Investigating the real life energy consumption of refrigeration appliances in Germany: Are present policies sufficient?

Christian Hueppe, Jasmin Geppert, Julia Moenninghoff-Juessen, Lena Wolff, Rainer Stamminger, Andreas Paul, Andreas Elsner, Jadran Vrabec, Hendrik Wagner, Heike Hoelscher, Wolfgang Becker, Ulrich Gries and Alfred Freiberger

Energy Policy, 2021, vol. 155, issue C

Abstract: Domestic refrigeration appliances are standard household commodities. Although policies, such as the energy labelling, prompted technical improvements and decreased appliance energy consumption throughout recent decades, important parameters were disregarded. These refer to the efficiency loss over time and the consumer behaviour. The objective of this contribution was to develop a dynamic energy model to determine the power consumption of refrigeration appliances considering degradation factors and behaviour. These were included by model parameters for direct consumer interactions, such as the storage behaviour, door openings and temperature setting, as well as indirect actions, e.g. exposing an appliance to specific temperature conditions at an installation site. For this, an online-survey was conducted to evaluate the consumer behaviour. A total of 706 consumers participated in the national questionnaire, serving as input for the dynamic energy model. It was found that the efficiency loss increases the power consumption by at least 1% annually, leading to an excess of 10% after 10 years of usage. Another important finding was that 32.5% of appliance's power consumption results from consumer behaviour, whereas the promotion of behavioural changes leads to a significant decrease of the consumer-induced consumption. Consequently, this study provides a tool to evaluate the impact of policies targeting refrigeration appliances, stressing that efficiency loss and behaviour should be integrated into future policy approaches.

Keywords: Energy efficiency; Refrigeration appliances; Dynamic modelling; Degradation; Consumer behaviour; Energy savings (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:enepol:v:155:y:2021:i:c:s0301421521001440

DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2021.112275

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