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How the Ice in Your Drink is Imperiling the Planet - Ecocentric - TIME.com
How the Ice in Your Drink is Imperiling the Planet
Posted by Jeffrey Kluger Thursday, April 14, 2011
Want to save the Earth? Easy, just buy a couple of ice trays. To the long list of
human inventions that are wrecking global climate—the internal combustion
engine, the industrial era factory—add the automatic ice maker.
Climate modelers have long known that households are far bigger contributors
to global warming than most laypeople realize. For all the blame tailpipe
emissions take for escalating temperatures, homes and office buildings are
actually the single largest contributor to greenhouse gasses. One key reason is
the 100-plus million refrigerators in America's 111 million households. According
to the Department of Energy, the standard fridge sucks up about 8% of the
electricity used by all homes—a pretty big share given the dozens of big and
small appliances and electronics that are also drawing juice.
That energy gluttony has always made refrigerators prime targets for design
improvements and most of the big manufacturers have made real progress in
squeezing every last bit of efficiency out of their machines—especially since they
know that cash-strapped consumers are paying closer attention than ever to
energy-consumption ratings before making their purchasing decisions. The
problem is, those ratings are not always terribly precise. In general,
refrigerators will simply get a gross energy-use score, without anyone
examining just which components in the overall machine are driving the
numbers up or down. Ice makers have thus long gotten a pass, but analysts at
the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) recently decided to
give them a closer look—and they got a surprise when they did.
According to the just-released findings, the average ice maker in the average
fridge increases energy consumption by 12% to 20%—a whole lot of juice for
an appliance that is in operation 24 hours a day from the moment you first plug
it in till the moment you replace it a decade or more later. The reason that
number was so unexpected was that the large majority of refrigerators are
refrigerator-freezer combinations anyway—which means they're freezing water
and making ice no matter what. So why should the simple business of
automating the process be so energetically expensive?
The answer, it turns out, is the tiny motor inside the freezing system that's
used to release the bits of ice from the mold and dump them into a tray. A
motor that is designed to operate in so cold a setting needs an internal heater
to keep it from freezing up, and heating elements require a lot of power—in this
case, roughly three fourths of the total additional energy the ice maker uses.
Certainly, on the list of big things that are responsible for global warming, the
icemaker ranks a good ways behind the coal-fired power plant, but averting
climate catastrophe is often a game played in increments and inches, and every
kilowatt hour helps. NIST is thus urging refrigerator manufacturers to look
closely at the design of their icemakers, insisting that there are "substantial
opportunities for efficiency improvements merely by optimizing the operations
of the heaters."
That appeal to reason, NIST officials hope, will be enough. But just in case it
isn't, the Department of Energy has announced that it intends to add 84
kilowatt hours to the efficiency rating of every refrigerator equipped with an
icemaker. Consumers will feel that fact in the wallet—and if manufacturers don't
scramble to improve their numbers, they soon will too.
It's not enough that our toilets won't flush and shower heads don't flow sh!t.
[email protected]...
How about tube amps that shut down automatically after 5 minutes on standby, eh?
.
How the Ice in Your Drink is Imperiling the Planet
Posted by Jeffrey Kluger Thursday, April 14, 2011
Want to save the Earth? Easy, just buy a couple of ice trays. To the long list of
human inventions that are wrecking global climate—the internal combustion
engine, the industrial era factory—add the automatic ice maker.
Climate modelers have long known that households are far bigger contributors
to global warming than most laypeople realize. For all the blame tailpipe
emissions take for escalating temperatures, homes and office buildings are
actually the single largest contributor to greenhouse gasses. One key reason is
the 100-plus million refrigerators in America's 111 million households. According
to the Department of Energy, the standard fridge sucks up about 8% of the
electricity used by all homes—a pretty big share given the dozens of big and
small appliances and electronics that are also drawing juice.
That energy gluttony has always made refrigerators prime targets for design
improvements and most of the big manufacturers have made real progress in
squeezing every last bit of efficiency out of their machines—especially since they
know that cash-strapped consumers are paying closer attention than ever to
energy-consumption ratings before making their purchasing decisions. The
problem is, those ratings are not always terribly precise. In general,
refrigerators will simply get a gross energy-use score, without anyone
examining just which components in the overall machine are driving the
numbers up or down. Ice makers have thus long gotten a pass, but analysts at
the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) recently decided to
give them a closer look—and they got a surprise when they did.
According to the just-released findings, the average ice maker in the average
fridge increases energy consumption by 12% to 20%—a whole lot of juice for
an appliance that is in operation 24 hours a day from the moment you first plug
it in till the moment you replace it a decade or more later. The reason that
number was so unexpected was that the large majority of refrigerators are
refrigerator-freezer combinations anyway—which means they're freezing water
and making ice no matter what. So why should the simple business of
automating the process be so energetically expensive?
The answer, it turns out, is the tiny motor inside the freezing system that's
used to release the bits of ice from the mold and dump them into a tray. A
motor that is designed to operate in so cold a setting needs an internal heater
to keep it from freezing up, and heating elements require a lot of power—in this
case, roughly three fourths of the total additional energy the ice maker uses.
Certainly, on the list of big things that are responsible for global warming, the
icemaker ranks a good ways behind the coal-fired power plant, but averting
climate catastrophe is often a game played in increments and inches, and every
kilowatt hour helps. NIST is thus urging refrigerator manufacturers to look
closely at the design of their icemakers, insisting that there are "substantial
opportunities for efficiency improvements merely by optimizing the operations
of the heaters."
That appeal to reason, NIST officials hope, will be enough. But just in case it
isn't, the Department of Energy has announced that it intends to add 84
kilowatt hours to the efficiency rating of every refrigerator equipped with an
icemaker. Consumers will feel that fact in the wallet—and if manufacturers don't
scramble to improve their numbers, they soon will too.
It's not enough that our toilets won't flush and shower heads don't flow sh!t.
[email protected]...
How about tube amps that shut down automatically after 5 minutes on standby, eh?
.
