Comparing the power consumption of a 30 year old refrigerator to a brand new one

Summary

Our apartment came with a refrigerator. It was alright, it made things cold, it kept them cold. It was also incredibly noisy, and no matter how much I fiddled with its settings, the compressor was always running and any ice cream left in the deep freeze part got rock solid. When I hooked up one of my smart plugs to it, I soon learned why: one of the two compressors was running all the time. This lead to a huge block of ice forming on the back of the main compartment, and the deep freeze section icing up really quickly. I suspect that the thermostat may have been busted and contributed to the issue, but after trying to repair a dishwasher, getting cut about 10 times on my hands and losing, I had zero interest in attempting another home appliance repair on my own. The refrigerator was the UPO Jääkarhu (jääkarhu means polar bear in Finnish), and the manual that the previous owner had still kept around had July 1995 on it, meaning that the refrigerator was about the same age as I am: 30 years old. Not bad at all for a home appliance! Behold, the UPO Jääkarhu! The manual that came with the refrigerator. I shopped around for a new refrigerator and got a decent one that’s about the same size, except newer. I won’t mention the brand here because they didn’t pay me anything and this post really isn’t a refrigerator review, but it was in the low-to-midrange class, sporting a “no frost” feature, and could be bought for about 369 EUR in Estonia in the summer of 2025. Based on some napkin math, I assumed that within a few years, the electricity savings will cover the upfront cost of buying the new refrigerator, assuming that it doesn’t break down. After letting it run for a while, I had some data! Turns out that the old one consumed 3.7x more electricity compared to the new one. Here are some typical daily power consumption numbers: old refrigerator: 2.6 kWh new refrigerator: 0.7 kWh Daily power consumption of the old fridge, in kilowatt-hours (kWh). Daily power consumption of t...