The Hindu Business Line : Videocon refrigerator most energy efficient: Study

IF you're planning to buy a colour television, a refrigerator, a water heater or a ceiling fan, be sure to check out its electricity consumption. According to a study conducted by VOICE (Voluntary Organisation in Interest of Consumer Education), consumers are being cheated of over Rs 5,600 crore per year due to energy-inefficient domestic appliances sold in the domestic markets.

"Important energy efficiency information is not revealed to consumers by manufacturers, and the consumers have no ways and means of knowing how much money they waste on energy-inefficient appliances," VOICE has said in its report.

The organisation has called for the earliest implementation of `Energy Efficiency Standards and Labelling' of products to be implemented by the Bureau of Energy Efficiency for saving on electricity bills (which are increasing due to privatisation of distribution companies), based on the provisions in the Energy Conservation Act, 2001.

As per the findings of the report, "There is a wide variation of energy consumption among brands tested, and some of the popular brands had surprisingly poor performance in terms of energy consumption."

The report reveals that while domestic refrigerator brand Videocon consumes the lowest energy in a day (0.60 kWh), Kelvinator, the most trusted brand, performed poorly. Kelvinator shoots past the maximum prescribed limit for energy consumption at 1.1 kWh per day, thus being an energy guzzler as per the finding. Kelvinator, however, has refuted the VOICE finding as incorrect (See box II).

Kelvinator, which advertises itself as the `coolest one', takes the maximum time to cool (202 minutes) as against Videocon's 78 minutes. The survey found that though Whirlpool is the quickest ice-maker, no brand provides the standard size 300-ml ice-tray as specified by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS).

Further, no brand declares the cooling time, ice-making time or energy consumption of the refrigerator. BIS also does not specify any cooling time, or ice-making time for manufacturers to follow. "In case of energy consumption, they only prescribe an upper limit and no optimal energy consumption value," the study said.

Eight brands catering to the segment of 165-175 litre direct cool refrigerators were tested. The VOICE study revealed that the energy consumption of each brand per day varied from 0.60 kWh (Videocon) to 1.44 kWh (Kelvinator). In terms of actual running cost for an entire year at the rate of Rs 4 per unit (kWh), the refrigerator that consumes 0.60 kWh of power (Videocon) will cost Rs 876, while that consuming 1.44 kWh (Kelvinator) will cost Rs 2,102.

Similarly, a study was also conducted on the energy efficiency of 12 major brands of colour televisions (CTVs). Keeping 10 hours per day as the average viewing time, it was found that the lowest power consumption was that of BPL CTVs while the highest was that of Panasonic.

The study also examined the energy efficiency levels of 10 brands catering to the segment of 25-litre geysers for a day. It was found that the actual cost of running a geyser for a year at the rate of Rs 4 per unit ranged from Rs 1,153 to Rs 2,113.

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