Huh? How is being gone any different than being home? Do you unplug all of the appliances you mentioned every day?

It is impractical to unplug/replug daily when you are living there and you implicitly accept the risk of lightning related damage to appliances. When you are gone for an extended period of time, it makes more sense to unplug appliances since there is no inconvenience involved. You basically drive the probability of lightning related damage from a small number to zero with little effort, so why not do it. If I am gone for a week or more I unplug a lot of stuff (and turn off the hot water heater).

To each their own I guess. I'm venturing to say most village residents aren't go to go to the trouble. I know I'm not.

I think this thread has outlived it's usefulness. Something this simple should allow a little common sense to prevail.

Fridge on or off, the decision is best made when you have some facts. A French door fridge runs 1.2 to 1.5 Kwh/day in a vacant home cooled to 82 to 84 degrees. The math is $3.97 to $4.96 per month at SECO's rates for the first 1000 kwh (which you will be in a vacant home).

It cost slightly more to operate when you are there (as you open it). They run nearly 50% of the time and a modern fridge consumes about 120 watts while operating.

Trouble? Not really. In just a few minutes I can unplug all the TVs, router, printer, data streaming boxes, computers, phones, etc. As I stated, I only do this when I am going to be gone for more than a week. If a few minutes of time potentially saves me the inconvenience of replacing appliances then I will do it.