Top energy star rated fridges — Keeping your cool with minimum energy use
This is an excerpt from an article in Sanctuary magazine issue 17.
The kitchen workhorse, the fridge-freezer, is getting more and more energy efficient: so much so that the star rating system recently needed recalibrating.
Refrigerators and freezers sold in Australia are required to meet minimum energy efficiency standards, and carry star rating labels to help you compare models. According to Sustainability Victoria, each extra star can save you around 20 per cent on energy use and therefore running costs. The rating system was regraded in 2010 and expanded to allow up to 10 stars for future products with exceptional efficiency; for now, the best-performing fridge-freezers carry 3.5 to 4 stars (around 5 stars in the old system). Remember to compare stars only across fridges of the same volume; you can also compare energy usage in kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year, given on the rating label. All this rating information is available online too, at the Equipment Energy Efficiency website (www.energyrating.gov.au).
If you’d like to read the rest of this article you can buy this issue here.
