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| Fig. 1: Typical residential refrigerator (Source: Wikimedia Commons). |
In California, nearly every occupied housing unit employs at least one electric refrigerator (see Fig. 1), with a significant fraction maintaining a second auxiliary unit in a basement, garage, or similar secondary space. Because refrigerators operate continuously throughout the year, they constitute a baseline electrical load that does not fluctuate with occupant behavior, thermostat adjustment, or time of day. Quantifying the aggregate electricity associated with refrigeration therefore provides insight into a stable and unavoidable component of residential electricity demand. In this report, data from the 2019 California Residential Appliance Saturation Study (RASS) is used to compute total statewide residential refrigerator electricity consumption and its share over the total residential electricity consumption. [1]
2019 RASS, which reports detailed household site electricity consumption by end use, gives total first refrigerator electricity consumption in California occupied housing units that ranges from 1,209 kWh for single-family homes to 968 kWh for apartments in buildings with five or more units. [1] This figure encompasses first refrigerators in the residential sector, and disregards second refrigerators and freezers that show greater variance between different dwelling types.
The same year, 2019 RASS reports average residential retail electricity consumption as 6,174 kWh for individually metered households in the study population. This figure is based on normalized interval data for 39,682 households. [1] Since both numbers refer to the same sector and year, they are directly comparable. Averaging first refrigerator electricity consumption across housing types, we arrive at 1088.5 kWh in 2019. Dividing 1,088.5 by 6,174 yields a fraction of approximately 17.6 percent. Thus, in 2019, first refrigerators in California homes accounted for slightly more than seventeen percent of all residential electricity sold across the state.
It is important to note that the study's methodology ensures its statewide relevance. While the Unit Energy Consumption (UEC) estimates were derived from individually metered households, the appliance saturation data encompassed the full housing stock using conditional demand analysis results to generate population-level estimates representative of the participating utilities. This rigorous approach validates the application of the 1,088.5 kWh average refrigerator consumption to the broader California residential sector.
Refrigerator electricity consumption at the appliance level has decreased markedly over the past several decades. This trend is driven in part by federal energy conservation standards issued under the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Appliance and Equipment Standards Program. In January 2024, the DOE promulgated a direct final rule in the Federal Register establishing updated, legally enforceable energy conservation standards for consumer refrigerators, refrigerator-freezers, and freezers, which sets maximum allowable annual energy use for new products based on equipment class and volume. [2] These standards reflect improvements in insulation materials, compressor efficiency, fan motors, and control systems.
In addition to regulatory actions, technical studies have examined how refrigerator and freezer energy use depends on household and climate characteristics. Greenblatt et al. derive functions for residential refrigerator and freezer energy use based on factors such as ambient climate, household behavior, and appliance configuration, and find that efficiency improvements and changing technology mix significantly reduce typical annual consumption compared to earlier generations of equipment. [3] Their work shows that climate and usage patterns affect energy use, but also that design and policy can meaningfully reduce the energy requirement for cold food storage.
The fact that refrigerators account for slightly more than seventeen percent of California residential electricity use in 2019 is important for several reasons. First, refrigeration is a relatively inflexible load. While some residential end uses, such as electric vehicle charging or certain forms of electric water heating, can be shifted in time by demand-response programs or time-of-use pricing, refrigerators must cycle frequently to maintain safe internal temperatures. Although there is some limited scope for shifting compressor operation within small time windows, the overall duty cycle cannot be reduced much without compromising food safety. As a result, refrigerator electricity use contributes to a non-negotiable baseline of residential demand that remains present even when other loads are curtailed.
Second, this baseline nature means that refrigerators assume greater relative importance in scenarios where other residential loads become more flexible or more seasonal. For example, as policies and technologies encourage load shifting and energy storage to integrate variable renewable generation, more of the heating, cooling, and mobility load may be scheduled to align with renewable output. In such a system, refrigeration remains a permanent requirement that must be met by generation capacity regardless of renewable availability. Planners and policymakers need to be aware that a substantial fraction of residential consumption cannot be shifted to off-peak times or curtailed without unacceptable consequences.
Third, the share of residential electricity devoted to refrigeration highlights the importance of continued appliance efficiency improvements and stock turnover policies. Since each refrigerator operates continually, even modest reductions in per-unit annual consumption accumulate to significant statewide savings when multiplied across the millions of California housing units. Standards such as those in the DOE direct final rule can reduce the energy use of new refrigerators, and studies like that of Greenblatt et al. provide insight into the potential range of consumption under different design and usage conditions. [2,3] However, these policy and technology advances will only affect the statewide total as the existing stock is replaced. This lag should be explicitly considered in long-range planning for residential electricity demand and in assessments of the potential energy savings from appliance efficiency measures.
Using California Energy Commission's 2019 Residential Appliance Saturation Study, one can calculate that primary refrigerators in California occupied housing units used 1085.5 kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2019, which corresponds to approximately 17.6 percent of all residential electricity sold across the state that year. [1] Although federal standards and technological progress have significantly reduced the electricity consumption of new refrigerators, the aggregate residential refrigerator load remains large because the appliance is nearly universal, runs continuously, and is replaced slowly. [2,3] Consequently, refrigerator electricity use constitutes a stable, structural component of residential demand that must be taken into account in any serious discussion of residential energy consumption and demand management.
© Marinos Eliades. The author warrants that the work is the author's own. The author grants permission to copy, distribute and display this work in unaltered form, with attribution to the author, for noncommercial purposes only. All other rights, including commercial rights, are reserved to the author.
[1] "2019 California Residential Appliance Saturation Study (RASS), Volume 2: Results," California Energy Commission. CEC-200-2021-005-RSLTS, July 2021.
[2] "Energy Conservation Program: Energy Conservation Standards for Refrigerators, Refrigerator-Freezers, and Freezers; Final Rule," 10 CFR 430, 88 Fed. Reg. 3026, 17 Jan 24.
[3] J. B. Greenblatt et al., "Energy Use of US Residential Refrigerators and Freezers: Function Derivation Based on Household and Climate Characteristics,'" Energy Effic. 6, 135 (2013).
