Yea, but it keeps my food cool and thus edible for several days longer than it otherwise would. Power usage of a device isn't the problem, power used not doing useful work for me is.

Nah they're really not. My freezer is basically nothing because it only gets opened once every few days. You might need a new freezer.

Actually a freezer only averages like 25-50 watts. It pulls a lot of power when the compressor is running, but the compressor usually isn’t running.

Newer ones are going the way of inverter/variable drive and “always on”, but varying their duty cycle. It’s the future!

A nice bonus is they soft-start (lower breaker trip risk) and no start capacitor to go bad. But more other electronics to fail.

Are freezers really that bad? Does it depend if they're chest or standup?

I don't remember my bill going up when I added a freezer, I didn't really measure though.

A chest is much better. The reason is intuitive: if you open it the cold air remains inside except for a little turbulence at the top and, of course, the new air that pours in to replace whatever you’ve just removed.

Whereas, when you open an upright one, cold air immediately starts pouring out the bottom of the opening, with warmer air coming in at the top to replace it.

Your energy use is going to be much more impacted by how full you keep your freezer. For the same reason.. the more product you have in there, the less air you have in there.

Your chest freezer will typically use about the same about of yearly kWh as a standing freezer would, but the chest freezer will typically have about 30% more capacity.

So.. it's "better," but if you're not going to keep it full, you may not actually be saving any total energy.

The thermal mass of the air is tiny - cooling it is negligible.

Chest freezers have better insulation and door seals, which is why they're more efficient.

> The thermal mass of the air is tiny

> Chest freezers have better [...] door seals

Hmm.

Is it outlandish to think that a modern standing freezer with working seals will let less air out the seals than is exchanged by opening the door even a couple of times a week?

Modern standing freezers are starting to get drawers with sides in them now, presumably for reducing air loss while it's open. And seals are practically air-tight (if you've lived in a place with high humidity, even tiny gaps or holes in the seal causes noticeable condensation and water build up. So I'm skeptical about the seal claim. Better insulation may be true.

> a modern standing freezer with working seals will let less air out the seals than is exchanged by opening the door

I think the idea is that the seals can conduct heat, and do so much better than whatever abitrarily-sophisticated thermal isolation is in the walls of the freezer, not that the airflow through the seals is carrying any significant amount of heat.

The chest freezers I've seen have very similar seals to standing freezers, are you saying they're significantly better?

In ether case modern doors build out an insulating section around the seal, and the seal itself creates a second seal against that so it's air gapped inside the freezer as well. The seal itself of course is a hollow tube which is somewhat of an air gap with the outside too. They're pretty good, I would be surprised for their small surface area if they caused a huge conductive loss.

Chest freezers do have much thicker insulation on all walls (as they aren't constrained by the standard widths (24 to 40 in in the US, I think? 60-90 cm in the EU).

Chest freezer seals are far better than upright freezer seals because:

* The length of the seal is smaller compared to volume,

* The height of the seal is not constrained by the closing magnets (as mechanical latches are not legal on consumer freezers),

* The temperature differential at the top of the freezer is smallest.

The specific heat capacity of air at constant pressure is ~1 kJ/kg K and 1 m^3 air has a mass of ~1.2 kg, so 1 kJ/kg K * 1.2 kg = 1.1 kJ/K. Even a freezer that exchanges 2 m^3 of air for outside air at say a 70K differential (the difference between -40C and a 30C room) for each opening only has to remove 1.1kJ/K * 2 * 70K = 154kJ, or 0.05 kWh, which is the standard unit of electricity.

An unit of residential electricity in the most expensive US State (Hawaii) is 41.2c / kWh, so opening our enormous freezer in the worst possible conditions and completely exchanging the air using the most expensive electricity costs us 2¢. It's a complete non-factor.

Source for prices: https://www.energybot.com/electricity-rates-by-state.html

What's the energy difference in the seals then?

> are you saying they're significantly better?

closewith (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32890571) is saying that:

> Chest freezers have better insulation and door seals

I'm not claiming anything either way, just pointing out that the seals are for sealing heat, not (primarily) air.

Modern freezers really aren't that bad. Chest freezers being better than standing, because less of the cold air escapes when it is opened.

The US requires all consumer appliances to have an Energy Guide sticker (the yellow and black thing) which estimates an annual KWh use and cost at average electric prices. My cheapo 4cuft chest freezer uses about 200 KWh annually, or about $25. Not nothing, but $2 a month isn't going to register compared to most things.