We have a 13 year old Fisher and Paykel (model E331T) freezer on top fridge.
It is currently chewing through 1.8 kWh per day, higher than its usual sub 1 kWh usage.
This increase, as far as we can tell, happened abruptly about four months ago. The fridge is largely working well, but since we’ve been paying attention, things in the freezer are not always as frozen as they should be.
This fridge has alarms to tell you if temperatures are fluctuating, and this has not gone off. It did go off last year and it turned out the problem was the fan.
So, either the alarm no longer works, or the fridge thinks it is working properly. (The fan does work.)
This leads me to suspect that the defrost system is activating too often, using power and warming up the freezer.
I’m thinking of finding and disconnecting the defrost circuit and then measuring the power usage for a week and seeing if goes back to normal. I’m assuming the fridge would operate normally if I did this.
So, am I barking up the wrong tree? Which part of the defrost circuit do I likely need to replace? Could I get away without replacing it and just do a manual defrost every three months? Is disconnecting it possible and a valid course of action?