World's Most Inefficient Refrigerator?
 

I think I saw the world's most inefficient refrigerator today at my local grocery store. Just inside the door they had a "display" fridge with some meat and other stuff they had on sale. It was about 2 feet high. The top of the fridge where the food sat was completely open and the output from the condenser was at the floor area where my feet were when I was looking at the food. So the heat that was just extracted from the food area rose up by convection and went right back into the area where the food was, to be pumped out by the system again. They just had a couple of panes of glass about 6" high on the sides (not the front where the heat was) to keep the cold air in and the hot air out. The power company must have designed this thing. Unbelievable.

The latest thing I've seen in the grocery store is plastic flaps instead of doors to the coolers. Must save them money on install. I can't imagine it costs less over time though.

If that display fridge uses ten times as power as my fridge/freezer, it would cost about $1/day to run. If the display fridge sells at least two more frozen dinners per day, they come out ahead.

I do my shopping at Aldi, where they don't waste electricity on gimmicks like light-up vendor displays, open fridges, or in-store music. :rolleyes:

I've asked about open coolers like this and altho they don't tend to be a good design for home use they do seem to have their place as a cooler with doors tends to loose alot of air when you open or close the door as the door it's self is pumping air in and out of the fridge, just like if you want to get smoke or a foul smell out of your house you don't just open a door you open and close it repeatedly.
They also tend to be designed to cool the food, not the air, by having the coils double as the shelving alot of the time, air is a poor conductor of air so really the only poor design is where the hot air is coming out of the bottom.
It's been a while but when our food co-op first got some open front coolers like this I asked them the same questions and they showed me the specs.