The old fridge in the garage is quietly running up your power bill

The U.S. Department of Energy makes a point that never shows up on a repair quote: with a refrigerator, the price of the fix is only half the math — the other half is what the unit costs to run. An older refrigerator uses about 35% more energy than a model that has earned the ENERGY STAR label, and dirty condenser coils can add as much as another 35% to its electricity use. A new certified refrigerator, by contrast, saves more than $220 over a 12-year lifetime.

That reframes the repair-or-replace question. A $150 fix on a 15-year-old fridge can still be the expensive choice if the unit then keeps burning an extra $80–$100 a year in electricity. The DOE’s Flip Your Fridge calculator exists to put real numbers on that tradeoff — and it flags a free win first: cleaning the coils, since clogged ones are a common, fixable reason a fridge works too hard.

OwnWise folds that running cost into the decision. It pins down the likely fault and a fair repair price, then weighs both against the appliance’s age and efficiency — so you don’t pay to revive a unit that costs you more every month it stays plugged in.