Read the EnergyGuide label before you size a battery

The yellow EnergyGuide label on a refrigerator or freezer is there to compare models under a standard test. For this site, one figure matters: estimated yearly energy use in kilowatt-hours. That number is the annual-kWh input in the calculator.

What to copy, and what to ignore here

Copy the kWh/year figure. Do not copy the dollar amount on the label into this site. That dollar figure is the label’s own national-average rate assumption for the year it was printed. It is not your utility bill, and this website does not republish a price or a rate.

The test is not your kitchen. A hot garage, a packed freezer, a noisy door gasket, or a household that stands in the open door will not match the label. The label is still a better starting point than a borrowed “typical refrigerator” number. If you want your actual average, use a meter and the measured-watts mode.

Where the label usually is

On many refrigerators it is on the unit or in the papers that came with it. If you cannot find it, the model’s specification sheet from the refrigerator maker is the next place to look. This page does not link a specific EnergyGuide program URL because the FTC topic addresses checked while building this site returned HTTP 404. Read the label in front of you rather than a missing web page.

What the yearly figure cannot tell you

It cannot tell you startup watts. Dividing kWh by 8,760 gives average watts, and average watts are not the compressor’s running watts and not the startup spike. That limit is explained on How Many Watts Does a Refrigerator Need?

A chest freezer has its own label. Do not paste a refrigerator’s kWh into a freezer plan. See chest freezer backup.