Chest Fridge

Using vertical doors in refrigeration devices is an act against the Nature of Cold Air. Understanding and cooperating with Nature rather than acting against it leads to much better efficiency.

My chest fridge (Vestfrost freezer turned into a fridge) consumes about 0.1 kWh a day. It works only about 2 minutes per hour. At all other times it is perfectly quiet and consumes no power. If I connected my chest fridge to the power grid, $5 would pay for the entire year of using it.

It is obvious that a truly energy efficient fridge does not cost any more money than a mediocre one. It actually costs less. It also has amazing food-preserving performance because temperature fluctuations in its interior are naturally minimized.

So - WHY mediocre food-spoiling fridges are being made? WHO makes decisions to manufacture them? Who awards them "stars" and other misleading awards? Why people continue to buy and use energy wasting and food-spoiling devices? Does anyone care about understanding anything?

Nearly every household on Earth has a fridge that totally wastes at least 1 kWh of energy a day (365 kWh a year). How much reduction in greenhouse emissions can we achieve by banning just ONE inefficient household device in just ONE country? How many politicians debating for how many years will it take to achieve such a ban?

Rather than waiting for someone to do something I supplied freezer-to-fridge modification kits to environmentally conscious people of Australia for 20 years.

Following ~20 years of our campaign promoting chest fridges, many modern manufacturers of chest freezers decided to provide them with temperature control up to +6 deg C, thereby allowing these chest freezers to be used as chest fridges. We recommend you to source such a freezer instead of ordering our freezer-to-fridge thermostat. If you plan to use a second-hand chest freezer as a fridge - please contact Tom for a custom order.

After ~20 years of service my Vestfrost freezer stopped working efficiently. I replaced it with 2 CHiQ hybrid inverter freezers one 142L and another 198L.

When I set their thermostats to +6 deg C, the energy consumption for both is about 0.4 kWh per day during a heatwave and about 0.18-0.23 kWh/day on a normal summer day. The standby power use for both is about 1.5 Watts. This energy consumption is larger than it was for my 240 litre Vestfrost freezer when it was new, but my new CHiQ freezers have larger combined volume of 340 litres, and their installation is simpler. Having two hybrid fridges gives me freedom to use one as a fridge and another as a freezer - whenever I want. I did not have this option when I used one large chest fridge.

Another benefit of using CHiQ freezers is their reduced peak power demand. Traditional single-phase AC compressors, typically used in fridges, demand more than 1 kW (>1000 Watts) power during starts, creating challenges for small off-grid battery powered systems. In contrast, the peak power demand for two CHiQ freezers is only about 138 Watts, because they use inverter-based slow starting and energy efficient motors in their compressors. Reduced peak power means that small inverters can be used to power the refrigeration system from a battery.