I plan to add this socket to the refridgerator light bulb to enable another device to signal when the refridgerator is open. The fridge is in the garage and the kids seem to leave it open.
If you have created a similar alarm for your fridge, please state this in your response. I am seeking ideas or hacking existing inexpensive devices to signal the fridge is open: that can be powered by the socket in the picture:
I'd make the whole thing battery powered. If I was making it myself I'd design a circuit with a photocell, RC time delay, transistor and buzzer.
You can buy (amazon) a circuit to do most if not all of the job. Again I would adapt it to use a light sensor but you could stick a magnetic switch on with double sided tape (possibly replacing with something more permanent once you're happy).
I'd also add a "shut up" button. Our previous fridge had an alarm built in, and transferring a week's worth of chilled shopping into the fridge meant spending a couple of minutes with a buzzer going off in your ear (it normally started while packing everything into the veg drawer, which blocked the door from shutting). This button would be wired in parallel with the door switch to fool the circuit into thinking you'd closed and reopened the door.
There is a reason that refrigerators do not have internal electrical outlets and that reason is so that people do not die.
Generally, that socket is a bad idea because a refrigerator is cool and when warm humid air enters, it will condense. The amount of condensation could easily rise to a level beyond that at which the socket is electrically safe.
Unlike other outlets in the rest of a kitchen, the National Electrical Code has not, historically, required ground fault protection for outlets serving refrigerators and other major appliances. A strict interpretation of the 'major kitchen appliance exception is why many jurisdictions prohibit duplex outlets in the area where a refrigerator is designed to go.
