Day: November 19, 2020

We had a very old freezer — more than 35 years old — which we thought was “still going strong”. After installing Sense and get a number of devices recognized, it was clear from the usage that this freezer was not only a major power hog, but the power meter also showed it was running about 55 minutes (or more!) every hour. Recognizing the savings potential, we took our time shopping around and settled on a new ‘basic’ freezer, which “paid for itself” in less than a year; Sense shows that its “on” cycle is ~20 minutes/hour (vs 55!) AND the power while on is about 1/4 of the old one.

Fast forward a year later: our old (but not as old as the freezer) analog fridge (which we loved the inside layout of) started making noises louder than usual at times; cleaning the coils did not help. Looking back over ~6 months at the Sense “Trend” data, it was clear that the “on-cycle” times started getting longer about 6 weeks earlier.

Then, one day it wouldn’t start after a brief power outage … panic! Turned it off, back on — whew. It started back up.

We’d been casually looking at possible replacements, but with the added incentive of the Sense data showing a recent gradual increase in the “duty cycle”, we knew we had to decide on a replacement. It took us almost 3 months to agree on one and get it in — but we didn’t have to make a “rush” to decide and get the quickest one available. We also were able to wait for a good sale (praying the old one wouldn’t die before we could get the new one in!). The new fridge has the latest cooling technology and runs at about 1/3 the monthly cost of the old one … and no scramble to “salvage the contents” of a failed fridge.

While most new replacement appliances will give a power savings, Sense allowed us to plan for replacement and wait for a good sale — which was about an additional $800 savings between the two appliances!