Definitely go with an induction cooktop. Having used one I have no intention of using anything else in our house. A light-duty pressure cooker (like the Instant Pot) can be a good, versatile addition; more efficient than the cooktop, but not as efficient as a microwave. A toaster oven is also good for situations where you don't need the capacity of a full-size oven.

Other than that... modern appliances are all pretty good. Heat pumps are the way to go for domestic hot water; bonus points if you combine that with a solar thermal system accompanying your photovoltaics, but it might be simpler to forego the extra plumbing and plan for extra PV to cover the consumption.

energystar.gov is your answer if you're in the us but as far as general guidelines:

Refrigerator: Freezer on top>freezer on bottom>side by side. not too big

Oven: there's not that much variability

Stove: induction. they're all similarly efficient

Microwave: again, they're all super efficient

hvac: geothermal heatpump>air source heatpump> resistive furnace/ac. if you go passivehaus you may not need much more than the air handler

dryer: condensing heat pump

Washing machine: front loader

dishwasher: there's usually a tradeoff between energy use and water use. the lowest energy models use more water and the lowest water use models use a little more energy. pick your poison, neither is going to make or break things.

bulbs: LEDs

water heater: solar thermal>geothermal>air source heatpump>resistive but this can get complicated depending on your tolerance for running out of hot water. there's a real debate between more photovoltaics and an electric heatpump water heater and solar thermal. IMO the most efficient solution is likely to be solar thermal with air source heatpump backup or backup by tying into the existing geothermal system if you have that option. hybrid solutions like this are very recently starting to appear.

A net-zero home is usually a passive house or similar and locks you into a few decisions. first - no combustion within the envelope - the means no gas stove, no gas furnace, no gas dryer. The other decision you'll have to grapple with is the dryer - vented dryers use a lot more energy and poke a hole in your building envelope, neither of which are compatible with your goals. your options are to put the dryer outside the house envelope (in the garage, for instance) or use a ventless, condensing dryer.

Looks like a good idea.

Obv go for the low energy bulbs all over the house - that can cut usage down by 1/10 or so.

In the EU all of our appliances are rated for energy so there's a visible sticker on them to show how much energy they use. An old big fridge can be really expensive to run.

And we have been using heated blankets this year instead of the heating so much. Much better to heat the person than the entire room.

Look forward to seeing the suggestions on here.

Do you have solar already? Electric grids run off a good chunk of gas/fossil fuels still so whenever you flip the switch on something you use gas. Going solar is the best way to go net zero☀️

We're on a farm, I'm setting up a separate solar charging system just for the barn cats warming pads. So when( not if) we lose power they can stay warm. We have horrible blizzards and sub zero temps. Next up is a small system for the house, expanding with larger battery storage.

This is the right approach to take! Since you're posting here, I encourage you to get a KillAWatt meter and a home energy monitor with one or more channels, so that you can see exactly how much energy each appliance uses. That will point you toward the best value improvements. Then start with whatever is oldest/cheapest, every bit helps.

If you're in the U.S., the EPA Energy Star database has a lot of appliances in them with various scores, but is not frequently updated or comprehensive. I use it when I'm looking for comparisons to appliances I see for sale.

Any LED will use 10-25% of what an incandescent would, and 50% of a fluorescent. The efficiency of the light itself isn't as important as how efficiently it spreads the light around the space. Retrofitting LED bulbs into incandescent fixtures is usually not optimal, and you will end up needing more bulbs than if you replaced the fixture with one designed for LEDs. Issues with clearance and overheating also come up in retrofits. Usually, I can find an LED solution that looks better than the old fixture with the old bulbs, and still use way less power. You can also get motion detectors that auto-on as well as auto-off, for convenience as well as savings.

This year I replaced a gas water heater with a Stiebel-Eltron heat pump water heater. It's definitely the most efficient one on the market, and the most expensive, and seems to actually cost less than the old gas one to operate ($7 vs $10/month).

I've looked at heat pump clothes dryers a bit, and that might be next. I dry on the line most of the year (inside and outside), but my tenant uses the machine year round. I've also thought about making a heat exchanger to save the dryer exhaust heat in the winter, but that looks messy.

Refrigerators vary widely, mostly based on the thickness of insulation and how fancy (quiet) the compressors are. You can make your old fridge a little better by cleaning the dust out of the radiator and making sure there is air flow around the back.

first rule: reduce your total energy needs. air-seal, insulate.

don't get lost in the efficiency hole. focus on usability and idiotproofing. oversizing your energy production/storage (if possible) makes life easier.

the combo that holds up for most cost-conscious boondockers/offgriders tends to be:

• standard 110v residential fridge.
• 12v compressor freezer
• minisplit heat pump (inverter/variable drive)

your biggest uptic will be going all DC if you are off grid with a battery system, if you are grid tie, keep what you have, you will spend more in replacing trying to upgrade than you would have in electrons

You can start with the efficiency rating of each (this is pretty common in Europe, it's even a color scale chart), but remember that behavior also matters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

I wouldn't fixate too much into efficiency. With this I mean that a 97% efficiency is as good as a 90% efficiency if the cost or durability of the product is significantly better.

The best energy savings come from:

• LED lights.

• Induction cooktops and convection ovens (ovens with fans).

• Modern fridges and freezers.

• Led or oled TVs.

• Good insulation on the walls and windows.

So just making sure you're using those products instead of old appliances will reduce your energy compsumption a lot.

I think they stretch the cost benefits. To them, $10 a month over the course of let’s say 25 years is great, but short term… not a huge difference. That’s my guess.

Some appliances got more efficient in terms of energy usage (Refrigerators in particular) but others did not for a variety of reasons.

Washing machines are more efficient in water usage, but there isn't much of a difference in electrical consumption. A lot of brands also do a really lousy job of engineering and producing them so their service life is shorter than the average just 30 years ago.

Dryers haven't evolved much at all. And newer ones are quite a bit more fragile than older models. They have been and continue to be just a sheet metal box, a heating element, and a drum driven by a motor from a belt.

Water heaters are the same, other than heat pump units. But those take quite a while to provide a return on your investment given their price. Tankless units are only more efficient if powered by natural gas.

This would not be a good time of year to evaluate any cost savings for replacing an air conditioning unit as the duty cycles are going to be very short. Your 1998 unit probably wasn't any less efficient than a modern unit WHEN NEW but as the units age their compressors wear out at their windings, the capacitors go bad, and they start drawing maximum current at higher duty cycles. Replacing it with an identical tonnage unit at even a minimum required SEER rating for you locality will net a considerable savings in electricity usage over the next year and might pay itself off in 2 or 3 years.

Whirlpool washer and dryer. Works great!

I previously owned a much more expensive Samsung pair and the only thing better about that was the cute songs it played. I'm much happier to find a low-priced, well-performimg version of a necessary appliance.

I closed on my new house in mid december and the first thing we swapped out was the 33 year old hot water heater with a new one. Works so much better.

I got a Nest recently! After selling them for fucking years, I finally was able to get one. I love the thing, honestly.

Dishwasher.

So silent I’m ecstatic about it.

The trick was to purchase a steel case dishwasher instead of the cheaper plastic case dishwasher.

Had to pay double for that steel case one than I would have had to if I had bought the plastic case, but completely worth it.

Dishes get done in two hours and they come out perfectly clean.

You're not going to save money by buying new appliances unless it's horribly inefficient. The years it takes to make back the money is often as long as the lifetime of the machine.

I'm agreeing with a several comments I see here: for some things, you rather take the performant (but energy-heavy) versions (bigger tv, better resolution) while for others you might not use them enough to make a difference. E.g.: we are a household of two and only use the dishwasher about once every 3 days, so that's way less than the amount used in calculations. So I'd rather take me a dishwasher that decently cleans and dries but uses a bit more water & energy in the process.

On the other hand, appliances like fridge or freezer, which are on 100% of the time, it might be worth taking one (if you look at the labels it's sometimes 20% difference in consumption :250 to 300kWh) so it might be worth looking for an efficient one. On the other hand, they often come at quite the premium. So even if you calculate 50c / kWh, it's still only 25 euro a year you "gain", while the appliance is often couple of 100 euros more worth.

Another thing to keep in mind: if you got ecocheques, then you can only use them on appliances with decent rating (although I don't remember which)

I check once in a while the actual consumption of all equipment with a smart meter.

When a newer appliance, with less +advertised+ consumption, would pay itself off within 5-8 years, I replace the existing one.

Currently, my dryer is on the hook given the spike in electricity price.

It depends on the appliance. With the energy label you should also be able to see the energy usage in kWh per year as well, just compare those.

I remember I checked what the difference would be if I bought a new washing machine and found it’d save me 15 euro a year, so for that I’d rather save it and just keep using the old one until it fully breaks.

Edit: also for some products certain labels are unattainable currently, like 4K TVs, because of their nature. I’d rather have a “not energy efficient” good TV than an energy efficient small 720p TV.

Apart from the financial point of view, it might be worth considering the environmental one, mainly the life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions.

Air Conditioners/Heat pumps: Daikin, Fujitsu, Mitsubishi Electric, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Panasonic

Dishwashers: Bosch Siemens (and probably all the other brands they sell under), Miele

Inducrtion stoves: Miele, Panasonic, Smeg

Microwave ovens: Hitachi, Panasonic (with Inverter), some Sharp ones (the cheaper ones outside of Japan are rebadged Midea ones, the more expesive ones are made by Sharp), Zojirushi

Refrigerators: Hoshizaki, Liebherr, Miele, Mitsubishi Electric, Panasonic

Rice Cookers: Mitsubishi Electric, Tiger, Zojirushi

Vacuum cleaners: Bosch Siemens, Lindhaus, Makita, Miele (Except the CX1), Mitsubishi Electric, Panasonic, Sebo, Sharp

Washing machines/dryers: Bosch Siemens, Miele, Panasonic, Speed Queen

Agreed, a good brand can make a bad product. It happens.

The best way imo is to just make sure what you're using doesn't have too many features (i.e., a fridge with a touch screen)

Samsung makes good TVs too. It practically has a monopoly on premium TV sales.

No, atleast not in the A/C space. I just listed them separately because they're (technically) seperate companies.

Electric tools- DeWalt. Hilti(pricey). Makita not bomb proof but good at the price. Garden tools- Stihl are excellent. Garden hand tools- Wolfcraft modular tools.

Miele makes nothing bad, designed and built on BIFL principles.

Buy once cry once.

Plus the energy efficiency helps pay for it over the decades.

Humans use the most energy in the house...wear an extra layer rather than turning the heat up.

Stuff that heats other stuff basically. Heaters, tumble driers, immersion heaters, washing machine, dishwasher, electric ovens and hobs, irons, kettles, microwaves etc…. (Not a definitive list, other devices exist) A kettle for example might be rated at 3kW but might only be on for 3 minutes, so something like 150Wh in total, whereas a 2kW oven might be on for 30 minutes and will consume 1kWh (oven power and duty cycle will vary). In the great scheme of things, phone chargers while adding up over time, won’t cost diddly compared when compared with big heat items.

I think the main thing to be aware of is your “background” usage, ie how much your home is using when you’re not there. If you have lots of electronics on standby, Alexa, smart thermostat, tv recorder, old inefficient fridge or freezer, etc it can add up to a lot. 200W running 24/7 will cost about £350. Reduce that by just 50W and you save £90.

Anything that involves heat is likely to be a big cost. Tumble drying always feels like the biggest unnecessary waste to me when you can dry outside for 9 months of the year.

It's the boiler, washing machine and (non-LED) lighting that use the most. I don't have a working boiler, or a standard washing machine and have nothing but LEDs. The amount of energy and water I use is minimal. If I could find a way of never having to use the bathroom, I'd be ultra-efficient.

Ah yes, buying stuff in order to help the environment.

If you really want to do the environment a favor, use things until they break, when they break repair them and only when they're no longer repairable replace them. This graph conveniently ignores the energy that goes into making all the new things

Thermal insulation for roofs and photovoltaics are a good idea though.

Who the hell can afford to buy a house?

I have bought a lot of energy star appliances, low flow shower heads, and low flow faucets. Yes it might be a pain waiting for the coffee pot to fill up in the morning, but it does save water and energy.

I only buy them when I need to replace old worn-out ones. I always read specifications and compare the cost of operation per year, just in energy savings they pay for themselves.

Plus there are things you can do to keep the high efficiency. How many of you vaccuum the coils on the bottom of the refrigerator? Replace filters frequently? Have a heat recovery ventilator that brings in fresh air and saves most of the cold/heat?

emporia has an in panel energy monitor

Leviton smart breakers

If it’s as a landlord, why not break the panel into pony panels with individual meters? It’s better for landlords anyways: absolutely no way for them to tamper, you’ll never be held accountable if they do, if they blow a breaker they can flip it themselves. Gives them proper privacy over what’s in their unit. Plus you can leave it to them to pay the utility.

Otherwise, there’s smart breakers. Shelly makes them

Emporia. I use it in this situation and it works well

Not out of the box. You can flash the device to work with ESPHome and it removes the cloud component and allows it to easily interface with Home Assistant.

Lots of ways. Sense.io. a few open source ones, iotawatt.com. Haven’t looked at this one too much https://openenergymonitor.org