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Comment by 01acheru | Hacker News Reader

The only thing worse than vertical fridges are those supermarket fridges that are both vertical and doorless. Those should be banned and IIRC in some countries supermarkets must have fridges with doors (I think France is one of those).

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Oddly enough, I saw quite a few of the doorless variety while on vacation in Hawaii. It seemed like every supermarket had at least one bank of doorless fridges. They run 24/7 on an island with 100% humidity and crazy high energy costs.

But presumably any escaping cold air is just cooling the store which would have been cooled anyways?

While the compressor just below the fridge is heating the store?

Fridges in stores typically have the condensor coils (the bit that gets hot) placed outdoors. That's why they're expensive to install and can't be moved around by the store staff.

If home refrigerators did the same, it would reduce your electric bill quite a lot, especially in places where A/C is used.

Sounds like an interesting idea for reducing energy consumption. Homes already have air ducts for washers/driers. Why can't be something for fridges too? Home fridges are almost never moved anyway.

I suspect the gain in efficiency is not too compelling compared to the increased up-front costs.

No, because the heat is rejected inside of the store. So there is actually a net temperature increase in the store

Not always, I have seen such fridges with ducts running the hot air out. Or as othees mention, the heatpump outside and gas piping.

Still losses to have to cool down to 5 Celsius instead of 20 Celsius though, makes the heat pump a lot less energy efficient.

Only the really small units for mom-and-pop stores do it, the supermarket-sized ones have the compressors and condensers outside the building. I know because a brother-in-law's company sells them.

It's like a heat pump setup backwards. Instead of providing efficient heat in the winter, it provides in-efficient heat in year round.

Such legislative knee-jerkery is counterproductive and unnecessary.

Whether having the heat rejecting coils indoors or outdoors is most energy efficient depends on the local climate. It is a very straightforward calculation based on building heating and cooling requirements over a given year and doing such calculation (really more of consulting a table of pre-crunched numbers) is SOP in commercial refrigeration.

I assure you nobody with a commercial refrigeration need is pissing away thousands of dollars a year in energy by choosing the non-optimal equipment for their situation. Basically there is already a big "tax" on "doing it wrong".

I wonder if anyone ever has two sets of coils (inside and outside) that they switch between seasonally? I'm thinking of places like northern Canada, where -40 is a common outside temperature for weeks at a time during winter, but 30 is common during summer (or even 40 in extreme cases). I imagine running costs dwarf the actual upfront cost of these units, but I don't know for sure.

The UK has those too, including entire open sections of milk jugs where the delivery cart-shelf is parked into.

Though some supermarkets in the UK seem to have a simple "solution" to this problem: turn the AC inside the building to a maximum. Last summer, it was 32°C outside, and a chilling 15°C inside.

Doorless fridges aren't a problem if you consider the whole shop as the fridge. /s

The Aldi nearest to us has fridges with doors & chest freezers.

Which implies that the expense of fridgeless systems must be worth eliminating, as Aldi are laser focused on cost.

One of my pet peeves is that, even where there are doors on these supermarket fridges, I've found that it's common for staff to lock them in the open position to streamline shelf stacking (presumably), then fail to unlock them.

I'm so irritated by this phenomenon I'll unlock those doors to close them.

Honestly never seen this in the supermarkets I frequent. The slidey glass panels on top of the actual chest freezers on the other hand.. feels like every time I visit some customer left one open, but I've seen shops have automatically closing ones which is very fun if you have a hand full and want to fetch something with just one hand.. or god forbid you're not very tall.

Vertical doorless fridges are not uncommon in France. They are also not illegal, according to this article (from last month): https://www.tf1info.fr/economie/video-l-aberration-des-rayon...

French here, many supermarkets have vertical, doorless fridges. So if they are banned, either these supermarkets are breaking the law, or it is not yet effective.

I am talking about fridges for milk, cheese, etc... that are round 5C. I don't remember seeing vertical, doorless sub-zero freezers. In fact nowadays, even the horizontal freezers usually have doors.

I don't think this is mandatory but government have been lobbying with supermarkets and they agreed to add doors about 8 years ago, probably to avoid being forced with a total ban.

You still see some small doorless fridges with high margin quick grab products but you no longer need to wear a coat when you go near the fresh or frozen department.

Part of this is not energy savings, but food safety - doorless fridges often have some products near the front that aren't kept to the required sub-5C. Meat products often require 0-3C nowadays too, which is an even narrower range and even harder to meet across all products in a doorless fridge.

Lower and more precise temperatures reduces food waste, which indirectly reduces both costs and energy use.

Over here in Germany I am seeing those fridges getting doors when supermarkets are being renovated as well. But still many open ones exist.

(While I assume that some of those are opened quite often, where shutting doors might push a lot of warm air back in, while keeping them open with less air movement might even be more efficient)

Where in France you buying refrigerated milk?

(Somewhat joking. I’m sure chilled milk is a thing, but I think shelf-stable UHT has like 95% of the market)

Almost any supermarket ;) You're right though, UHT is a big thing for some inexplicable reason.

UHT is a bit cheaper and of course, shelf stable. I understand the reason why it is so popular.

Personally, I use both. I usually buy a bottle or two of fresh milk when I go shopping, and I keep a pack of UHT in case I don't have enough fresh milk. This way, I will not run out of milk, and I will not let my fresh milk spoil because I bought too much.

And yes, fresh milk (whole and half-skimmed) can be found in almost any supermarket. AFAIK skimmed milk is almost exclusively UHT, and raw milk is very hard to find but not illegal.

These are called "display fridges" or "chillers", at least here in the UK where they are very common.

Yeah absolutely. Supermarkets are huge energy consumers and unless the electricity comes from clean sources it means lots of emissions.

What country has those monstrosities? Never seen them

The US has some, usually in the deli/cheese section.[0] It's the big shelf in the center of the image.

The freezer section has doors for more effective temperature control.

0: https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/austin-texas-circa-...

Fairly common in Norway

If you do a google image search for "supermarket fridge", half of the results are doorless.

Doesn't really answer the question.

All the meat and dairy, and some vegetables are in completely open refrigerators in most Australian supermarkets, although they’re also air conditioned so any loss of cold air is just more air conditioning really

UK has them.

Like on this picture: https://www.grocerygazette.co.uk/2021/11/09/supermarket-frid...

We used to have those in the Netherlands before there was any attention paid to energy savings (~15 years ago). Freezers also used to be just open without any coverings. Budget supermarkets like Lidl and Aldi were the first to introduce both sliding glass doors on the freezers and doors on the standing fridges.

Interesting. Lidl and Aldi in Poland (at least the ones nearby) have doorless fridges.

Poland has cheaper electricity, so there is less incentive for savings.

Adding to all the other comments: They used to be common in Germany as well, though I haven’t seen any for many years now.

They're very common here in Europe. Although when shops get remodeled they usually are replaced with newer models that have doors (and now doors that close themselves, because people). Seems the energy costs have risen sufficiently to make them care.

> They're very common here in Europe

Nonsense. Europe is a big place and making sweeping generalizations is not meaningful.

Europe is big. I saw them in an Italian Coop recently, but they are indeed more of an exception than a norm in recently upgraded stores.

LOL, downvoted to -4 for pointing out Europe is diverse.

Common in higher-end stores in India.

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