Most of us have a freezer but how many of us know about freezer running costs ? Are they high or low – do they vary much between freezers and can we reduce their costs further?
I put on my best specs, dug out the calculator and started looking at freezer running costs.
With growing our own food, we need to store it. We enjoy seasonal food but it’s nice to have a selection available all year round and a freezer is ideal for this.
Like most people we have busy lives and the freezer helps us there. It takes no longer to make 2 shepherd’s pies or lasagnes than one, enough soup for 6 meals as one, so we bulk cook and freeze.
Then when we are busy, we can pop into the freezer and defrost a ‘ready meal’ except that this is a genuine home cooked meal.
Make Your Freezer Pay!
We’re also bargain hunters; when the shop reduces something because it is at the end of its shelf life, we grab it. One of our best bargains was a chateaubriand reduced from £27.99 to £4.99. By freezing we can hold onto the bargain until we’re ready to eat it.
Check products for suitability for freezing – especially fish which may have already been frozen and defrosted. Cheese and butter will freeze. Cream does not freeze well but can be converted to butter and then frozen. Previously frozen fish or meat can be cooked and then re-frozen as part of a home made ‘ready meal’.
Now this has meant that we’ve acquired 4 freezers. Second hand bargains, of course. A small chest freezer, a small upright freezer, a tall upright freezer and a fridge freezer. Perhaps a bit much for two of us and four cats, but that’s how things have worked out.
Energy Saving Plug – Savaplug, Effect on Freezer Running Costs
With the increasing cost of electricity, we decided to see how much they actually cost to run and to measure the effectiveness of a device called a Savaplug that is claimed to reduce running costs for fridges and freezers. The results were interesting and in some cases, the costs were chilling. Sorry about that pun!
When this article was written, we were paying about 11p per Kwh – now we’re paying about 14p. I’ve left the calculations as they were but you can see that as time goes on the savings of energy efficiency increase.
We bought a power metering device that tells us how many hours it has been running since the last reset and how many KWh have been consumed. Since we pay just over 11p per KWh, we can calculate running costs with a bit of maths. A KWh is a unit of electricity – one kilowatt run for one hour.
Unfortunately Savaplug seems to be sold out everywhere and not available to the public at the moment but you might find some on ebay or even a car boot.
Freezer Running Costs – Test Methodology
- Each freezer was run for a minimum period of 24 hours without the Savaplug and then with the device connected. Temperature was measured continuously and no difference was found.
- At the end of each test cycle the KWh consumption and running time was noted. By dividing by the number of hours on test, power used per hour was calculated.
- By multiplying this figure by 24 hours in the day and 365 days in the year (8,760), annual running costs were calculated on the basis of a cost per KWh of 11.7p
Part 1 of a 3 part article on freezer running costs. See also :
More Information on Freezing Produce
- Freezers and Freezing Food
- Freezers – Chest or Upright Freezer?
- How to Freeze Food – General Information, Blanching etc.
- Freezing Vegetables – Preparation & Blanching Times Part 1
- Freezing Vegetables – Preparation & Blanching Times Part 2
- Freezing Herbs – How to Freeze Herbs
- Freezing Fruit – How to Freeze Fruits
- Freezer Running Costs – How Much do Freezers Cost to Run
- Freezer Running Costs – Test Results How Much our Freezers Cost
- Running Costs for Freezers Conclusions
