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Comment by thatwebdude | Hacker News Reader

Good point, but I'm not always home to do the laundry at the most opportunistic time. Doesn't a refrigerator run most efficiently if it cools continuously? I'd hate for my milk to spoil.

I know that Nest has an option with some electric providers to integrate with their demand needs already for something like this; I have it enabled, but they've yet to utilize it.

I could totally see a dishwasher utilizing this, it makes the most sense, assuming I had enough extra dishes and space for the relatively small inconvenience it'd provide.

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Refigerators commonly have a compressor to cool the freezer, and then a heat exchanger to equalize between the freezer and the fridge.

So the freezer can store energy by working extra hard bringing things down from -5C to -20C whenever it's expedient, and the equalizer keeps the fridge in its usual temperature range. Nothing spoils, and you don't even have to notice.

It still isn't controlled by a timer or switch, though. That's the point I was opposing.

But there's no reason it can't be. So far there just wasn't a reason

Food safety dictates a minimum chilling temperature, we can't override that without sacrificing health. We can make fridges/freezers more efficient and insulated though. My deep freezer (according to Energy Star) takes $24 a year to freeze my food. That already seems extremely efficient.

Yes, but it's not going to be retrofitted onto existing fridges. You'd need to replace most of the fridges in the system.

Today's washing machines already have timers to start in X hours (at least mine has, and it's not exactly top of the line). Once consumer electricity prices reflect the actual electricity price at that moment new models would quickly contain internet-connected logic to start the washing cycle at the point in the next 24h with the lowest predicted electricity price.

If you integrate washing machine and dryer into one mashine, the cost-savings from electricity would be even bigger with very little convenience lost.

Absolutely, although I don't know how they handle wrinkles, though without an auto-fold/hang feature (that'd be so cool!).

Our drier tumbles the dry clothes for a second or two every five minutes or so for hours after the dry cycle has finished. This goes a long way to avoiding the clothes getting too wrinkled waiting for us to unload it.

...my dryer simply doesn't go long enough to keep them wrinkle-free.

A well designed refrigerator can hold temperatures without "turning on" for quite awhile if the door isn't opened and warmer food placed in it in that time period. The insulation is "passively storing" the temperature differential.

Yeah, "continuous" was a bad choice of word.

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