Size doesn’t always matter when it comes to saving electricity. Those mini-refrigerators of about 2 cubic feet are perfect for your office or dorm room and may save you space and money up-front, but they’re surprisingly inefficient when it comes to conserving electricity. “The most efficient compact refrigerator we recently tested consumes about 280 kilowatt-hours per year, compared with roughly 390 kilowatt-hours for an energy-efficient 18-cubic-foot top-freezer refrigerator. That means the mini-fridge offers only about one-tenth of the storage space but uses almost 72 percent of the energy the full-size model consumes,” says Consumer Reports magazine.
