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Re:PHP 5 and 7.0 end of life by userbinator on Saturday July 20, 2019 @02:29PM (#20487458)
I'm not, but someone on YouTube has taken the time to document restoring one of similar vintage:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_ysVqppaN0

The article you posted shows they went from 1300kWh/yr to 412kWh/yr. Amusing that it says "Some use as little as 255 kwh/year" when the article I posted mentions 244kWh/yr for the 30s Monitor-Top. (Mine is a "flat top" but has a very similar refrigeration system.) Like I said, average power consumption went up after the late 60s/early 70s, but before that they used less.

The compressor in mine draws <100W when running. A quick calculation shows that if it was running 24/7 that would be almost 900kWh/yr, but it definitely won't be running that much --- duty cycles I've found for these old ones vary from 15-20%, giving around 200kWh/yr, still very good. How often you open it and/or put warm things in probably has a higher impact on total power consumption than anything else.

Re:PHP 5 and 7.0 end of life by pbhjpbhj on Sunday July 21, 2019 @01:45PM (#20492558)
Thanks for that.

This is extremely surprising, no. Motor/compressor/refrigerant/insulation design have all improved considerably.

Any insight there?

Usage patterns clearly have an impact, but I doubt they change much for a particular family across models -- some models have little doors for heavy use items to reduce air exchange, compartments probably make a big difference ('glass' shelves instead of wire).

Interesting. /beardStroke

Re:PHP 5 and 7.0 end of life by userbinator on Sunday July 21, 2019 @09:19PM (#20494759)
Apart from improved insulation I don't think there's been much in the way of improvements since the late 30s --- if you look at the hermetic systems, they haven't changed much in decades.

In fact, the newer "environmentally friendly" refrigerants are less efficient than CFCs... so it's sort of a tradeoff between risking more ozone depletion when they leak, or putting more CO2 into the atmosphere from the higher power consumption...