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Comment by athenot | Hacker News Reader

I have a wine fridge that uses Peltier cooling and it feels like the perfect application, since the target temperature is not as low as a normal refrigerator, and quietness is important.

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If you live in Europe right now, beware that unless you're a big drinker, that wine fridge will be costing you more in electricity than the wine you put into it.

European energy is super expensive right now, fridges normally use quite a lot of energy, and peltier fridges use quite a lot more than normal fridges.

Fridges barely use any energy in Europe. Something like 4-5 euro/month. Everything sold in last fifteen years is A class or better for efficiency.

I think their point is that a Peltier refrigerator will be much less efficient than a compressor refrigerator.

I agree. It should be around 3 times less efficient. My guess is that people that are into wine enough to buy a dedicated fridge probably plow to way more than 30 euro a month of wine.

> Everything sold in last fifteen years is A class or better for efficiency.

In case you are unaware: The European efficiency rating system is in fact percentile-based on some fictional reference appliance which is adjusted every few years [0].

A fridge with an "A" rating you bought 15 years ago would not get an A rating today.

(This sounds weird, but fights the problem that when the system was based on absolute values instead of percentiles, nearly fridges started being rated A, A+, A++ or A+++ to the point that the scale was very opaque to consumers.)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_energy_label#Re...

Yes. And still modern home fridges consume single digit or early teens of kwh/month. Mostly due to the amazing insulation.

(I agree, but still let me rant a bit)

Well, some of them do.

Unless the genius who designed your kitchen put the fridge directly next to the dishwasher, whose job it is to keep hot steam inside for a long time.

Yeah, don't put the box full of hot steam next to the box filled with cold stuff.

(I rent, so I can change nothing about this arrangement.)

Do you have any recommendations? I live in a 1-bedroom apartment (so noise level is important) and have been looking for some quiet wine fridge (or perhaps a wine+canned beverage combo fridge). Any brands I should be looking at or avoiding? If I also want to store cans should I be avoiding Peltier coolers?

Peltier costs a lot more in energy costs. Inverter fridges are good for quietness.

Interesting. For wine, vibration can also be a problem so this sounds like a sensible application all around.

" Although researchers still don’t agree on why vibration ruins wine, they have found that certain kinds of vibration impact how bottles age."

https://blog.vinfolio.com/2016/09/13/does-vibration-ruin-win...

...I don't think it's common to age wine in the fridge.

A typical refrigerator is too cold for aging but it's common to age wine in a temperature controlled environment that primarily uses refrigeration.

Just going off of general chemistry knowledge, vibration may be speeding up the chemical reactions that are happening in the wine (aging). Same as stirring.

EDIT> For a reaction A + B -> C, the more chances molecules of A and B have to get into contact, the faster the reaction could run since chemistry is just atoms bumping into atoms. Stirring or shaking can bring more unreacted A's and B's together.

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