high amount, so in many cases maybe it is not worth turning it off completelybut rather follow the advice mentioned above.
Cover image | nrd
In Xataka Smart Home | I’m going on vacation for a few days: tips to find your appliances and equipment in perfect condition when I return