NEW COLD WAR COULD PRODUCE A FINER REFRIGERATOR

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, February 14, 1993                   TAG: 9302150312
SECTION: HOMES                    PAGE: E-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: THOMAS W. LIPPMAN THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Long
NEW COLD WAR COULD PRODUCE A FINER REFRIGERATOR
Suppose your appliance dealer offered a refrigerator that had all the features you wanted at a competitive price but was at least 30 percent more energy-efficient than other brands, and environmentally friendly as well. Would you buy it?
A group of utilities is betting $30 million that the answer will be yes. That is the prize they are offering in a winner-take-all contest between Frigidaire Co. and Whirlpool Corp., to design such a refrigerator and build a prototype by next July.
In a secret judging session in California in mid-December, utility engineers selected the two manufacturers as finalists from an initial field of 14 in a contest aimed at force-feeding promising but expensive new technologies into the appliance market.
Frigidaire and Whirlpool have until July to develop prototypes of a refrigerator that will be at least 30 percent more energy-efficient than current federal standards require, use no ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, in the cooling system or insulation and yet be similar to existing models in price and features so that customers will want them.
The winner will be expected to sell about 300,000 units, with the price to consumers effectively subsidized by the $30 million. The money is being offered by Super Efficient Refrigerator Program Inc., a coalition of 25 private and public electric utilities.
The utilities are buying "negawatts" - paying for electricity they will not have to produce, rather than paying for additions to their capacity.
The household refrigerator may seem an unlikely arena for technological breakthrough - its basic design has changed little since electric-powered models replaced the icebox many decades ago - but the potential for nationwide energy savings through refinements in mundane components is immense, according to contest sponsors.
The estimated 110 million refrigerators in the United States account for more than 20 percent of all household energy use, said Ray F. Farhang, an executive of Southern California Edison Co. and chief executive of SERP.
The model that wins the contest, experts said, is likely to incorporate several relatively modest efficiency improvements in its motor, compressor, door seals and insulation, rather than a single ground-breaking new technology. To consumers, it will look like any ordinary refrigerator, ice-maker and all.
"It will have the same looks, the same sort of features that consumers want," said Farhang. "We told the manufacturers, `We need a product you can sell, a product there is a demand for.' "
Driven largely by progressively tighter federal standards, manufacturers have greatly increased refrigerator efficiency since the first energy crisis of the early 1970s.
A typical 18-cubic-foot refrigerator model delivered 20 years ago consumed more than 1,500 kilowatt hours a year, while a similar model built today consumes about 900. Most of the reduction was achieved by substituting polyurethane insulation for fiberglass in the cabinet, according to Len Swatkowski, a technical expert at the Association of Appliance Manufacturers.
SERP said its goal "is to increase refrigerator efficiency in the next three years on the same order of magnitude as has been accomplished since 1972," and to abate the threat to the ozone layer from CFCs, which will have to be eliminated by 1996 in any case because of federal regulations adopted since the contest was announced.
Energy efficiency on the order sought by SERP would cut annual carbon dioxide emissions from power plants by 600,000 metric tons, according to Environmental Protection Agency estimates.
"Domestic consumer bills will drop by at least $240 million per year," then-EPA Administrator William Reilly said in announcing the selection of the finalists. Each household that acquires one of the 300,000 units can expect to save more than $500 over the life of the unit, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Theoretically, the gains registered by the manufacturer that wins the contest will compel others to adopt similar energy-saving devices, multiplying the savings as the nation's refrigerator inventory is replaced. A refrigerator's life span is normally 15 to 20 years, Swatkowski said.
Because the two finalists are competing, their proposals were judged in secret, and it is not known what devices or techniques they are evaluating for inclusion in their prototypes.
According to David B. Goldstein, co-director of the energy program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, which helped organize the contest, several components of a refrigerator lend themselves to efficiency improvements.
Most promising, he said, is insulation that uses a vacuum, rather than CFC-based urethane foam. He said manufacturers are developing vacuum-insulation blocks, similar to double-glass windows with air between the panes, that can have 10 times the insulation value of materials now in use.
"It's not a new material but an absence of material," Goldstein said.
Another possibility, he said, is to modify defroster controls. Existing models defrost when signaled by a timer, "whether the refrigerator needs it or not." The timer could be replaced by a sensor that would kick in only when frost collects on the coils and defrosting is necessary, he said.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB