As Britain braces for another hot week, the nation’s fridges are buckling under the strain. In Somerset and Bristol, shoppers have reported supermarket chillers switched off and empty. Engineers in Wiltshire logged record call-outs to home fridges that have “given up the ghost”.
The culprit is not a mechanical flaw but a design reality: most fridges were built decades ago for a cooler world. Bristol-based refrigeration expert Dr Alan Foster, who runs experiments at a testing lab in Lower Langford, Somerset, said the appliances were “designed decades ago in a much cooler world”.
“Record heat is overwhelming fridges designed for cooler climates, causing failures in UK homes and supermarkets.”
Fridges are typically engineered to operate in air temperatures up to about 32C. When the mercury climbs higher – as it did last week and may again next week – they struggle to stay cool or fail entirely. Inside his climate-controlled chamber, Foster fits a standard fridge with sensors and gel blocks to measure cooling distribution. “We can test the temperature across different parts of the fridge,” he explained, and crucially, make the room warmer or cooler to see how it survives in a warming world.
Once temperatures exceed the system’s design, the compressor runs continually to keep things cold – eventually leading to breakdown. Foster’s team at Refrigeration Developments and Testing (RD&T) works with big retailers on coping with climate change. “In most of the supermarkets out there, the fridges were designed for 32C, which obviously isn’t enough, because these were designed decades ago,” he said. When pressure mounts, supermarkets may reduce the number of chilled cabinets in use to keep the rest running.
The Met Office warns that heatwaves are becoming more common in the UK. A study commissioned by the UK Climate Change Commission found the food industry was badly hit by the 2022 heatwave, which saw a maximum temperature of 40.3C for the first time. The study noted increased energy costs and failure of refrigeration systems in numerous retail facilities. As the UK heats up, the question remains: can the nation’s fridges keep up?