Appliances Energy-efficient appliances According to the Australian Greenhouse Office, 29% of all the energy used by a household goes on use of appliances. This includes 9% on the fridge and freezer, and 15% on electronic equipment and items such as irons, vacuum cleaners and sewing machines. But the energy used by a household also includes all their transport. If you don’t count transport in the energy total and just look at electricity and gas usage, the percentage of a household’s energy use from appliances goes up to 53%. This means that cutting the energy used by your appliances can have an immediate effect on bills and carbon emissions. While most people can’t live without using appliances some of the time, it’s easy to make energy cuts by using them more efficiently. And when it’s time to replace your whitegoods, choosing the most energy efficient appliances available can save several tonnes of carbon emissions across the item’s lifetime. Changes in the Lanes’ household included low-energy lightbulbs that were a more suitable design for their light fitting, a front-loading washing machine to replace the top-loader, a new fridge-freezer twin-pair to replace a similar set, and showerheads that cut down the amount of hot water needed in a shower. n Energy Ratings www.energyrating.gov.au n Operating costs of electrical appliances www.sustainability.vic.gov.au/resources/documents/Operating_costs_of_electrical_appliances.pdf n Choosing and using household appliances www.sustainability.vic.gov.au/www/html/1984-dishwashers-fridges-and-freezers.asp n Global Warming Cool It – appliances www.greenhouse.gov.au/gwci/appliances.html Dryers and drying rooms More than 55% of Australian households have a clothes dryer. Clothes dryers are one of the highest power-drawing appliances in a home, so it’s important to use it efficiently – drying light items and heavy items separately, drying full loads rather than single items, and doing multiple loads in a row to take advantage of residual heat. Best of all however is to simply not use it wherever possible. Most parts of Australia have sufficient sun and/or wind most of the year to make using a dryer unnecessary except for convenience. The old rotary clothesline is still the cheapest solar dryer technology we have. There are times when a clothesline can’t be used, however. An old fashioned solution to this was the drying room, and the Cops added some extra modern technology. A small storeroom was fully sealed and draught-proofed and drying racks installed. Then a solar venting system was installed on the roof above. The system draws air into a collector where it’s heated by the sun. That warm air is vented into the drying room and cool moist air is drawn out. Solar venting systems are more commonly used as a running-cost-free heating solution to provide warmth and reduce damp (particularly in moist climates), which is also what you need for drying clothes. The drying room was tested over a week, measuring and comparing the humidity and temperature inside and outside. The data showed that clothes in the drying room became dry within three to four hours. | | Carbon Cops : Appliances n Clothes washing and drying tips and facts www.greenhouse.gov.au/gwci/clothes.html n Solar Venti and Global Export Solutions www.ges.com.au n Sun Lizard www.alternativefuels.com.au/sunlizard Standby power and phantom loads Many electronic appliances use a constant trickle of power when they’re on standby. Chargers for mobile phones, cameras and music devices still use power when they’re not charging anything. The total of all of this is called the “phantom load” of a house, because it doesn’t seem to come from anywhere – nothing is in use. To cut your phantom load down, appliances need to be switched off at the power point. You can see how much your phantom load is by picking a time when nothing electrical is being used, and then having a look at your electricity meter. You’ll see it’s still spinning. A quick way to calculate your total phantom load is: n Add 5 watts for every appliance with a little red or green light on standby n Add half a watt for every charger plugged in to an active power point. If you’re not sure if a charger is drawing power, touch it – if it’s warm, it’s using electricity. n To work out the cost or the kilogrammes of carbon emissions per year, add $6 or 66kg for every standby appliance, and 60 cents or 7 kg for every charger. The Australian Government has developed policy and standards to reduce the amount of standby energy that electronic and electric appliances consume. n Standby power and government policy www.energyrating.gov.au/standby.html n Energy Star program www.energystar.gov.au n Global Warming Cool It – standby power www.greenhouse.gov.au/gwci/standby.html Refrigerators 99.9% of all Australian households have a refrigerator, and 33% have at least two or more in active use. They’re an important feature of our life in a warm climate, and important for our food safety. So the energy efficiency of our refrigerators is going to have an impact on Australia’s energy use – with almost eight million households, that’s at least ten million refrigerators in use across the country. Refrigerator technology has changed throughout the last few decades. Fridges from thirty or fifty years ago had less efficient motors, so needed much thicker and better insulation. As motors became more efficient, fridges could be made more cheaply with less insulation and still have the same energy use. The Energy Star ratings were brought in around the mid-1990s, at which point it became required for manufacturers to record energy consumption under standard testing conditions. Fridges sold prior to this may not have manufacturer’s specifications for energy consumption available. Since that time refrigerator technology has advanced. Consumer pressure has meant that the energy consumption of fridges has dropped, and it’s dropped enough that the permitted values for star ratings needed to be dropped as well. This happened in 2005. So a fridge rated as three stars in 2005 uses significantly less energy than a similar-size fridge rated as three stars in 2001. One option for old fridges is to have them reconditioned. Reconditioning involves fixing any seals, ensuring that a highly-efficient compressor is installed, and that the insulation levels are as high as they can be. It also involves making sure there are no leaks in the refrigerant system, changing the refrigerant gas to one that is currently approved if need be, and topping | | Carbon Cops : Appliances up refrigerant levels. The Phoenix Fridge project, a joint venture of the Moreland Energy Foundation and the Brotherhood of St Lawrence, takes donations of old fridges and gives them to apprentice refrigeration mechanics to recondition under supervision. The newly fixedup fridges have a much improved energy efficiency, and are donated to low-income earners who might not be able to afford the newest and most energy efficient fridges. n Energy ratings and efficiency for fridges and freezers www.energyrating.gov.au/rfmenu.html n Phoenix Fridge project www.mefl.com.au/business/project/49/ Fridge placement Fridges keep their contents cool by removing heat from the inside and putting it outside the fridge. The hotter their surroundings, the harder they have to work to get the heat out and the more electricity they use. If a fridge’s radiator coils are kept in too small a space or pressed up against a wall, the heat can’t dissipate and stays by the fridge, forcing it to work harder even on a cool day. All fridges should be placed at the manufacturer’s recommended distance from the wall, so that natural air flow can cool the coils effectively. Enclosed spaces are also a bad idea, as the heat brought from inside the fridge can’t go anywhere. Instead it’s trapped around the outside of the fridge where it makes the coils work harder, and where it can seep back inside again. Putting fridges in full sunlight during summer is another place that will raise the electricity use. Refrigerants Energy consumption is not the only carbon problem associated with refrigerators. The refrigerant gases used to transfer heat from the inside of the fridge to the outside are also greenhouse gases. The refrigerants were once CFCs, but have been replaced in recent fridges by ozone-friendly gases since our recognition of the ozone hole. Ozone-friendly doesn’t mean climatefriendly: both CFCs and their new replacements are far more powerful at trapping heat in our atmosphere than the most common greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide. The refrigerant in your fridge may be about 8000 times as warming as carbon dioxide. This means that every kilogram of refrigerant – less than a milk-carton’s worth - that escapes into the atmosphere is equivalent to eight tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions. That’s more than the average Australian car puts out in a year. At this point in time, the biggest effect of these substances on climate change comes from the choices we make at end-of-life, in terms of resource recovery, recycling and destroying banked material. Old refrigerators can leak these gases over time, and disposing of a fridge badly can mean accidentally releasing all the refrigerant into our atmosphere. Refrigeration mechanics are now trained in removal and correct disposal of these gases. n IPCC Special Report on Safeguarding the Ozone Layer and Global Climate System arch.rivm.nl/env/int/ipcc/pages_media/SROC-final/SpecialReportSROC.html Cooking and energy use Cooking creates about half a tonne of carbon emissions each year in an average Australian home. There are many different ways to save energy in the kitchen, from choosing the method that’s the most energy efficient to cook any one thing, to finding ways to cut down the waste of heat. Energy ratings have not yet been developed for cooking appliances, so you can’t choose your new oven or sandwich toaster based on a star rating. But you can make some good estimations about running costs. In general, the larger the cooking appliance and the longer | | Carbon Cops : Appliances the cooking time, the more energy you will use for cooking and the more expensive your cooking costs will be. The wattage listed on the appliance shows how much it uses – low watts means low running cost. You can also look for energy-efficient features, such as tripleglazed oven windows or high levels of oven insulation. Smaller electric cooking appliances such as microwaves, electric kettles or electric frypans are generally energy efficient and inexpensive to run. In general, electric stove cooking creates more emissions than gas cooking, small efficient appliances or microwave ovens, but this can vary. The most efficient form of electric stovetop is an induction stovetop, which can use up to 50% less electricity than a normal electric stove. These are cool to the touch, because they heat only your saucepan and not your stove itself. They are often used in places where fire is a risk. n Global Warming Cool It – cooking www.greenhouse.gov.au/gwci/cooking.html n Sustainability Victoria – cooking appliances www.sustainability.vic.gov.au/www/html/1971-cooking-appliances.asp n SEDO Western Australia - cooking www1.sedo.energy.wa.gov.au/pdf/cooking.pdf Cooking tips n Don’t boil more water than you need n Use an electric burner that’s the right size for your saucepan n Put lids on pots n Simmer at the lowest flame size you can n Check your oven seals n See how something’s cooking by looking through the oven window rather than opening the door n Don’t pre-heat gas ovens before baking n Save coolness by thawing frozen food in the refrigerator. This will help cool the other food in the fridge n Use the smallest and quickest appliance to cook with where possible n Reheat food in the microwave rather than the oven Microwave ovens Microwaves are a form of light that’s at a lower frequency than either heat (infrared light) or visible light. This light is just the right frequency to cause water molecules to start moving back and forth in resonance. When cooking in a microwave oven, the water molecules in food get vibrated back and forth, creating heat. The heat energy moves from the water molecules into the rest of the food, heating through it. This means that the highest temperature you can get food to in a microwave is the boiling temperature of water – 100 degrees. This is why food cooked only with microwaves doesn’t brown: browning is a chemical reaction that only takes place at temperatures over 130 degrees. Inside your oven, the microwaves are generated inside a magnetron, and aimed at the food in the oven. Because they’re pure light energy, once their energy’s been absorbed by something the microwaves are completely gone – they can’t stay in your food. The oven itself is sealed and shielded to microwaves, so they can’t escape from the oven while it’s cooking. If the door’s opened, the magnetron shuts off automatically so that you’re not exposed to any microwaves yourself. n Food Science Australia factsheet, microwave cooking www.foodscience.afisc.csiro.au/micwave1.htm © ABC Copyright 2007 | | Carbon Cops : Appliances