Feeling the heat on energy bills?

Insulating your commercial kitchen from rising electricity prices

There was a time, not so long ago, when energy efficiency was seen as a ‘nice to have’ feature when purchasing commercial refrigerators and freezers. Today it’s absolutely essential.

According to the Australian Energy Regulator, small business can expect prices to increase between 14.7% and 25.4% from 1 August 2023 (depending on the region). It’s a significant rise, especially given inflation and wholesale electricity prices are already touching record levels across Australia. It means every dollar and kWh really counts.

Of course, you can’t simply stop refrigerating your perishable food and ingredients. But you can absolutely take positive action, by investing in the most energy efficient appliances possible for your commercial kitchen. The good news is, whatever your location, size, or menu type, there are some fantastic energy-efficient commercial refrigeration options now available in Australia.

Driven by market leaders like True Refrigeration, cooling technology has come a very long way in recent years and you might be surprised by just how much energy – and money – you could actually be saving.

Reverse your bills with Reverse Condensing technology.

The use of LED fridge lighting has led to major improvements in energy efficiency, as has the adoption of more ozone-friendly refrigerants. But one of the biggest energy-saving innovations in the past decade has been the emergence of Reverse Condensing Units (RCU), a patented technology pioneered by True Refrigeration.

As the name suggests, Reverse Condensing Units have a fan motor that periodically reverses the direction of the condensing fan to remove excess debris from the interior and surface of the all-important condensing coil.

Proven savings.

Today, RCU technology is a standard feature in all True Refrigeration hydrocarbon models. To prove its benefit, our refrigeration engineers ran a side-by-side test with two commercial fridges over a 4-year period – one with RCU, and one without. During the test, no condenser cleaning took place. On average, the compressor on the unit without RCU needed to run 30% more often than the unit with RCU. The unit without RCU also consumed 61% more energy due to the dirt accumulation on the coil and the compressor’s higher temperature discharge!

Turn down the heat on cooling costs.

Energy-efficient commercial refrigerators and freezers are no longer just a luxury. In 2023, they are critical tool to extend service life, minimise energy usage, reduce overheads and, ultimately, stabilise the profitability of your business.

Remember, even if the up-front capital outlay is a little higher than ‘energy-heavy’ units, the savings over the lifetime of your equipment will be significant – and you will see these savings with every energy bill.

To make comparing products and finding the most energy efficient option easier, we include kWh/24hr and kWh/Annum data on our model webpages and spec sheets. The numbers can be multiplied by the cost paid per kWh unit by your business to gain an idea of annual and lifetime running costs.