by Jbs060909 e3 — June 15, 2009—Proposed new national energy efficiency standards for beverage vending machines will help make America more energy efficient, according to a coalition of energy efficiency, environmental, and consumer groups.
The proposed new standards, the first of many required to be released by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) in the next three years, would cut the average energy use of the most common new cold beverage vending machines by about 42%. However, even larger savings could have been achieved for all the universities and other institutions and businesses that pay the electric bills for these machines if DOE had required energy-saving smart controls, says the coalition.
These standards build on a series of improvements in vending machine efficiency achieved over the past decade. According to Noah Horowitz, Senior Scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), who pioneered research into vending machine energy use, many machines used as much as 3,000 to 5,000 kilowatt-hours per year in the mid-1990s.
With the new standards, per-unit energy use will be no more than about 1,400 to 1,800 kilowatt-hours per year. Once the new standards take effect in three years, each typical new machine will save about $320 per year compared to an older machine.
The proposed standards reduce energy use of the increasingly popular glass front machines by 35 percent to 42 percent compared to basic machines available today, but for the older-style, solid front machines, energy use is reduced by 15 percent The NRDC, the Appliance Standards Awareness Project (ASAP), and the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) will be evaluating if stronger standards makes sense for the solid front machines.
