OT: I purchased my new refrigerator and my son left for college last August. My electric bill was cut in half!
I'll be able to tell exactly how much savings was from the fridge when he moves home this summer (I think roughly 25%).
I'd be surprised, unless you use very, very little electricity other than for your refrigerator.
I have one of those Kill-a-Watt meters, and my 17 YO fridge (nothing fancy, not bought a s a super efficient unit at the time, in fact it is a bottom freezer, which people say are less efficient) uses less than $10/month (@ $0.10/KWHr), my 22 YO freezer uses less than $7/month. New units *might* use about half that, but it is half of a fairly small number.
The new fridge should have come with a statement on average costs, and you can probably look up the number for the old one. But I suspect you can thank your son for the savings (or yell at the kid for the waste
), I would not expect much more than a $5/month savings from the fridge. It is tough to tell just from your bill, seasonal variations can be large.
edit/add: I mentioned this for the clunkers, but they should do a reverse auction for these - offer small credits until the actions dries up, then keep raising them each week until the total funds allocated are used up. They would have a slow, controlled flow of money. They would optimize the number of upgrades (which was the point, right?). If a business consistently sold out in hours, they would raise the price of their product. Actually, they shouldn't do these credits at all, but that's another story.
-ERD50
