This is kinda cool.  I recently read that Energy Star was revamping ratings for some category since now a very high percentage of products in the category already met the standard; IOW, it wasn’t pushing very hard.

But there’s another organization which tracks ultra-efficient appliances: The Consortium for Energy Efficiency (CEE). I found out about this when looking for a cheap, efficient backup fridge at Home Depot (we have a tiny kitchen which can only hold a tiny fridge, and sometimes we overflow).

I was looking at a Hotpoint HTH17CBTWW mainly because it was:

1. cheap
2. Energy Star certified

but I noticed this little “Tier 3” icon on the tag.  Hm what’s that, I wonder, pulling out the trusty Apple fetish device.  The list on the CEE website tells me that this unassuming, cheap little white box fridge is really amazingly efficient; its power usage of 324 kWh/year is 30% better than the Federal standard of 463 kWh/year!  It’ll save $65 a year over the one it replaces, and will pay for itself pretty quickly.

Anyway.  I think it’s cool that there is an easy way to find out about appliances that go above and beyond Energy Star – if you’re looking for efficiency, take a gander at the lists at CEE.

Edit 10/29/2010: Possibly because it’s the “beer fridge” (and leftovers, etc) and doesn’t get opened as often, this look like it’s using closer to 157kWh/year, or about 18W average draw.  Not bad at all for a fridge!

Edit 11/12/2010: Turns out this is the top-ranked medium fridge on TopTenUSA, a really great site dedicated to the top 10 energy efficient products in several different categories.  Similar sites exist for other countries, see http://topten.info/