Comment by technothrasher
10 days ago
Somebody in rural Africa once told me, "one advantage you have living in a colder area is that you don't have to run your fridge for half the year!" I honestly didn't have any good answer for him as to why I do anyway.
Off topic but I always wanted a fridge that uses cold outside air to cool in the winter.
That's actually kind of a "cool" idea. Likely reduce bills significantly with some kind of external HVAC connection, like your dryer, that pulls in cold air from a shaded overhang on the side away from solar input (or maybe underground).
This paper [1] has some discussion of testing differences between 16 C, 25 C, and 31 C ambient exhaust conditions. It's actually a fairly significant difference under testing. ~(0.35, 0.70, 1.05) kWh / 24h for (16 degC, 25 degC, 31 degC). Refrigerators in experiments were kept at ~ 5 degC (approx 600 tests).
[1] https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/82169783/j.ijrefrig.20...
That sounds either really difficult to make and maintain or an absolutely fridge industry destroying innovation. Given weather and stuff I fear the first. Sick idea tho. I know nothing of fridge engineering besides basics so could be way off.
Fridge in winter isn't wasteful. All the energy consumed goes towards heating
Depending on what "colder" means, some days it'll still be too warm outside, or some days it will be freezing, or both. Neither is good for many foods or drinks you keep in your fridge.
Of course this might still be micro-optimization from a rural Africa point of view. And a part of the reason for running the fridge is still just convention and convenience.
in rural plqces often they will also use alternate ways to keep things good besides keeping things cold, because its cheaper or more easily available than using a fridge. drying things, salting (pickle? not sure of the term sry) etc. so they have less usecases for a fridge than us (lazy?) ppl whi just throw a fridge at any such problem of food preservation
haha this... had similar experience :'). for ice cubes? haha