[Seeker]

I'm unsure whether I've proved a little knowledge is dangerous or confirmed I'm an idiot. I suspect the latter.

I have a power meter that lets me know how much electricity I'm using, it pre-dates the smart meter and I have it set to kW. Over the last few years I've noticed that the fridge is occasionally drawing power but the compressor isn't running and, I assumed, that the compressor had stalled since the fridge is old. I would switch the fridge off, leave it for a minute or two and switch it back on. Eventually the compressor would kick in.
I recently had one of those middle-of-the-night thoughts: "What if the fridge is doing some kind of defrost cycle?". So, I looked it up and an auto-defrost fridge (which mine is) uses a heating element which would explain the power utilisation without the compressor running and it does it several times in 24 hours. Oops!