It used to be relatively clear that it was hardly worth replacing an older household appliance that was still working well with a new, more energy-efficient one. But is that still true in view of the enormously rising electricity prices? And what about the life cycle assessment for climate and environment?
The washing machine, dishwasher and refrigerator actually still work, even if they are no longer the youngest. But they usually consume significantly more power than current devices. Many users are therefore wondering whether it is worth exchanging old “white goods” for new ones given the rapidly increasing energy costs. This is not easy to answer, because it depends very much on the individual device and how it is used. And in addition to the electricity bill, you should also consider what a new purchase means for the climate and the environment.
According to the Federal Ministry of Economics, household appliances account for 37 percent of the annual electricity consumption of 3700 kilowatt hours (kWh) in an average three-person household. At 17 percent, the proportion of refrigerators and freezers is highest, followed by washing machines and dryers at 13 percent and dishwashers at 7 percent.
Basically, one can say that a new purchase is only worthwhile if you buy a device with a high, preferably the highest, energy efficiency class, which in turn should be very durable. That usually means not going for the cheapest devices. Stiftung Warentest recently found that the most economical test candidates for large fridge-freezers use up to three times less electricity than the most energy-hungry.
The more you invest in a new device and the less you use it, the longer it takes for the purchase to pay for itself through lower energy costs. If the difference in consumption is very large, it can happen very quickly. According to Stiftung Warentest, you can ideally save 200 euros a year with a new fridge-freezer combination.
The potential savings are increasing rapidly: last year, a kilowatt hour cost an average of just under 32 cents, now it’s already around 37 cents. According to Forbes, new customers currently pay an average of 41 cents. The announcement by the Baden-Württemberg utility EnBW that it will raise electricity prices in the basic supply tariff by an average of 31 percent from October shows how things will continue.
To determine what a replacement could actually bring, you first need to know the power consumption of the old device. You can try to determine it using documents – as long as they are still available and you can make sense of them. It is more accurate to use a meter. You can get it from around 20 euros, some smart sockets have a corresponding function integrated. You can also borrow an ammeter from many suppliers or from the energy advice service of the consumer advice centres.
When it comes to refrigerators, you should bear in mind that they use different amounts of electricity at different room temperatures. According to Stiftung Warentest, their energy requirement at 25 degrees is around three times higher than at 10 degrees. Under certain circumstances, measurements in summer or winter may result in an extrapolated annual consumption that is too high or too low.
The energy requirement of a new device can be easily read from the new energy label. For refrigerators, for example, you can see the consumption in kilowatt hours per year, for washing machines per 100 wash loads in eco mode, for dishwashers per 100 wash cycles in eco mode.
If you want to determine whether and when it is worth replacing, the Bavarian Ministry of Energy’s household appliance check can be very useful. In the case of refrigerators, it is fed with the price of the new device and the determined or stated electricity consumption per year. For washing machines and dishwashers, you enter the energy requirement of the standard program and the number of rinses or wash cycles.
In addition, you can enter general conditions such as the inflation rate and electricity price increases. As a result, you can then see after how many years an exchange could pay off.
CO2online states that, as a rule of thumb, buying a new dishwasher or refrigerator with a high efficiency class is worthwhile if the old appliance is at least ten years old.
This can also be the case with washing machines, but only in large households where a very inefficient appliance runs several times a week. A sample calculation by CO2online has shown that in ten years, with 220 washes per year and an electricity price of 31.81 cents, a new appliance will save 220 euros.
Even if an exchange should pay off, it can be better for the ecological balance to continue to use an old device. Because material extraction, production and transport of a new machine are a major burden on the environment. The Öko-Institut found in 2018 that replacing a working washing machine from 2000 alone would take 40 years to offset the greenhouse gases released by the production of a new appliance.
In the case of refrigerators and dishwashers, on the other hand, replacing them early can also be beneficial for the environment. According to the Öko-Institut, this is the case on average when appliances that were bought before the year 2000 or which consume a lot of electricity are replaced with new, more energy-efficient appliances.
