A Cool $30 Million : Whirlpool Wins Prize for Designing Environmentally Safe Refrigerator
Whirlpool Corp. on Tuesday beat out rival Frigidaire Co. in a competition for a $30-million prize to design a refrigerator that is highly energy-efficient and more environmentally friendly.
The high-stakes industrial contest was sponsored by a consortium formed by 24 electric utilities, including Southern California Edison Co., the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and Pacific Gas & Electric Co.
The competition, which drew 500 responses from around the world, was intended to accelerate development of a refrigerator that would be at least 25% more energy-efficient than today’s models and use no ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs.
David Goldstein of the Natural Resources Defense Council, which first proposed the contest idea, called the collaborative program “a whole new way to address the energy policies of the nation.” Each of the utilities provided from $150,000 to $7 million, depending on the number of customers in their service area.
Goldstein estimated that the new refrigerator will save utility customers $300 to $500 in electric bills during the appliance’s lifetime.
Across the country, state regulators are pressing utilities to find innovative ways to reduce customers’ energy use instead of building new power plants to meet increased demand.
Refrigerators, which use about 20% of the electricity in the average household, seemed like a logical first step, said Ray Farhang, an Edison executive who headed the utility consortium, known as the Super Efficient Refrigerator Program Inc.
“We have been encouraging our customers to purchase the most efficient products in the market,” Farhang said. “This (contest) is one way that we can bring lower bills with an enhanced product.”
Whirlpool said it plans to market its first super-efficient model as early as the first quarter of 1994. The 22-cubic-foot, side-by-side unit will be sold under the Whirlpool and KitchenAid brands and at Sears stores under the Kenmore brand.
The new refrigerator will be priced about the same as today’s comparable models--between $1,200 and $1,600, depending on features, Whirlpool said. Although the refrigerator will cost more to manufacture, the company will be able to hold down prices by using the $30-million prize to partially subsidize production costs.
Whirlpool will get its award in the form of rebates from SERP--about $120 per refrigerator sold. The Benton Harbor, Mich., company says it sees strong demand for the super-efficient models and expects to sell at least 250,000 of them.
California will receive about half the refrigerators Whirlpool manufactures because California utilities contributed about half of the $30-million prize money.
Farhang said if Whirlpool sells 150,000 refrigerators in California, the annual energy savings will be roughly equivalent to the energy used by 10,000 households per year.
Frigidaire, which also developed a prototype model, said it has already incorporated some of the design advances into current models.
“We found many new ways we may not have found so soon in our developments,” said Tony Evans, a spokesman for the Dublin, Ohio-based company.
Frigidaire said it plans to market its own super-efficient models as soon as possible.
The success of the SERP program has led to similar coalitions for other products.
Twelve organizations, including utilities, environmental groups and researchers have formed a sister company called the Consortium on Energy Efficiency Inc.
The group plans to announce projects involving more efficient appliances such as air conditioners and washing machines within the next 12 months, Farhang said.
“We realized that the SERP concept was so successful and so innovative that we didn’t want it to die,” he said.
A Winning Design
In a contest sponsored by utility companies to design an environmentally friendly, energy-efficient refrigerator, Whirlpool Corp. closed the door on the competition, winning the $30 million prize. Company engineers achieved most of the refrigerator’s energy savings by concentrating on: * COMPRESSOR: A redesigned, more energy-efficient compressor using advanced, computerized “fuzzy logic,” which uses the system in the most efficient way at any given time. The compressor accounts for about 90% of a refrigerator’s energy use. * ADAPTIVE DEFROST CONTROLS: Defrost controls that only operate when needed, not at wasteful, routine intervals. * THICKER INSULATION: Wall and door insulations does not use CFCs. * DRAIN TRAP: A simple change in the shape of the defrost runoff pipe to keep warm air from entering the refrigerator. * VACUUM INSULATION PANEL (Will not be used in first model but will likely be in subsequent models.) * LOW ENERGY FAN
More Efficient Refrigerator The amount of energy used by refrigerators has dropped sharply since 1972, when the appliance industry first began to monitor energy use. Prompted by tougher federal energy standards, the annual energy consumption of refrigerators decreased by more than 50% between 1972 and 1991, the latest year for which figures were available.
Average annual energy consumption per unit in kilowatts: 1972: 1,726 1991: 856
Source: Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers; Researched by ADAM S. BAUMAN / Los Angeles Times
