How Much Power Does Your Fridge Actually Use? – It’s Probably Less Than You Think!

Written By The Solar Lab

When a power outage strikes, the first thought many of us have is, “How do I keep my fridge running?”. After all, with grocery prices through the roof, who wants to have to replace everything just because of a blackout? 

This is also why many people consider buying a portable power station or generator in the first place. Whether the grid is unreliable where you live and blackouts happen all the time, you’re worried about storms and hurricanes knocking out the power, or you just want to be prepared for anything, a power station can be a reliable source of backup power.

However, there’s quite a bit of misinformation out there when it comes to keeping a fridge running. Far too many people are convinced that kitchen fridges have massive power requirements, so only the highest capacity power stations would be able to keep them running for more than a few hours. In fact, we’ve even seen this debate rage in the comment sections of our own videos.

So, if you’ve wondered how much power your fridge really uses, we’re here to show you that it’s probably way less than you think. To do so, we’re going to quickly explain how refrigerator power ratings work, then explain how much power they actually use in a day, and what this means for your emergency power backup plans. Let’s get started!

Refrigerator Power Ratings Explained

You may have noticed that your refrigerator came with a sticker or label on the back or side of it that lists its power rating. It might say something like "115 volts, 3 amps," or simply list the wattage. This number represents the maximum power your fridge can draw when it’s working its hardest—like right after you plug it in for the first time and it’s cooling down from room temperature. Even if you have a combination fridge and freezer, the numbers on that label will reflect the maximum power consumption that unit is rated for when both are running. 

It's important to remember that most of the time, your fridge isn’t running at full power. This is because once the interiors of the fridge and freezer are cold, the compressor only kicks on occasionally to maintain that internal temperature. 

For the rest of the time, it’s basically just chilling and using almost no power at all. Sure, the fridge will kick on if you leave the door open long enough for the cold air to escape, and it will have to work harder if your house is particularly warm, but fridges just don’t run at full tilt all the time. If they did, they’d be insanely loud. 

The truth is, modern fridges, and even that old-school beer fridge you still have working in the garage, are designed to keep cold air inside. Once the fridge’s evaporator fan motor has drawn enough power to cool down the interior, the fridge will stay cool, so the motor barely has to work.

Here’s the key takeaway: your fridge doesn’t run 24/7. Instead, it cycles on and off, depending on factors like: 

  • The Room Temperature Where Your Fridge is Located: Naturally, a fridge in a hotter room is going to have to work harder than one that is sitting in a cold garage or basement. 

  • Fridge Settings: For adjustable fridges, a colder internal temperature setting requires more energy to maintain those colder temperatures. 

  • Your Usage: Opening the door frequently forces the fridge to work harder. Whenever the door is open, that cold air inside the fridge escapes, meaning the fridge has to kick on and cool the internal air down again.

  • The Size of the Fridge: As you can probably guess, a huge, double-door fridge is going to use a lot more power than a small bar fridge.

  • Extra Features: Things like built-in ice makers and water filters draw power, so a fridge that has extras is going to pull more power than one that doesn’t. With that said, these power requirements will be included on the power rating listed on your fridge’s label. 

Our Power Consumption Tests:

We have used power stations to run fridges countless times for our power station reviews, so we were pretty confident that they don’t use nearly as much power as some people claim they do. With that said, here at The Solar Lab, we always want to make sure that we actually back our claims by running our own tests. 

To settle the debate on how much power a fridge actually uses, we tested three typical household refrigerators under normal conditions. Here’s what we found:  

Fridge #1 (Robbie’s Kitchen Fridge): 

This basic kitchen fridge is rated for 345 watts. When the compressor kicked on, it used around 110 watts. Over a full 24 hours, it consumed about 1.3 kilowatt-hours (1,300 watts) in total.  

Fridge #2 (Tiny Baby’s Not-So-Tiny Fridge): 

Tiny Baby likes big appliances, so, unsurprisingly, his fridge had the highest power requirements of the three fridges we tested. It was rated for 609 watts; however, when we tested it out, it only used about 130 watts when we left the door open long enough to get the fridge’s motor running. Its daily power consumption? Also, roughly 1.3 kilowatt-hours. 

Fridge #3 (The Solar Lab Fridge): 

Finally, we tested the fridge we use here at The Solar Lab. It’s rated for 350 watts and the front of it is loaded with extras, like a water dispenser, ice maker, and LED-lit touchpad. It drew 110 watts when cooling and consumed 1.33 kilowatt-hours over an entire day. 

What These Results Mean:

Those results are pretty consistent, aren’t they? Even with variations in fridge size and features, all three used roughly the same amount of energy over a 24 hour period. 

For clarity, we didn’t just leave these fridges alone to prove our point, we tried to simulate standard daily use by opening and closing the door to both the fridge and freezer, using the ice maker on the fridge here at The Lab, and basically just trying to use them like it was any other day. 

We also measured the power consumption using the same plug-in voltage, amperage, and wattage meter that we use for so many of our other tests and reviews, so the numbers were accurate. 

Why the "Divide by 3" Rule is Wrong 

A common formula we kept finding online, including in an article about fridge power requirements by SolarReviews, suggests calculating your fridge’s daily energy use by dividing its rated power by 3 and then multiplying that number by 24.

Using this formula, a 350 watt fridge would supposedly consume about 2,800 watts per day—more than double what we found when we measured three completely different full-sized kitchen fridges. 

Based on our tests, the compressor inside a fridge runs for about 10 minutes per hour, or a sixth of the time. A more accurate formula would be:  

Rated Power ÷ 6 × 24 hours

For a standard 350 watt fridge, that’s around 1,400 watts per day, much closer to the real-world results we discovered after running three distinct 24 hour tests. 

What Does This Mean for Your Power Backup Needs?

What does this actually mean, beyond just proving that your fridge isn’t the only reason why your utility bills are so high? Basically, it means it’s much easier to keep your fridge running during a blackout! In other words, you don’t need a hugely expensive power station to prevent your groceries from spoiling if you lose power for a day or two.

If, like the fridges we tested, your fridge uses about 1.3kWh daily, how long could a portable power station keep it running? Let’s take the budget-friendly EcoFlow DELTA 3 Plus as an example.  

This compact power station has a battery capacity of 1,024Wh. That’s enough to power your fridge for almost a full day, without recharging! If you have a solar panel setup, you can keep that unit’s battery charging while it keeps your fridge running, stretching the number of days you can keep your fridge going without grid power. 

If you have the larger EcoFlow DELTA Pro 3, with its battery capacity of 3,600Wh, you could stretch that to almost three days of fridge power. Again, this would be without charging up the unit’s internal battery with solar panels.

For most of us, outages rarely last that long. In fact, smaller and more affordable options like the DELTA 3 Plus or even the Anker F2600 are going to be sufficient to keep your fridge running until the power comes back on. Basically, you don’t need some elaborate and expensive power station and solar panel setup to keep your fridge cold during a blackout. With that said, those who need to keep their fridge running without grid power for multiple days at a time might want to go with a bigger setup, but most people only use grid power for about a day following a storm.

Our Final Thoughts

Your fridge may be the heart of your kitchen, but its power demands aren’t nearly as intense as you might think. Even with a fairly basic portable power station, you can easily keep it running during an outage—and still have room to power other essentials, like lights and charging your phone. 

If you’ve ever seen someone claiming that fridges are massive energy hogs, share this article (or the video) with them. We doubt they’re being rude dicks for the sake of it, they probably just read the wrong information. And, if you’re currently in the market for a power station, we’ve linked a few units below that we think are great for basic home backup needs. 

🛒 Our Favorite Power Stations for Home Back Up

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The Solar Lab
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