I work with a food pantry at my church. We receive food on the first Thursday on the month and distribute food to those in need on the following Tuesday. We have several chest freezers which we use to separate meats (poultry, beef, pork) and a stand up freezer for things like lunch meat, hot dogs, prepared meals, sausage, bacon, and extras. My question is, would it be better to leave them plugged in and on the lowest setting, or unplugged? How long does it usually take for the freezer to get back to optimal temp when unplugged? Because there times when he freezer may need to be used at last minutes notice. Also, all but one of these freezers have been donated to the church. They have some age on them. It is good to keep stopping and starting the motor? Isn't there freon (or some kind of chemical) which keeps everything ''lubricated''? I'm open to opinions, but I REALLY could use the ADVICE of a professional fridge/freezers sales/repair person. Thank you so much~~~ Cherie
When freezers are not in use fr 2-3 weeks a month, should they be left plugged in
energy efficiency
Best Answer
The key additional factor is: what temp is the food when it's going into the freezer? If it has been kept in a similarly low temp environment (say, coming off of a freezer truck at 0F or below) then putting a large quantity of it into a freezer, even if the freezer was literally not turned on yet, will cause it to get the freezer pretty cold (a freezer unplugged is basically a heavy nonportable igloo cooler). In that scenario, you could save some energy by leaving the freezers open/off at all times when food is not inside them, and plug them in only when the food arrives.
If the food is not cold, say if it was transported outside of sufficient insulation for a period of 15 minutes or more, then you definitely want to drop it into a very cold freezer so you can get it back down to safe storage temp. In that case, you would be advised to not only keep the freezers on, but as another answer said you should keep some additional frozen mass in there (jugs of frozen water) to help maintain the low temp.
Every extra few degrees colder you keep that food prolongs its life (frozen at 20F is not the same as frozen at 0F which is not the same as at -10F) so it is probably worth the few dollars a month the freezers cost to run (most are rather efficient if they are in a room temp environment and not opened.) If I were in charge of the operation, I would opt to keep them running to better protect the lifespan of the food, unless I calculated the actual electrical savings and found it to be a substantial dollar figure (which no doubt can be redirected to better serve the church's mission vs throwing at the electric co).
The only situation where you are going to unduly stress the units would be to take a freezer that was not fully cold and load it with food that was not fully cold, without some additional frozen mass (other already frozen food, jugs of frozen water, etc) to keep it cold. Simply taking the units offline for some period and then firing them back up while empty will not cause excess wear, because chilling an empty freezer is a very easy task.