Interesting reading all this. My fridge-freezer consumption and when it operates has always been something I’d have liked to improve.
It does this. Runs for approximately 12 minutes every 40 minutes. Day in, and day out, doesn’t seem to change more than a minute or two on the time the compressor runs.
I did think about fitting a smart switch (shelly with power monitoring) to see if I could do a better job and reduce electricity consumption a bit.
However, I thought to myself. There’s been a group of hopefully qualified engineers who have gone through a design for this, so whatever I do will more than likely just cost me money, damage something and just be an interesting mental exercise.
And as for frequency response, by the time my fridge and a group of its friends got around to running, or not running, to control the frequency. The Fridge might not be available to RUN/NOT RUN at that exact time. The three Siemens 285MW gas turbines which are just up the road from me will more than likely beat the Fridges to it when the Gas Turbines are selected to Frequency Response instead of Load Control 