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posted by LaminatorX on Wednesday September 03 2014, @07:46AM   Printer-friendly
from the Will-it-Blend? dept.

The European Commission has banned the sale of powerful vacuum cleaners. Now it might do the same for other domestic appliances, but would this actually cut energy consumption?

It started with vacuum cleaners. Then there were howls of outrage when it emerged the European Commission has set up a working group ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-29004060 ) to look at whether other common household appliances - kettles, toasters, bread makers and hairdryers among them - should also be regulated.

The working group ( http://www.ecodesign-wp3.eu/sites/default/files/Ecodesign%20WP3_Draft_Task_3_report_11072014.pdf [PDF]) is at an early stage and may rule out many of the products. But is the premise correct - does the power of an appliance determine energy consumption? Or by halving the wattage do you simply mean that someone uses it for twice as long ?

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-29020988

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03 2014, @08:07AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03 2014, @08:07AM (#88806)
    If you want to cut energy consumption just charge exponentially higher for usage past a certain point you consider reasonable for the billing category (e.g. factory, residence, restaurant etc)[1].

    Then tell people how to check regularly how much they are using - even better if they get a meter that shows stuff clearly (how much power they are using, how much energy they have used today and total so far, and how much they will get charged if they keep using it at that rate).

    [1] Side effect you'll have fewer people trying to cheat about which categories they belong to - since residences may have a lower initial rate but the exponential bit starts earlier. No more growing pot in your home at residential rates, no more baking cakes at industrial rates.
    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03 2014, @08:16AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03 2014, @08:16AM (#88812)

      The side effect is that rich people can do wtf they like, poor people are screwed. Sort of like "if you're rich, you can use a washing machine, if you're poor you have to use a mangle". It's a philosophy, but it's not why I signed up to work in R&D.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03 2014, @09:36AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03 2014, @09:36AM (#88821)
        How's it hurt the poor more than the current/proposed methods? Poor people won't be using that much electricity anyway so they'll never hit that tier. The rich might hit it, but they'll have to be very rich to go deep into it.

        Doubt the filthy rich use kettles, toasters, bread makers and vacuum cleaners the way the rest of us do... Their bread makers probably wear silly hats and speak Italian or French ;).
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03 2014, @10:54AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03 2014, @10:54AM (#88832)

          > How's it hurt the poor more than the current/proposed methods? Poor people won't be using that much electricity anyway so they'll never hit that tier.

          I agree, if the tiers are chosen well it is effectively a progressive tax.

        • (Score: 5, Interesting) by stingraz on Wednesday September 03 2014, @11:43AM

          by stingraz (3453) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @11:43AM (#88847)

          Poor people won't be using that much electricity anyway so they'll never hit that tier.

          At least here in Germany, that's not how it works: Poor-to-modest-income people usually hunt for "bargains" when shopping for appliances, so they end up with older or (sticker-price) "cheaper" devices that use more energy for the same task. Richer people are more likely to opt for the more expensive offerings, which tend to have better energy efficiency (be it out of an actual intent to make a better-engineered product, or only to have some element to differentiate from the low-price offerings; same effect).
          In the end, poor people use more power to do the same in their homes. In consequence, they have higher power bills, which does not help them get out of poverty.
          This is why you can get various types of "energy counseling", and also financial aids to offset the higher sticker prices of more energy-efficient devices, if you're a recipient of state welfare aids.
          Granted, if we're talking about countries with actual poor people, not the below-60%-of-median-income "relatively poor" people that we've got in developed countries, there will be a correlation between income and power consumption. Those places however tend to have bigger problems than the power usage from vacuum cleaners...

          To get back to topic: the main effect of such heavy-handed bans of certain products is not just that the offending products are removed from the market, which is a nice side-effect; primarily, it gets the producers in the affected market to innovate and implement existing solutions for higher efficiency over the whole product range, not just in premium offerings for premium prices.
          A nice example can be found in the "lightbulb ban" from a few years back: before the ban, the go-to solution for lighting was the standard light bulb with abysmal ~10lm/W efficiency. The most widely available alternatives were odd-looking CFLs, with drawbacks like this annoying slow-start behavior, a slightly higher price, not-great color accuracy especially for the affordable models, and more complicated handling when broken. LED lightbulbs were rare, expensive, and frankly, not that great in light color either.
          After the "ban", producers scrambled to get LED-based replacements ready, and now there is a sizable offering of decent-quality LED lightbulbs for any usage scenario, at a quarter of the previous prices or less. That effect of the ban is going to be more permanent, and overall much larger, because the innovation that was triggered brought the whole industry forward much faster than the "free market" would have.
          The same applies to vacuum cleaners (why invest in research for producing a better turbine design when you can just add more watts to a cheap design?), kettles, toasters, etc. (why spend money on improving heat transfer, reducing losses etc. when you can just keep on selling the old version?): sometimes it's useful overall to force market actors to innovate.

          • (Score: 5, Informative) by evilviper on Wednesday September 03 2014, @01:14PM

            by evilviper (1760) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @01:14PM (#88871) Homepage Journal

            A nice example can be found in the "lightbulb ban" from a few years back: before the ban, the go-to solution for lighting was the standard light bulb with abysmal ~10lm/W efficiency. The most widely available alternatives were odd-looking CFLs, with drawbacks like this annoying slow-start behavior, a slightly higher price, not-great color accuracy especially for the affordable models, and more complicated handling when broken. LED lightbulbs were rare, expensive, and frankly, not that great in light color either.
            After the "ban", producers scrambled to get LED-based replacements ready,

            Except none of that is true. LED bulbs became more common because the price of the emitters had simply been dropping for years, until it reached a reasonable point and there were lots of takers. The falling prices of LEDs follows the same pattern as the falling prices of microprocessors, or solar panels.

            CFLs similarly became popular when the price had dropped to reasonable levels, without any need to ban anything. I remember early CFLs from 20+ years ago, when they were astronomically expensive, and the tube detached from the ballast so it could be reused. It was cheap electronic ballasts that made them economical and convenient, not regulations.

            And LEDs aren't quite competitive with 60W equiv CFLs right now. $1.40 vs $8, with only 4W power difference, only saves you $1.50/yr even with heavily used lights, putting payback time at 3-5 years. Meanwhile... using a CFL bulb for those 3+ years until it fails, will give LED prices plenty of time to work their way down. The places we should start using LEDs first, are in refrigerators, automotive lights, and similar, uses where they'd offer the most money savings, yet they're really not at all advertised for those purposes.

            --
            Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
            • (Score: 2) by danomac on Wednesday September 03 2014, @06:14PM

              by danomac (979) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @06:14PM (#89013)

              And LEDs aren't quite competitive with 60W equiv CFLs right now. $1.40 vs $8, with only 4W power difference, only saves you $1.50/yr even with heavily used lights, putting payback time at 3-5 years. Meanwhile... using a CFL bulb for those 3+ years until it fails, will give LED prices plenty of time to work their way down.

              Keep in mind the expected lifetimes of the CFLs vs. the LED bulbs. I am using LEDs from 5 years ago that are turned on and off frequently and have not had to replace any LED bulbs in that time. Contrast that with my personal experience with CFLs: I've had to replace some as early as 9 months in.

              Only time will tell if LEDs will actually last the 20 years they claim...

      • (Score: 2) by tomtomtom on Wednesday September 03 2014, @09:49AM

        by tomtomtom (340) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @09:49AM (#88822)

        "Banning" high power vacuums etc is no different though (in fact perhaps worse). Rich people can still afford to buy on the secondary market, stockpile ahead of time, or buy "industrial" vacuum cleaners (cf lightbulbs where incandescents are still available but sold as "rough service" variants).

    • (Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03 2014, @08:23AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03 2014, @08:23AM (#88813)

      If you want to cut energy consumption just charge exponentially higher for usage past a certain point you consider reasonable for the billing category

      That doesn't work because it's evil communist socialist government market interference.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by evilviper on Wednesday September 03 2014, @08:29AM

    by evilviper (1760) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @08:29AM (#88816) Homepage Journal

    While just mindlessly reducing the power output may make an appliance take twice as long, it also provides an opportunity for innovative changes that DON'T have such drawbacks.

    Hair driers are a PERFECT example. They could cut out the heating element entirely, and go for higher powered fans instead, dramatically reducing both drying time and power usage. The same principal behind efficient high-speed hand driers like the Mitsubishi Jet Towel/Dyson Airblade/Excel XLERATOR.

    A heat-pump can also do the job much better than cheap resistive heating elements... Not just for the 3X efficiency improvement, but because moving air over cold coils, before heating it, removes much more humidity than just heating it.

    That said, in their position, I certainly wouldn't be restricting the sales of vacuums and hair dryers... There are "opportunity costs" to efficiency improvement, and both items are used so very rarely that I don't expect the tiny efficiency improvements are going to make the effort worthwhile. Would you buy a bigger and heavier $100 hair dryer to save $1 on electricity each month? It's a "penny-ante" energy efficiency game.

    --
    Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday September 03 2014, @11:10AM

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday September 03 2014, @11:10AM (#88835)

      "There are "opportunity costs" to efficiency improvement, and both items are used so very rarely that I don't expect the tiny efficiency improvements are going to make the effort worthwhile."

      This is close to the definition of greenwashing. It does fit into the hair shirt environmentalist mindset. "Well, it may not save the planet at all, but at least it makes humans suffer more, which (in their mentally ill twisted minds) is good"

      • (Score: 2) by mojo chan on Wednesday September 03 2014, @05:06PM

        by mojo chan (266) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @05:06PM (#88981)

        The draft report points out that the savings from vacuum cleaners, and the expected losses if the motor-watts arms race continues, are quite significant for the EU. Currently vacuum cleaners in the EU use about the same amount of energy as Denmark.

        Hair dryers may be less worth while limiting from an energy saving point of view, but from a quality point of view ours really suck because we are stuck in a power arms race. If you look at Japanese hair dryers (check out Sharp and Panasonic's Japanese sites) they are far better but also less than half the power of EU ones. They have more features and dry quicker, damaging hair less.

        --
        const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      • (Score: 3, Informative) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday September 03 2014, @07:23PM

        by bzipitidoo (4388) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @07:23PM (#89035) Journal

        Hair shirt? Wasting energy makes humans suffer more. It's just incredible how people will whine about having to change, no matter how good the change is. The slightest hint of a change being forced upon them has them up in arms. They'd rather keep the hair shirt they know than trade it in for something that really is more comfortable.

        There are still people out there who hate audio CDs and love the vinyl record, even now when both have been made obsolete by flash memory. They love their vinyl record hair shirt. Me, I've been eagerly watching the audio CD die, and I sure don't miss vinyl records or cassette tapes. Yeah, CDs were a big improvement over vinyl, but flash is way better. Miss having to wait 10 minutes for a Vic 20 to load a game from cassette? No way! And light bulbs? I will not miss in the slightest having to be careful that I don't burn my fingers on a hot incandescent bulb. And I am eager to see electric cars sweep combustion engine cars right off the market. I also would just love to tell the electric company to shove off and switch to my own personal solar panel system. I've already told the big bad phone company to get lost, and switched to Internet telephony.

        The hair drier ranks up there with clothes driers and fireplaces for stupidly wasteful technology. A bit of time is all that's needed to dry hair and clothes. I've tried to understand why fireplaces hang on in their incredibly inefficient form, centuries after Benjamin Franklin complained about their wastefulness. They could at least be designed to wring a little more heat out of the fire, but no they send the smoke straight up the chimney. Have to chop a lot more wood and clean out a lot more ashes to compensate. I can only conclude that a fireplace is actually an entertainment device that provides pretty flames for lovers to cuddle in front of, but which is often mistaken for a serious way to heat a home.

        • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday September 03 2014, @09:33PM

          by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday September 03 2014, @09:33PM (#89092)

          At least one of us doesn't understand the argument. Could very well be me, but probably isn't.

          My understanding of this is that high power / high suction vacuums are being banned as "wasteful" for hair shirt and green washing reasons.

          My decades of experience show that as the vacuum cleaner fills up or clogs up, which fairly accurately simulates lower power, the amount of time required to finish the job goes up far more than linearly, at some poly or exponential function, resulting in higher total energy usage for the overall task.

          So rather than using a 2 KW vacuum cleaner for 2 minutes which instantly sucks up everything it passes over, some poor bastard with a 0.5 KW vacuum cleaner might have to spend perhaps 30 minutes trying to clean the dog hair out of his car or whatever.

          On a greenwashing uninformed hair shirt perspective, the guy who owns the 0.5 KW vacuum cleaner is obviously "saving the planet" (TM) compared to the guy who owns the 2 KW cleaner. Obviously, however, if you run the math, the guy who uses his wasteful rollin coal and destroy the planet (TM) vacuum cleaner for 4 kilowatt-minutes of total energy is obviously causing about a quarter the environmental damage NET than the hair shirt guy who uses 15 kilowatt-minutes of energy using his "Coexist" brand vacuum cleaner for a half hour.

          We had a similar problem on this side of the pond, where our toilets used to use 2 gallons per flush and work pretty darn well. So we passed a hair shirt law requiring them to only use 1.5 gallons or WTF it is, because California is in a drought and they're the only state that matters and all that other provincial BS. Anyway the new ones don't work so you have to flush twice. So from a hair shirt perspective its a huge win to use 1.5 gallons per flush instead of 2 gallons per flush, but the net effect in reality is either you live in filth or just flush twice, resulting in a total use of 2 * 1.5 = 3 gallons per trip to the bathroom instead of only 2 gallons per trip to the bathroom in the old "rollin coal" "F-the-earth" era. This is of course viewed as a heroic win, because there's three things:

          1) More wasted water = higher utility profits

          2) greenwashing PR

          3) The hair shirts are thrilled our indoor plumbing doesn't work right anymore

          Hopefully the .eu can avoid the same stupidity we have here. Politically most of them are .us lapdogs so its probably unavoidable, unfortunately.

          • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday September 03 2014, @10:38PM

            by bzipitidoo (4388) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @10:38PM (#89114) Journal

            Greenwashing? I think this is an unrelated problem or the opposite problem. Some people are knee-jerk anti-environment because they think pro-environment always means sacrifice. They'll reject things that are actually better if they hear it is also better for the environment. They'll scream "greenwash!" and won't even give it a fair chance.

            I think this is more about watching out for the consumer than the environment. For years, we lived with very inefficient PC power supplies. 60% efficiency was common, and it could even be as bad as 55%. It costs only pennies to make power supplies more efficient, pennies that would be paid back in under a year, but manufacturers wouldn't do it. Wasn't their electricity those power supplies were wasting. Recently there was a program, 80plus, to improve power supplies to at least 80% efficiency. It's been a huge success.

            So marketing has decided that on vacuum cleaners, Europeans go for power. Engineers are ordered to deliver. An easy way to cut manufacturing costs is to cheapen the motor, give it fewer windings. They can cheap out all over, use more power hungry transistors, capacitors. It will take more power to achieve the same result because now the motor and everything else is less efficient. And it runs hotter. But if the consumer who doesn't know any better interprets more heat, noise, and energy use as more powerful, marketing wins. Marketing screws the consumers and convinces them they got a better deal!

        • (Score: 2) by evilviper on Thursday September 04 2014, @02:54AM

          by evilviper (1760) on Thursday September 04 2014, @02:54AM (#89182) Homepage Journal

          There are still people out there who hate audio CDs and love the vinyl record, even now when both have been made obsolete by flash memory.

          Flash memory hasn't obsoleted CDs any more than 8-track tapes obsoleted vinyl records. CDs are the cheapest method to buy and store uncompressed audio. Flash storage is a considerably more expensive way to store the same quantity of uncompressed audio, and of course it's not available for sale in that form, anyhow. Flash is just a nice and compact transient storage mechanism for your already-compressed audio.

          And I am eager to see electric cars sweep combustion engine cars right off the market.

          That actually offers a major opportunity I've never heard anyone talking about. Right now, property near major roadways is greatly devalued due to the noise and pollution. But EVs promise to eliminate the pollution entirely, and reduce the noise by perhaps 1/3rd. Non-pneumatic tires that have been in-development for many years could dramatically reduce the other 2/3rds of the noise, as well. It'll take a few decades, but some of the cheapest, least desirable property out there, could become the most expensive and most desirable property, with great energy-saving highway access and none of the drawbacks we associate with that, today. Though you'll still want some screening from the headlights...

          I also would just love to tell the electric company to shove off and switch to my own personal solar panel system.

          It's unlikely that it'll ever be cheaper and better to go off-grid and use batteries, rather than being grid-connected. It's only economical if you currently can't get grid connected without paying thousands of dollars for the privilege.

          I've already told the big bad phone company to get lost, and switched to Internet telephony.

          Have you seen RepublicWireless? Dirt-cheap, uses VoIP but has cellular as a backup option.

          I can only conclude that a fireplace is actually an entertainment device that provides pretty flames for lovers to cuddle in front of, but which is often mistaken for a serious way to heat a home.

          More than that, the brick chimney is actually quite fragile, and is common to have it collapse on people, and/or the rest of the structure (during an earthquake/storm/etc), causing major damage when a simple steel vent pipe would have allowed escaping completely unscathed. That, plus homeowner's insurance charging much more for homes that have a fireplace, makes me absolutely avoid them, at all costs.

          --
          Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Geezer on Wednesday September 03 2014, @11:10AM

      by Geezer (511) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @11:10AM (#88836)

      It's the old engineering trade-off game, with objectives handed down by price point-conscious marketing boffins.

      All sorts of appliances can, and should, be more efficient by design, but at what cost to manufacture? What pricing will the market support?

      In the lean, just in time, cost-driven world of manufacturing, energy efficiency will always play second fiddle, even when products are marketed as "green" and "energy efficient".

      Vasts segments of the consumer durable goods market, the lower-income groups, are forced by necessity to only look at the purchase price tag today, not the electric bill tomorrow.

      From a fairness standpoint, I like the progressive nature of a tiered billing system, but the engineer in me says that we need to work harder at at greener+cheaper too. Affordable and efficient technology is a problem we need to solve.

    • (Score: 1) by Flyingmoose on Wednesday September 03 2014, @12:53PM

      by Flyingmoose (4369) <mooseNO@SPAMflyingmoose.com> on Wednesday September 03 2014, @12:53PM (#88865) Homepage

      Both of your examples are ridiculous...

      The hand dryers work by blowing the water off your hands instead of drying it. If you tried this with hair, especially a woman's long hair, you'd end up with a tangled mess.

      Heat pumps put the cold coil outdoors, so it wouldn't dehumidify the air, which you don't want to do in the winter anyway. In fact, my (gas) furnace includes a humidifier that reduces efficiency but keeps me from getting bloody noses all winter.

      But the electric kettle in the summary is the most ridiculous, since boiling a given amount of water takes the same amount of energy whether you do it faster or slower. In fact, the less time it takes, the less energy is wasted by leaking out.

      • (Score: 2) by evilviper on Wednesday September 03 2014, @01:25PM

        by evilviper (1760) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @01:25PM (#88876) Homepage Journal

        The hand dryers work by blowing the water off your hands instead of drying it.

        If that was true, there'd be a huge puddle of water underneath them... There is not. They would come with drains if that were so. Instead, it's just that the larger volume of air makes up for the higher relatively humidity of that air without heating.

        If you tried this with hair, especially a woman's long hair, you'd end up with a tangled mess.

        If you tried it with one of the hand-dryers, sure... With a high-speed hair dryer, the air speed could instead be quite manageable... It just wouldn't dry your hair in 12 seconds like the hand dryers manage.

        Heat pumps put the cold coil outdoors,

        Which makes sense if you want to heat the indoors... That's not our purpose at all. And the condenser is NOT outdoors because of humidity levels in any way.

        dehumidify the air, which you don't want to do in the winter anyway.

        Yes, for a DRYER, you absolutely do want to dehumidify the air. That's all the heating coil is for.

        But the electric kettle in the summary is the most ridiculous, since boiling a given amount of water takes the same amount of energy whether you do it faster or slower. In fact, the less time it takes, the less energy is wasted by leaking out.

        Encouraging people to boil water on a natural gas stove instead of with an electric kettle would be vastly more efficient and cheaper here in the US.

        Reducing the size of the kettle will allow boiling water within the power limits as fast as you could want, without wasted heat... You just won't be able to make as much of it in one use.

        And they're probably trying to encourage the use of insulation, which would be an improvement all-around.

        --
        Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
        • (Score: 3, Interesting) by drussell on Wednesday September 03 2014, @03:24PM

          by drussell (2678) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @03:24PM (#88940) Journal

          Encouraging people to boil water on a natural gas stove instead of with an electric kettle would be vastly more efficient and cheaper here in the US.

          Using a stove (electric or gas) is not more efficient . The immersed element in an electric kettle transfers virtually all of the input energy into the water with only a small amount of loss through the kettle walls during the heating process. Heating water in a pot on a stove tends to leak a large amount of heat around the pot from the burner which does not enter the water. This can be minimized with careful pot to burner size matching but still wastes much more heat than an immersed heater.

          Using a natural gas stove vs. electric would currently be less expensive in the united states and other places where natural gas costs less per BTU than electricity. Bulk propane tends to be close to the price of electricity but as sold for a typical 20lb tank of propane is usually about double the price of electricity for the same BTUs. The exact rates vary by market, obviously, but you're using more thermal energy (BTUs) using a stove than an electric kettle.

          1 kWh (1000 Watt/hr) = approx 3412 BTU/hr if you want to compare fuels using the approximate average energy density of a gas fuel.

          • (Score: 2) by evilviper on Wednesday September 03 2014, @04:20PM

            by evilviper (1760) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @04:20PM (#88963) Homepage Journal

            but you're using more thermal energy (BTUs) using a stove than an electric kettle.

            Nope. Electricity doesn't just get pumped out of the ground. Generation has significant losses. And here, most electricity is generated with natural gas to begin with, so the extra step to convert it to electricity just to use it for heating is a massive waste.

            --
            Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
            • (Score: 2) by drussell on Wednesday September 03 2014, @05:04PM

              by drussell (2678) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @05:04PM (#88980) Journal

              Nope. Electricity doesn't just get pumped out of the ground. Generation has significant losses. And here, most electicity is generated with natural gas to begin with, so the extra step to convert it to electricity just to use it for heating is a massive waste.

              Please notice I said nothing about the generation side of the equation, only the actual energy put into the water.

              Obviously the complete system of a natural gas fired thermoelectric power plant plus all thermal and resistive losses at the plant and during transmission is going to be less efficient than burning the natural gas on-site to heat the water directly (although the total energy used for extracting, compressing, storing and distributing the natural gas is not zero, either.) but that isn't what I said.

              Now, let's say I have a solar panel or wind generator on my roof. Does this change your efficiency calculations in any way? :)

              The method of generation, be it gas thermoelectric, nuclear thermoelectric, hydroelectric, solar, wind, etc. is going to change your total energy input into the complete system significantly.

              As for getting the energy into the actual kettle, an immersed heating element-in-kettle is significantly more thermally efficient than kettle-on-element or flame.

              • (Score: 2) by evilviper on Wednesday September 03 2014, @05:25PM

                by evilviper (1760) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @05:25PM (#88991) Homepage Journal

                Please notice I said nothing about the generation side of the equation

                You didn't seem to notice that I didn't exclude the generation side of the equation in my statement, so I don't see why going with your very narrowly defined scope is somehow correct.

                Now, let's say I have a solar panel or wind generator on my roof. Does this change your efficiency calculations in any way? :)

                You don't really want to talk about the horribly poor conversion efficiency of solar and wind power. In fact, direct solar heating would be far more efficient.

                --
                Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
      • (Score: 2) by jcross on Wednesday September 03 2014, @01:34PM

        by jcross (4009) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @01:34PM (#88881)

        I believe the OP was talking about using a heat pump in a hairdryer, pumping heat from a cold coil at the air intake to a hot coil at the outtake. The idea is that water condenses on the cold coil, dehumidifying the air before it passes over the hot coil. Since dry air has less heat capacity, the hot coil either needs less energy to heat it to a given temperature or doesn't need to heat it as much to achieve a given capacity to absorb water from the hair. I'm not sure how this all plays out in a thermodynamic sense, or whether it would actually save energy in a holistic sense, but it seems like an interesting idea at least.

      • (Score: 2) by drussell on Wednesday September 03 2014, @03:26PM

        by drussell (2678) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @03:26PM (#88942) Journal

        But the electric kettle in the summary is the most ridiculous, since boiling a given amount of water takes the same amount of energy whether you do it faster or slower. In fact, the less time it takes, the less energy is wasted by leaking out.

        Yes! ... Precisely!

      • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday September 03 2014, @03:53PM

        by Thexalon (636) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @03:53PM (#88954)

        The really green solution to drying your hands: just walk away from the sink, and in the vast majority of places your hands will dry off in the air after a few minutes.

        As far as home heating goes, the efficiency of the heating system has not all that much to do with the furnace, and everything to do with insulation and caulking. If you're losing lots of heat constantly, that's going to use up more fuel than if you have proper insulation everywhere and few drafts. And of course if you're building new buildings, passive solar heating by having lots of equator-facing double-paned windows and skylights is also a big help.

        If your local conditions allow, probably the most efficient way of boiling water is a solar cooker [wikipedia.org]: You use a parabolic-ish reflective surface to concentrate the heat of the sun at whatever you're trying to heat up.

        Actual conservation and environmentalism is mostly doing stuff we already know how to do, and often uses cheap and simple solutions. That's why the stuff that basically says "Buy this and you're an environmentalist" is worse than doing nothing: it's selling the feeling of being green without actually being green at all, and causing people to make the wrong adjustments: For example, driving a Prius 50 miles to work is better than driving a Hummer that same distance, but from an environmental standpoint the Prius is much worse than living near your job and biking or walking to work (or, even better, telecommuting).

        --
        The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
        • (Score: 2) by evilviper on Thursday September 04 2014, @03:07AM

          by evilviper (1760) on Thursday September 04 2014, @03:07AM (#89187) Homepage Journal

          from an environmental standpoint the Prius is much worse than living near your job and biking or walking to work

          A nice house around here costs $100,000.

          A tiny miserable house that's walking-distance from my job would cost $1,000,000.

          And don't start mentioning condos, apartments, etc. The economics doesn't work out any better for them.

          If there was an inexpensive capsule hotel near the office, I might use it once a week or more. That might help.

          Long-run, short-run, whatever... Commuting is actually better for the environment (earning that $900,000 is going to have a huge environmental footprint), and obviously better for humans. How much money you spend is usually a pretty good proxy for how much damage you're doing to the environment, and you ignore that at your own peril. Plus, people like to save money a LOT more than they like to save the environment.

          --
          Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
    • (Score: 2) by hankwang on Wednesday September 03 2014, @05:36PM

      by hankwang (100) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @05:36PM (#88999) Homepage

      A heat-pump can also do the job much better than cheap resistive heating elements... Not just for the 3X efficiency improvement, but because moving air over cold coils, before heating it, removes much more humidity than just heating it.

      I have a dehumidifier which weighs about 10 kg (not counting the water reservoir), draws 200 W, and cost me about 150 euros. And it's pretty small for a dehumidifier; I think the warm air flow coming out of that thing could be used as a modest hair drier if you could direct it suitably. This doesn't look like a realistic alternative to a resistive hand-held hair dryer.

      • (Score: 2) by evilviper on Wednesday September 03 2014, @05:49PM

        by evilviper (1760) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @05:49PM (#89005) Homepage Journal

        I have a dehumidifier which weighs about 10 kg (not counting the water reservoir), draws 200 W, and cost me about 150 euros

        I have a 150W peltier. It weighs about 2oz, it'll slip comfortably into your wallet, and it costs $10 on amazon.

        --
        Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
        • (Score: 2) by hankwang on Wednesday September 03 2014, @10:10PM

          by hankwang (100) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @10:10PM (#89103) Homepage

          I have a 150W peltier. It weighs about 2oz, it'll slip comfortably into your wallet, and it costs $10 on amazon.

          My dehumidifier is 200 W in current draw. I think the heat-pump capacity is closer to 800 W (coefficient of performance = 4, typical for a compressor-based heat pump).

          I have a Peltier-powered icebox and professionally I have designed a temperature controller based on Peltier cooling. From experience with both of them I can tell you that the efficiency of thermoelectric heat transport is ridiculously bad if it has to be over a substantial temperature differential, say 20 C or more. At that temperature difference, your 150 W Peltier module will suck about 50 W of heat out of the cold side (CoP=0.33) and dump 200 W on the hot side. With 50 W of cooling power, it will not be able to dehumidify a substantial volume of air. You are not going to replace a 1500 W hair dryer by that thing.

          And then you still need to move the heat into and out of the Peltier module, which will typically involve big expensive metal heat exchangers and which will lower the efficiency even more, a power supply that can deliver 15 A at 10 V or so, a fan, and so on.

          • (Score: 2) by evilviper on Thursday September 04 2014, @02:15AM

            by evilviper (1760) on Thursday September 04 2014, @02:15AM (#89167) Homepage Journal

            With 50 W of cooling power, it will not be able to dehumidify a substantial volume of air.

            It will do far, far better than a resistive heating element, which has no cooling capacity at all.

            your 150 W Peltier module will suck about 50 W of heat out of the cold side (CoP=0.33) and dump 200 W on the hot side. With 50 W of cooling power, it will not be able to dehumidify a substantial volume of air. You are not going to replace a 1500 W hair dryer by that thing.

            ...I can get 10 of them, no problem. But matching your humidifier would only take about 3-4, which is reasonable. And that's without discussing how much those higher-speed fans are going to improve drying with less heating.

            And then you still need to move the heat into and out of the Peltier module, which will typically involve big expensive metal heat exchangers

            A chunk of aluminum is NOT expensive. You can get ridiculously inexpensive heatsinks quite easily.

            a power supply that can deliver 15 A at 10 V

            Thanks largely to computers, those are widely available, in very high efficiencies, at pretty low prices.

            But my point was really more to illustrate the ridiculousness of your previous comment... Obviously, a hair dryer doesn't need to be a super-efficient, 50,000 hour duty-cycle dehumidifier built like a tank. There are plenty of ways to shrink the cycle down to a reasonable size.

            --
            Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
            • (Score: 2) by hankwang on Thursday September 04 2014, @07:05AM

              by hankwang (100) on Thursday September 04 2014, @07:05AM (#89222) Homepage

              On the one hand, you state that a single Peltier module with power supply is cheap, then you state that you need four of them. With $40 for the Peltier modules, and another $50 for a chunky 600 W power supply, more for heat sinks and fans, you still end up with a monstruously big and expensive hair dryer that will need a condensation catch tray and that will merely replace a 750 W resistive hair dryer.

              Thermoelectric heat pumps are only useful in certain niche applications: heat transport against small (10 C) temperature differentials in tight spaces and applications where lack of moving parts or accuracy are more important than efficiency. A hair dryer is neither of them.

              • (Score: 2) by evilviper on Thursday September 04 2014, @07:32AM

                by evilviper (1760) on Thursday September 04 2014, @07:32AM (#89231) Homepage Journal

                "But my point was really more to illustrate the ridiculousness of your previous comment... Obviously, a hair dryer doesn't need to be a super-efficient, 50,000 hour duty-cycle dehumidifier built like a tank. There are plenty of ways to shrink the cycle down to a reasonable size."

                --
                Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Aiwendil on Wednesday September 03 2014, @11:41AM

    by Aiwendil (531) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @11:41AM (#88845) Journal

    Seriously, banning high-wattage vacuum-cleaners are somehwere between stupid and insane (and not in the good sense).

    For instance, right now one could perfectly well make a 50cfm vauum-cleaner at 600watt and still be within limits (ok, you probably would need a better airflow than that to cool the thing, but still).

    I would much rather would have wanted to see them put in a restriction on minimum airflow per watt at the default startup-setting.

    Sometimes you actually need an insanely powerful vacuumcleaner and sometimes you rather just want a quiet thing that does the job well - the new restriction bans both.

    • (Score: 1) by Buck Feta on Wednesday September 03 2014, @01:06PM

      by Buck Feta (958) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @01:06PM (#88868) Journal

      I think they'd be better off banning vampiric appliances [wikipedia.org] than ones we actually use while they are on.

      --
      - fractious political commentary goes here -
      • (Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Wednesday September 03 2014, @04:45PM

        by Aiwendil (531) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @04:45PM (#88970) Journal

        Banning vampiric devices would have the same issue really, regulating the wrong thing. It would be much better if they set it as a max draw allowed over the course of a day for vampiric use.. Set it as something high (5Wh per day) to allow the manufacturers to play and pull updates and such.

        Personally I kinda like the notion of having motion sensors to wake things up, being able to wake things from my main computer, and being able to wake things with a remote rather than having to fetch a ladder in order to reach the power switch..
        However, vampiric devices are mainly an issue with badly design things anyways - properly designed devices has a very low powerdraw (probably to the point where a ban against vampiric devices only would end up with devices having built-in batteries for the vampiric draw and thus meaning we all lose functionaly when that battery has worn out over a couple of years)

        (Main reason why I don't agree with that it would be BETTER to ban vampiric devices mainly is due to that I want to see a heavy optimization of power use rather than outbanning entire subsets and thereby useful implementations as well)

        • (Score: 2) by jdccdevel on Wednesday September 03 2014, @09:23PM

          by jdccdevel (1329) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @09:23PM (#89087) Journal

          However, vampiric devices are mainly an issue with badly design things anyways - properly designed devices has a very low powerdraw (probably to the point where a ban against vampiric devices only would end up with devices having built-in batteries for the vampiric draw and thus meaning we all lose functionaly when that battery has worn out over a couple of years)

          Since for now the ban in question is only on "high-wattage" appliances (ostensibly to reduce power use), I believe the GP was implying that it would make sense to ban devices that draw more than a certain wattage while sleeping/suspended, (i.e. high-wattage vampire devices), rather than banning such devices outright.

          It doesn't take much energy to run a remote sensor, and wake-up timers can be run from a CMOS style battery. Properly designing electronics like this really is "low hanging fruit", and will save MUCH MUCH more energy over the product's lifetime than a reduced wattage vacuum. Without any (even perceived) reduction in functionality.

    • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday September 03 2014, @03:53PM

      by bob_super (1357) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @03:53PM (#88955)

      Ok, many people need a clue:
      Current small appliances get to Europe by the boatload from $generic_manufacturer in China.
      Europe says: Your inefficient crap can't be sold here. $generic_manufacturer ships the next container to Brazil.
      $European_manufacturer says: I can do it, hand me your monies (but still builds mostly in China)
      $European_manufacturer gets to live another 5 years selling more expensive stuff, until $generic_manufacturer decides the market is worth the extra investment.
      Europe will then add another restriction, based on whatever their local guys tell them is good for another 5 years.

      Side-effect: Europe's reliance on imported energy might benefit.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by mojo chan on Wednesday September 03 2014, @04:57PM

      by mojo chan (266) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @04:57PM (#88976)

      Actually it's genius.

      Current EU vacuum cleaners are locked in an arms race for ever bigger motors that don't actually improve cleaning performance. Once above about 900W there isn't much to be gained from high power motors as all they do is suck up dust that is already free and can be moved. To get dust that is adhered to a surface or buried in a carpet you need an agitator. Basic ones are the little strips they place on the vacuum cleaner's head to brush against the floor, but the more advanced ones use rotating brushes to dislodge dust. Once the dust is in the air it doesn't take 2500W to suck it up.

      By limiting the maximum power AND requiring testing of vacuum cleaners AND the ratings placed on the box manufacturers are forced to compete on quality instead of who can fit the most wasteful motor. As well as cleaning performance on a variety of surfaces they are testing how much dust makes it through the filters and back out the exhaust, which is extremely important for people like me who suffer from allergies.

      Note that in countries with 100V or 120V mains you can't even buy a 2000W vacuum because their sockets are only 15A fused, meaning about 1500W maximum output. Naturally vacuums don't assume 1500W is actually available so limit themselves to about 1200W. Somehow they manage to clean just as well and just as quickly though.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      • (Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Wednesday September 03 2014, @06:18PM

        by Aiwendil (531) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @06:18PM (#89015) Journal

        Insanely high suction has its uses, other than the wet vacuuming needed at some times (I really hope EU remember to make an exception for those, but considering how well they regulate I doubt it) it is at times useful to just move insane amounts of air when vacuuming things you can't reach directly - like the inside of vents, behind heavy furniture, under low furnitures, getting dust out from behind grates/behind the fridge (without having to move it). And not to forget my common use for vacuum-cleaners - pebbles and semi-wet soil and plantparts after repotting plants..

        But yeah, for dry dust where one can reach with a nozzle pretty much anything above 600watt is overkill - but banning high-wattage units removes the possibility to select for the other cases.

        (However, for just dust in itself I'm looking into getting a batterypowered stick-type vacuumcleaner - since they are sufficient for the non-bi-monthly vacuuming and are "always ready" devices which encourages more frequent vacuuming)

  • (Score: 4, Informative) by martyb on Wednesday September 03 2014, @12:21PM

    by martyb (76) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday September 03 2014, @12:21PM (#88857) Journal

    Not sure about the other products, but for a kettle, one needs to be aware that over time the contents will cool. The idea is to put heat into the water sufficiently faster than it is dissipating it so that one can get boiling hot water in a reasonable period of time. As the difference in temperature between the contents and ambient air increases, the rate of heat loss increases, too. Obviously, one can to some extent reduce the rate of heat loss through insulation. Still, it takes a great deal of heat to transition from water to steam. (Latent heat of vaporization.)

    IOW, you can't legislate a law that violates the Laws of Thermodynamics! =)

    --
    Wit is intellect, dancing.
    • (Score: 2) by mojo chan on Wednesday September 03 2014, @05:01PM

      by mojo chan (266) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @05:01PM (#88978)

      Kettles can be improved by reducing the minimum amount of water required to operate them. Most standard kettles need at least three cups of water to reach the minimum operating level. So called "instant kettles" simply allow you to put only one cup's worth in, and thus heat it much faster. The EU is considering encouraging this by limiting maximum power. Countries with 100V or 120V mains can't use kettles over about 1200W anyway as their sockets are typically fused at 15A, meaning 1500W peak power is available to every device on the same spur.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      • (Score: 3, Informative) by drussell on Wednesday September 03 2014, @05:38PM

        by drussell (2678) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @05:38PM (#89001) Journal

        120V mains can't use kettles over about 1200W anyway as their sockets are typically fused at 15A, meaning 1500W peak power is available to every device on the same spur.

        It's generally calculated at 125v so 1875 watts max on a 15A breaker and since code says (basically) that except for fixed resistive heating loads (like a baseboard heaters where we can fuse at 100% of nameplate rating) we cannot attach a load to a circuit which is more than 80% of the circuit ampacity, single loads may not exceed 1500 watts. This is why every space heater you see is 1500W on high and kettles, toasters, hairdriers etc. are pretty much always 1500W max. (or less) There are rare exceptions (like my portable 4HP compressor which when wired for (110/115/117/120/125) instead of (220/230/234/240/250) is rated 15A or 16A or somesuch but is allowed to be connected to a standard 15A circuit because it is an intermittent load. Small home welders are often like this as well because they have duty cycle limits of, say, 10-20%... 30% if you're REALLY lucky. :) I modified my old Century MIG to add capacitors on the output and changed the line cord to 10ga with a 20A plug instead of the 14ga 15A stock cord to maximize the available juice.

        As for "peak power" you can draw many times 15A from a 15A breaker for short periods of time. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to start large motors or turn on several standard light bulbs in parallel with one switch. A 15A breaker will hold 15A indefinitely, 20A for hours, 25A for minutes, 30A for seconds, etc. approximately and typically. Different curves are available (think slow blow vs fast blow fuses, etc.) and when you design equipment you need to look at the graphs in the data for your protection device to pick the correct type for the application.

        As an aside, for years now I've actually been meaning to order a 3000W 240v kettle from Europe (most standard kettles are 3000W there vs. our 1500W; wouldn't want to have to wait for that tea! :) ), changing the plug to a NA style 240v 15A, and changing one of the 2-circuit split duplex receptacles to a 240v 15A so I can heat water in half the time (or slightly less). Significantly faster than a 2200W element on a typical electric stovetop AND with less thermal losses!

      • (Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday September 03 2014, @09:42PM

        by LoRdTAW (3755) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @09:42PM (#89094) Journal

        If you want a single cup of tea or coffee consider getting an immersion cup heater. They burn about 300W and can bring a cup to a boil quite fast. From what I remember it took only 30 seconds to a minute to heat a mug of water. My grandmother used one all the time to make instant coffee.

  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03 2014, @12:35PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03 2014, @12:35PM (#88861)

    ...that takes several flushes to get the job done.

    Or worse yet, these things show up in public places, failing to remove the previous client's deposit if the previous client doesn't hang around long enough to supervise the toilet and have it do-over until it does a satisfactory job.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03 2014, @02:47PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03 2014, @02:47PM (#88921)

      Yepp...
      I train, and are a bit over 100 kg:s, thus, eat a bit more than average...
      Nowdays, its a fucking battle to get the shitting done without without having to poke it halfway down the pipe...

  • (Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday September 03 2014, @12:38PM

    by LoRdTAW (3755) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @12:38PM (#88863) Journal

    I dont get it. Do people in Europe vacuum for hours on end every day? When I vacuum the machine runs for no more than 5 minutes. Per week I vacuum about 2-3 times. I have one of those Dyson ball vacuums, I can't find a decent power rating other than an 11 amp rating which is marketing BS. So lets say 1kw for sake of argument, though it is probably much less. Running that vacuum for 1hr means it consumes 1kw/hr. Per week I run the vacuum for about 15 minutes. So, each month I use about 1kw/hr for vacuuming. Perhaps I am underestimating so lets say 2kw/hr. That costs me about 40 cents here in NYC. An LED bulb that is a 60W equivalent burns about 9W and if I light it for 5 hours each day then I am using 1.35kw/hrs. I usually have one or two lights lit so my lighting uses more power than vacuuming.

    Perhaps there are clean freaks that vacuum for an hour per day, but they must be insane or live in a home that is too big. I still think this is going after the wrong appliances. You are not running the mentioned appliances in the summary for more than a few minutes save for the bread maker (do Europeans make a lot of homemade bread? I don't know a single human being with a bread maker).

    You want to want kill power hogs? Go look at cable boxes and other electronics and see how they draw 40+W on "standby" (TV and DVR combined draw on standby). Next up would be to sell all residential outdoor lighting fixtures with dusk-dawn and motion detectors. Also force air conditioner manufacturers to put proper thermostats + timers and not some crappy knob that has a scale that means, I don't know, more cool to less cool? Ban portable oil filled radiator heaters, they only make good resistive load banks for testing small generators (I use 4). Other then that they do nothing but burn 1 - 1.5KW and all of your money.

    Maybe these are already banned or regulated in Europe, I don't know. But going after minimal use appliances is stupid. We have this toaster at work that is called a Euro-toaster. Friggen thing is so slow it takes 10 minutes to brown a bagel. If this is European power saving in action then Europeans have my condolences.

    • (Score: 2) by carguy on Wednesday September 03 2014, @01:02PM

      by carguy (568) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday September 03 2014, @01:02PM (#88867)

      Go look at cable boxes ...

      When passing by, I stopped in at my local Time Warner Cable store. Asked to see all the different types of cable boxes. They had three and the back panel ratings varied from (iirc) 15W to 45W. Turned out I already had the 15W Cisco box. At first the counter person was dubious, but after I described the savings on the electric bill they were pleased to have learned a little something.

      If I do this again in a few years, I should take a Kill-a-Watt (or equal) along to check the accuracy of the back panel ratings.

    • (Score: 2) by KritonK on Wednesday September 03 2014, @01:33PM

      by KritonK (465) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @01:33PM (#88880)

      5 minutes sounds like awfully little. It takes me a little over half an hour to vacuum my medium-sized apartment. This includes vacuuming under furniture and the furniture themselves. (I have a cat who sheds a lot...)

      If you are in the US, your vacuum cleaner's 11 A rating would suggest a maximum power consumption of 120 × 11 = 1320 W.

      On the other side of the Atlantic, I recently had to replace my old Siemens 1200 W vacuum cleaner, and I couldn't find anything under 1500 W. I ended up buing a 2200(?) W Miele vacuum cleaner, at the recommendation of a friend. At half power, it sucks so strongly, that you can feel it trying to remove the floor boards. At full power, it will probably succeed, so yes, European vacuum cleaners can be quite powerful!

      On the other hand, at half power, which is the recommended setting for everyday use, the new vacuum cleaner cleans better than the old vacuum cleaner at full power. At this setting the new vacuum cleaner uses at most the same power as the old one, but, as the motor isn't strained, the new vacuum cleaner is not as loud. Having this extra power available does not mean you actually have to use it. It's there so that you don't have to operate the vacuum cleaner at its limits.

  • (Score: 1) by cyrano on Wednesday September 03 2014, @01:00PM

    by cyrano (1034) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @01:00PM (#88866) Homepage

    The main reason the EU restricted power in vacuum cleaners, was noise, not energy consumption. The vacuum is the noisiest household appliance in use today. And because people buy numbers, they'll look at the wattage and buy the one with the highest number, vacuums are getting noisier and noisier.

    By restricting max. power usage, the people who brought this up hope to convince the makers to design more efficiently. After all, 1.500 W (2 HP) should be enough for any aspirator.

    It is fairly hard to reduce noise, but noise never was a number the consumer could understand or deal with. It will take a number of years, but I'm convinced it can be done. There's just no incentive to do it.

    I don't know what the plans are for the newer committee, but until now, it hasn't all been negative. The USB port as a universal 5V, 1A power source is also of the making of the same group. And I like having ONE charger to deal with most all phones, some tablets and even entire computers, such as the Raspberry Pi.

    --
    The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear. - Kali [kali.org]
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03 2014, @01:15PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03 2014, @01:15PM (#88872)

      Then why not restrict the DB of the machine? We do have things that measure how loud something is? I am missing something then?

      • (Score: 2) by Hartree on Wednesday September 03 2014, @01:40PM

        by Hartree (195) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @01:40PM (#88884)

        What? Speak up! I can't hear you over the noise of the vacuum.

        • (Score: 2) by carguy on Wednesday September 03 2014, @02:38PM

          by carguy (568) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday September 03 2014, @02:38PM (#88915)

          Speak up! ...

          Get a whole house vacuum -- noisy in the basement, very quiet everywhere else. Bonus--exhaust air and any dust that escapes the dust collection system is sent outdoors, not into the air in the house (even better than HEPA filter).

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03 2014, @07:52PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03 2014, @07:52PM (#89047)

            Agreed, a central vac is an excellent investment. You must see it to believe it.

    • (Score: 2) by tibman on Wednesday September 03 2014, @02:19PM

      by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday September 03 2014, @02:19PM (#88907)

      In that case, wouldn't it make more sense to put a restriction on the level of noise created?

      --
      SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
      • (Score: 1) by cyrano on Thursday September 04 2014, @01:17AM

        by cyrano (1034) on Thursday September 04 2014, @01:17AM (#89157) Homepage

        Noise levels are very hard to measure reliably. Power consumption is clear to anyone and is directly related to the noise these things make. If you want the same performance with less power, you need to reduce noise and heat production.

        --
        The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear. - Kali [kali.org]
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03 2014, @04:51PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03 2014, @04:51PM (#88973)

      Rasberry Pi? Why not bring up Bitcoin too?

      And no, this is not about noise. Noise be measured in dB, not W.

      This is regulation of people that don't know about statistics, but heard about "smart grid" and "2000W? that's a big energy spike!".

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by nukkel on Wednesday September 03 2014, @06:26PM

      by nukkel (168) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @06:26PM (#89017)

      Another problem with vacuum cleaners in particular is that some manufacturers increase profit margins by severely underdimensioning the magnet wire in the motor. Most of the electrical power is wasted as heat but the manufacturers don't care because it's the customer who pays the electricity bill. A gullible customer is thus fooled thrice: (1) he is fooled into thinking he bought a great product because it "has plenty of watts" (2) he pays for the waste heat through his electricity bill; (3) his purchase will suffer from lower MTBF due to the internal heat.

      That said I think the EC should get its priorities straight...