Build a refrigerator with an energy footprint of 'zero'

Graduate student Aleksander Tilkowski has figured out how to build refrigerators with no energy footprint. None. According to Aleks, refrigerators consume dozens of MW annually cooling when they shouldn't, and spooling up their compressors at the exact time when energy is least plentiful and most expensive.

How's he do it? Using ice! Simply, his design uses the refrigerator's compressor to make ice in special containers in the housing of the refrigerators. The water has a saline pump to modulate the temperature at which it freezes and thaws. During the day, when energy is most expensive, the temperature in the refrigerator is maintained by the cooling effect of air moving through the refrigerator as it is cooled by the ice.

Very cool.