Ridiculous! Hair dryers, vacuum cleaners may use a lot of electricity while in use, but they are in use for only a tiny fraction of the time, so overall they use very little power. It's stuff that gets left on all day and night that is the problem. Most of my friends leave their PC's on 24 hours a day, and their entertainment stuff (TV's etc) are in standby, slowly chomping their way through many KW hours.
And a less powerful kettle will just take longer to boil the water, so overall it will be the same. Same for a hair dryer. Are these people nuts or just stupid?
If they think we have a problem now, just wait until we are all driving their beloved electric cars! When several million cars are being charged overnight, each gobbling many KW, then they'll start to panic.
You may only use a vacuum cleaner for a tiny fraction of a time as a tv left on standby but it only takes 10 minutes of hoovering to use the same power as that tv on standby would use in a month.
Going after the average person on the street in the name of climate change is a load of bollocks. They need to be going after the big factories around the world, especially those in China, that spew out God-awful crap every day because otherwise all other efforts are pointless. There also needs to be some sort of movement to get less cars on the road. I know so many households where there are four or five people and they all have a car. Jobs that demand you must drive even when all the work is local are particularly ridiculous.
I am sick to the back teeth of the EU's meddling and their general spineless nonsense. What's the matter with them!
Anyone bothered to read the Ecodesign Draft Task report?
Kettles ... the focus will be on improving durability as too many are failing within 1-2 years due to crap manufacturing and quality control. That means loads of kettles are being chucked which is a waste of resources. There are, however, some potential energy savings by the use of thick film heating elements, reducing the thermal loss through the kettle walls, and (again!) improving the durability and quality as a common fault is that the kettles don't switch off when the water has boiled.
Hair driers ... studies are being undertaken on very high wattage driers as there is a limit to the practical drying temperature. If too hot, the person using it will simply hold the drier farther away from their hair so energy is being wasted. The study is also looking at the use, and recyclability of materials, as well as durability and safety.
Mobile phones & smart phones ... the study acknowledges that manufacturers have reduced, and are continuing to reduce, the energy levels in order to gain a marketing advantage by offering longer periods of use between recharging. Key areas being looked at in the study are improvements in battery technology, the use of recycled materials, the recyclability and recoverability of materials, and durability of the product.
... but it's easier to just panic! ;-)
Thanks for that. Journalists are generally too useless to bother (and probably wouldn't understand if they tried), so it's much easier to come up with an attention-grabbing exercise in synthetic outrage. Plays well with the target demographic, as we can see from this thread!
Anyone bothered to read the Ecodesign Draft Task report?
Kettles ... the focus will be on improving durability as too many are failing within 1-2 years due to crap manufacturing and quality control. That means loads of kettles are being chucked which is a waste of resources. There are, however, some potential energy savings by the use of thick film heating elements, reducing the thermal loss through the kettle walls, and (again!) improving the durability and quality as a common fault is that the kettles don't switch off when the water has boiled.
Hair driers ... studies are being undertaken on very high wattage driers as there is a limit to the practical drying temperature. If too hot, the person using it will simply hold the drier farther away from their hair so energy is being wasted. The study is also looking at the use, and recyclability of materials, as well as durability and safety.
Mobile phones & smart phones ... the study acknowledges that manufacturers have reduced, and are continuing to reduce, the energy levels in order to gain a marketing advantage by offering longer periods of use between recharging. Key areas being looked at in the study are improvements in battery technology, the use of recycled materials, the recyclability and recoverability of materials, and durability of the product.
... but it's easier to just panic! ;-)
cheap kettles often from china. a nice example is the cookworks from argos which lasts about 6 months. but it is as efficient as any other kettle in turning wattage into heat ..... how does limiting the wattage help ?
smartphone chips have got better due to improved design but the power needed for displays and 3g/4g comms are limiting factors .....
Let's ban all non essential flying. Now that really would cause a stir!
Seriously the governments all around the EU would lose so much tax if people refrained from flying & kept to shoddy overpriced UK holidays. But hey if they did ban flying, then they may as well ban it for MP's and the Royal clan as well, make everyone take a more efficient form of transport. But until that happens, I will continue to use my passport, hell I may even go to Ireland next year, only an hour or so on the plane, but cheaper & quicker than boat or anything else.
cheap kettles often from china. a nice example is the cookworks from argos which lasts about 6 months. but it is as efficient as any other kettle in turning wattage into heat ..... how does limiting the wattage help ?
I can't find anything in the latest Ecodesign Draft Task report about limiting the wattage of kettles.
Of course, far be it for me to suggest that any journalist might "sex up" or "dumb down" a story in order to create a good headline!! ;-)
Surely, persuading more people to only boil the required amount of water in a kettle would help reduce energy use the most.
That's one of the "topics for discussion" in the study ... so I'm now waiting for the headline "Brussels to ban people from boiling more than one cupful of water at a time!"
Wouldn't surprise me if the EU numnuts fitted everyone with breathing meters to combat excessive breath. All that carbon dioxide has to be reduced somehow 😆😆
Wouldn't surprise me if the EU numnuts fitted everyone with breathing meters to combat excessive breath. All that carbon dioxide has to be reduced somehow 😆😆
Well the idiots in power already have IDS, a cretin that sucks the air out of people.
As much as I instinctively want to rail against stuff like this, unless we're forced in this way to use less energy we're only going to **** up the environment even more than we have already.
It makes sense to me, why the need for a (sample) 1600w hair dryer when a lower wattage, say 1000, gives the same result ie dry hair.
Yeah it may take slightly longer but so what.
Have you ever thought if you leave it on for longer it uses the same amount of energy or before.
It's a bit like the EU's water saving toilets our masters in Brussels enforce on us. You often have to flush two or three times therefore you use more water than you would have done using our great British toilets.
Still as long as those EU fruit loops can justify their jobs eh?
As much as I instinctively want to rail against stuff like this, unless we're forced in this way to use less energy we're only going to **** up the environment even more than we have already.
You don't use less energy if everything takes longer because of less power. It renders this whole changeover pointless.
You don't use less energy if everything takes longer because of less power. It renders this whole changeover pointless.
Just because something uses less energy doesn't mean it is going to take longer to work. There are plenty of ways you can make household items more efficient. Look at the light bulb, incandescent bulbs used almost 10 times the power of an LED bulb but most of that energy was wasted as heat. Even with LED bulbs there are still ways of making them use less energy while producing more light.
With a kettle you could increase the insulation on the outside or make the element in a way that transfers the heat into the water faster. You could take a completely different approach and excite the water molecules using RF radiation like in a microwave oven, although I am not sure if that would be more or less efficient than the current resistive heater elements.
Just because something uses less energy doesn't mean it is going to take longer to work. There are plenty of ways you can make household items more efficient. Look at the light bulb, incandescent bulbs used almost 10 times the power of an LED bulb but most of that energy was wasted as heat. Even with LED bulbs there are still ways of making them use less energy while producing more light.
With a kettle you could increase the insulation on the outside or make the element in a way that transfers the heat into the water faster. You could take a completely different approach and excite the water molecules using RF radiation like in a microwave oven, although I am not sure if that would be more or less efficient than the current resistive heater elements.
In theory you're right. In practice has it happened with vacumn cleaners. I think not.
In theory you're right. In practice has it happened with vacumn cleaners. I think not.
Bit premature to be claiming that, don't you think? The regulations only came into force a few days ago!
Interesting that the new range of Hoover vacuums with their high efficiency motors all seem to manage on 700W, whereas the previous range (and even equivalent models) were in the 2000/2100W range!
With a kettle you could increase the insulation on the outside or make the element in a way that transfers the heat into the water faster. You could take a completely different approach and excite the water molecules using RF radiation like in a microwave oven, although I am not sure if that would be more or less efficient than the current resistive heater elements.
A resistive heating element is as good as it gets (100% efficient). Microwave ovens generate a lot of waste heat from the magnetron. But you can improve efficiency by reducing the thermal mass of everything in the kettle that isn't water, because that has to be heated to the same temperature. This includes the element.
Bit premature to be claiming that, don't you think? The regulations only came into force a few days ago!
Interesting that the new range of Hoover vacuums with their high efficiency motors all seem to manage on 700W, whereas the previous range (and even equivalent models) were in the 2000/2100W range!
They come into force on Monday. And I have not seen any mention of a super duper hoover that passes these "EU" regulations that will be just as good as a more powerful make on sale now.
And I have not seen any mention of a super duper hoover that passes these "EU" regulations that will be just as good as a more powerful make on sale now.
No ... but I'm not the one who's complaining that they aren't likely to be as good! ;-)
The Hoover brand had some very high-wattage vacuums ... in the region of 2000W ... and although the motors are now capped at 1600W, their range now uses high efficiency 700W motors. Even the new Pure Power upright which looks identical to the previous model has gone from 2100W down to 700W. Why do you reckon that is? If Wattage is king, why haven't they gone for the maximum allowed? After all, the reduced cap in three years time is 900W, but they haven't even gone for that! Do you think that Hoover would deliberately alienate their customers by using a motor which was well below any proposed cap if it didn't do the same job?
The Henry HVR200 (which I have) was 1200W, but even although that's still well below the cap, the new equivalent model uses a high-efficiency 580W motor. Why would Numatic risk the reputation of the Henry range by needlessly fitting a lower Wattage motor if it didn't do the same job?
It ceratinly seems as though manufacturers have have found it fairly easy to meet, and even surpass, the Wattage requirements simply by using more modern, high efficiency motors.
Playing devils advocate for a moment, we all moaned about being forced to recycle back in the day but it's become a natural part of our daily life now. The idea that everything I now put in my recycling would have once gone into a tip is awful.
If the EU hadn't forced this through on a region wide basis I doubt that the national politicians would have ever had the political courage to do it. Maybe these limits would force manufactures to come up with better, more efficient designs.
no way, recycling sucks arse, i hate having like 9 bins of rubbish hanging around. All the recycling should be done at the other end, not on my door step. Would like to go back to one bin collected weekly. The EU can stick it's climate change dogma up its arse. It's yet another reason to vote UKIP. The only party to oppose these things.
Comments
You may only use a vacuum cleaner for a tiny fraction of a time as a tv left on standby but it only takes 10 minutes of hoovering to use the same power as that tv on standby would use in a month.
I am sick to the back teeth of the EU's meddling and their general spineless nonsense. What's the matter with them!
cheap kettles often from china. a nice example is the cookworks from argos which lasts about 6 months. but it is as efficient as any other kettle in turning wattage into heat ..... how does limiting the wattage help ?
smartphone chips have got better due to improved design but the power needed for displays and 3g/4g comms are limiting factors .....
Seriously the governments all around the EU would lose so much tax if people refrained from flying & kept to shoddy overpriced UK holidays. But hey if they did ban flying, then they may as well ban it for MP's and the Royal clan as well, make everyone take a more efficient form of transport. But until that happens, I will continue to use my passport, hell I may even go to Ireland next year, only an hour or so on the plane, but cheaper & quicker than boat or anything else.
I can't find anything in the latest Ecodesign Draft Task report about limiting the wattage of kettles.
Of course, far be it for me to suggest that any journalist might "sex up" or "dumb down" a story in order to create a good headline!! ;-)
That's one of the "topics for discussion" in the study ... so I'm now waiting for the headline "Brussels to ban people from boiling more than one cupful of water at a time!"
Well the idiots in power already have IDS, a cretin that sucks the air out of people.
Have you ever thought if you leave it on for longer it uses the same amount of energy or before.
It's a bit like the EU's water saving toilets our masters in Brussels enforce on us. You often have to flush two or three times therefore you use more water than you would have done using our great British toilets.
Still as long as those EU fruit loops can justify their jobs eh?
You don't use less energy if everything takes longer because of less power. It renders this whole changeover pointless.
http://www.sageappliances.co.uk/the-smart-kettle.html
when I was being demonstrated it in debinhams I said to the lady "but it hasn't bothered the Chinese for many years"..... I got a confused look....
Just because something uses less energy doesn't mean it is going to take longer to work. There are plenty of ways you can make household items more efficient. Look at the light bulb, incandescent bulbs used almost 10 times the power of an LED bulb but most of that energy was wasted as heat. Even with LED bulbs there are still ways of making them use less energy while producing more light.
With a kettle you could increase the insulation on the outside or make the element in a way that transfers the heat into the water faster. You could take a completely different approach and excite the water molecules using RF radiation like in a microwave oven, although I am not sure if that would be more or less efficient than the current resistive heater elements.
In theory you're right. In practice has it happened with vacumn cleaners. I think not.
Bit premature to be claiming that, don't you think? The regulations only came into force a few days ago!
Interesting that the new range of Hoover vacuums with their high efficiency motors all seem to manage on 700W, whereas the previous range (and even equivalent models) were in the 2000/2100W range!
They come into force on Monday. And I have not seen any mention of a super duper hoover that passes these "EU" regulations that will be just as good as a more powerful make on sale now.
Have you seen any back-to-back tests?
No I haven't. Have you?
No ... but I'm not the one who's complaining that they aren't likely to be as good! ;-)
The Hoover brand had some very high-wattage vacuums ... in the region of 2000W ... and although the motors are now capped at 1600W, their range now uses high efficiency 700W motors. Even the new Pure Power upright which looks identical to the previous model has gone from 2100W down to 700W. Why do you reckon that is? If Wattage is king, why haven't they gone for the maximum allowed? After all, the reduced cap in three years time is 900W, but they haven't even gone for that! Do you think that Hoover would deliberately alienate their customers by using a motor which was well below any proposed cap if it didn't do the same job?
The Henry HVR200 (which I have) was 1200W, but even although that's still well below the cap, the new equivalent model uses a high-efficiency 580W motor. Why would Numatic risk the reputation of the Henry range by needlessly fitting a lower Wattage motor if it didn't do the same job?
It ceratinly seems as though manufacturers have have found it fairly easy to meet, and even surpass, the Wattage requirements simply by using more modern, high efficiency motors.
no way, recycling sucks arse, i hate having like 9 bins of rubbish hanging around. All the recycling should be done at the other end, not on my door step. Would like to go back to one bin collected weekly. The EU can stick it's climate change dogma up its arse. It's yet another reason to vote UKIP. The only party to oppose these things.