If you’ve been considering purchasing a little refrigerator, you’ve certainly contemplated this question: how much power does a mini refrigerator require? Because it is far more compact than a standard refrigerator, it must use a great deal less electricity, right? Today, we will provide detailed answers to all of your pressing inquiries, beginning with “how many watts does a tiny refrigerator use?” The response can take you by surprise.
Contents
What Is Wattage? And How Does It Work?
Before we go any further, we need to address the obvious question that everyone is thinking about: what exactly is a watt? What information does it provide you? Don’t worry, we won’t go too technical or use any difficult vocabulary in this conversation.
Watts, in their most basic form, are the units of measurement for electric power. They provide information on the amount of power that a device consumes. Almost every device in your kitchen has a label somewhere on it that specifies the amount of watts it uses.
Watts are the fundamental unit for determining how much energy a device consumes. Kilowatt-hours, abbreviated as kWh, will be included anywhere on the monthly electricity bill that you get at the end of the month. Wattage tends to increase in proportion to the size of the device. This is what will inform you the total amount that you will have to pay each year as well as each month.
Mini Fridge Wattage
Mini refrigerators typically use between 50 and 65 watts of power on a continuous basis. However, things aren’t quite as simple as they first seem to be here. There is a possibility that certain models will utilize a lower amount, while others are capable of exceeding that range. In point of fact, there are certain versions that can use up to 100 watts of power!
Different Models, Different Wattage
There are a number of different things that might affect the amount of wattage that a tiny refrigerator uses.
To begin, the size of the refrigerator is important since bigger models use more energy than smaller ones do.
Second, the energy efficiency of your small refrigerator is also impacted by the quality of the insulating system that it has. If your refrigerator is effective at retaining cold, you should expect it to use less electricity.
Thirdly, in comparison to more recent models, older ones use more power and have a greater wattage. Because of this, it could be beneficial to spend a little bit more money on an appliance that is more up to date and saves more energy.
In conclusion, the manner in which you stock the mini-fridge is also an important consideration. Because of the pressure that is placed on the motor, the refrigerator is forced to operate for longer periods of time, which results in increased energy consumption.
How Many Watts Does My Mini Fridge Use?
How do you know how much electricity your small refrigerator is consuming if each little refrigerator is unique? It is easy, and there is no element of guesswork involved at all.
Examine the contents of your refrigerator as a first step. It is recommended that there be a label affixed to one of the side walls, and that it include information of a technical nature. We are going to take a look at those data.
You should also notice a number for “amps” in addition to the “volts” figure. Simply multiply the two numbers together to get an accurate wattage reading. Voilà.
You also have the option of reading through the instruction handbook (if you still have it). You won’t have any trouble finding whatever you need to know in there, like the wattage, for example.
Mini Fridge vs Full-Sized Fridge: Energy Consumption
It should come as no surprise that full-size refrigerators have a greater power usage than their smaller counterparts. That is mostly due to the fact that they are so big.
Mini refrigerators typically have a volume of roughly 3 cubic feet, in contrast to the standard refrigerator’s capacity of around 23 cubic feet. Because of this significant disparity, the average amount of power that refrigerators use is anywhere between 100 and 250 watts.
Are Mini Fridges Energy-Efficient?
Mini refrigerators use a fraction of the power of standard-sized refrigerators because of their smaller size. They are able to maintain the temperature of the goods being cooled at more or less the same level while using less electricity.
Having saying that, not every single model is very good at saving energy. You may save quite a bit of money annually by purchasing ones that are more recent and built by trusted manufacturers. If you are not cautious, purchasing low-quality appliances might wind up emptying the contents of your wallet. Search for products that have been awarded the Energy Star certification.
How Much Does It Cost to Run a Mini Fridge?
You’ll be able to figure out how much you’ll have to spend for the electricity to run your tiny fridge once you know how many watts it consumes. However, we are unable to provide you with a direct response at this time.
The reason for this is because tiny refrigerators do not operate continuously throughout the day. They are not squandering electricity around the clock. Instead, they work in spurts throughout the day. The engine will operate until the temperature inside the refrigerator has dropped to an appropriate level, at which point it will shut off until the next time it will be necessary to cool the refrigerator, and so on. That implies that on a daily basis, your tiny refrigerator will probably be on for around a third of the 24 hour period.
The wattage-hour value may be calculated by multiplying the wattage of your tiny refrigerator by eight hours, which is equal to a third of a day.
After that, you will need to divide that figure by 1000 to get kilowatt-hours, which is the measurement that is most often used for estimating the cost of power.
The cost of operating your small fridge each day may be calculated by taking this number and multiplying it by the price per kilowatt-hour in your area.
Wait, What?
Let’s break that down even further by looking at an illustration, shall we?
Imagine you have a little refrigerator that only requires 100 watts of power to operate. If it operates for eight hours every day, which is equivalent to one third of a day, then its power usage is equal to 800 watt-hours. That’s equivalent to 0.800 kilowatt-hours of energy use. Considering that the cost of one kilowatt-hour of electricity in the United States is 13.31 cents on average, the cost of operating this little refrigerator would be $3.20 per month. That works up to almost $38.4 each year!
Top Tips for Lowering Your Mini Fridge Power Bill
You are in luck because there are things you can do to further reduce the amount of money you spend on powering your tiny refrigerator. Warning: these are probably the things that your parents instructed you to do when you were a younger child.
Keep the Door Closed
If you keep opening the door to the small fridge, the temperature inside will eventually reach an unsafe level. In order to combat this, the engine begins working overtime, which results in increased energy consumption. This will ultimately be reflected in your monthly power statement; the more energy that is used, the higher the cost will be.
If you want to stay to a reduced budget and lower power consumption, try to avoid the temptation of continuously examining what is inside your tiny refrigerator. This will help you keep your power consumption lower.
Don’t Leave the Doors Open for Long
The same thing takes place when you keep the doors open for an excessive amount of time: you will wind up spending more money annually due to the increased energy usage. Because of this, the most up-to-date tiny and regular-size refrigerators are equipped with a beeper that goes off if the door is left open for an extended period of time.
Stack Items Efficiently
A fantastic tip for saving money is to store your food and beverages in an orderly manner inside your storage areas. To begin, the information that you want may be located in a simple and expedient manner. Second, since the cold air within the refrigerator is able to move more freely, it can chill each shelf in an equal manner. This stops the engine from going into overwork mode, which in turn brings the temperature within the appliance down, which in turn reduces the amount of energy that is used.
Defrost Whenever Needed
It’s possible that you’ve seen ice crystals accumulating on the shelves and walls of your little refrigerator on occasion. It’s nothing unusual, but you’ll just have to get used to it. If you don’t, the engine will have to (you guessed it!) work harder than normal to bring the temperature down throughout the whole inside of the tiny fridge.
You are in luck since we have previously provided an in-depth explanation of how to defrost a compact refrigerator in only one day!
Keep It Away from Heat Sources
One further approach to save costs is to relocate your mini-fridge away from any particularly warm rooms in your home or place of business. When the temperature is high outdoors, the tiny refrigerator will attempt to compensate by operating at a higher level (and wasting more energy and money).
It is in your best interest to store it outside of cabinets and away from equipment that generate heat (such tea kettles or instant pots).
FAQs
Do mini fridges take a lot of power?
When in operation, a micro refrigerator consumes an average of 65 watts of electricity and is on for an average of 8 to 10 hours each day. This equates to an average daily energy use of around 600 Wh and an annual energy consumption of approximately 220 kWh. At a rate of 12 cents per kWh (kilowatt-hour), the annual operating cost of a tiny refrigerator would be between $20 and $30.
Can I run a mini fridge off an inverter?
The power inverter has the capacity to manage up to one thousand watts of continuous electricity, which ought to be more than plenty for your little refrigerator.
How many watts does a Frigidaire mini fridge use?
The operating power consumption is listed as 55 Watts on the technical schematic that is included with the product (less then an average incandescant light bulb).
Can I plug a mini fridge into a power strip?
You certainly may, but before you do so, I would advise you to determine the total amperage need of everything that will be connected into the power strip. If, for example, you have a minifridge that draws 2 amps and you hook it into a power strip that has 10 amps but nothing else plugged into it, everything should work well.
How much money does a mini fridge add to electric bill?
It is predicted that the yearly cost of your power use in a tiny fridge would be between $60 and $80, which translates to a cost of between $5 and $6.67 each month to operate. The annual operating costs of a full-sized home refrigerator may range anywhere from $90.00 to $200.00, which breaks down to between $7.50 and $16.67 per month in monthly costs.
Can you run a mini fridge on solar?
If there is a battery, an average amount of direct sunlight, and no partial shading, a 100-watt solar panel is capable of reliably powering a small (12V) car refrigerator with a capacity of 1.6 to 2.5 cubic feet, and it has the potential to reliably power a mini-fridge with a capacity of 4.5 cubic feet.