I have read that unplugging anything electrical when not in use is a great way to cut your energy consumption and therefore your energy bills. I’ve tried to do that with a number of items around the house, including the cell phone chargers, reading lamps and the shredder (which I use to shred junk mail and then reuse as packing material for sending packages, but more about that in a future blog posting).

But I got to wondering: what about the electrical appliances that I use daily and can’t unplug or don’t because it’s not convenient to do so? How much energy were these appliances sucking up?

I just found a cool website through the U.S. Department of Energy on Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE). It provides mathematical formulas for determining how much you are spending in energy dollars to run certain appliances. This is a good and bad thing–good because it gives you a measurable way to understand your energy costs, and bad because the reality of how expensive it is to run appliances is quite scary.

For example, my circa 1970s refrigerator in the kitchen, which came with this house, does a great job of keeping things cold but at what price? It says inside the freezer door that the unit uses 1,388 kwh (kilowatts) of energy to run each year (with the disclaimer that actual energy use may vary. I’ll bet.) According to the EERE formula, that means that we spend $117.98/year to run this refrigerator. But wait, there’s more. We have an “overflow” refrigerator in our mudroom that is plugged in all the time. However, this is a newer model frig, purchased in 1999. It’s a Kenmore, top-freezer model from Sears and has a good Energy Star rating. By comparison this fridge costs $39 a year to run.

Gee, which refrigerator do you think we should unplug the next time we go on vacation? The choice is obvious.

I’ll keep you posted on how expensive or efficient other appliances in our house are.