On 12/05/2016 15:27, Andy Burns wrote:
Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

It's quite possible they are looking at all domestic appliances.

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/LKD/?uri=CELEX:32009L0125

So far on the ze list ...

micro generation

Could be a good idea.

lamps/lighting

We had years of crappy CFLs that haven't started giving as much light as
a candle by the time you've walked up or down the stairs and a horrible
colour light from them too. Now that the LEDs are available things are
improving. The banning of traditional lighbulbs was brought in before a
proper alternative was available.

solid fuel heaters/boilers
professional refrigeration units

Sensible to encourage good efficiencies for these.

games consoles

If you're running software that pushes the limits of what can be done on
reasonably priced hardware, you're going to use a lot of power. I would
hope efficiencies are aimed at standby power, DVD playing, streaming
films, etc. rather than limiting power - the fast switching of millions
of transistors required for producing quality "3d" video, at high frame
rates, from the interactions of thousands of virtual objects, is bound
to take a lot of power and produce a lot of heat. Any efficiencies in
new design are likely to be used to improve processing power for the
same electricity consumption.

ventilation units

As long as they both work and are affordable. For instance mandating
heat recovery units may make sense long term, but makes a simple
bathroom or kitchen ventilator unaffordable for many.

power transformers

Already very efficient.

domestic ovens and hobs

I wouldn't have thought that you could really improve the efficiency of
hobs much, they are sureky 100% efficient at generating heat, it is the
pans that lose most of it and insulating those will cause problems in
dealing with boil-overs.

Ovens can be made more efficient by heavy insulation, but there is only
so much space in small kitchens for an oven, so thick walls would not be
acceptable, as you'd either have to have wider ovens or smaller
Christmas turkeys!

electric motors

Already pretty efficient and improvements are likely to be by adding
complex electronics, which will increase the cost to unaffordable levels
for many devices.

household washing machines/driers

The AAA -F rating already works well for that, without mandating
specific fugures that could lead to compromises on washing quality. No
good making your machine to use very little water or power if it means
the user has to put it on a longer wash or wash everything twice to get
it clean.

water heaters

Cost of fuel is sufficient to make high efficiency a selling point and
drive others out of the market.

televisions

Are they planning to limit the size of TV you can have, because TVs are
getting bigger and bigger TVs use more power than smaller ones.

water pumps

Industrial or domestic? The only water pump most households have is in
the central heating/hot water system. Any inefficiency there simply
turns electricity into heat - heat that you are using anyway.

vacuum cleaners

As I've said before, a limit is not a good idea, the compromise of
defaulting to a lower power, but being able to switch to a higher power
when needed works for me and at least 95% of the time, the higher power
is not used - but it's there when needed.

computers and servers

What is efficiency? Standby power? Running power for certain operations?
When running, like games consoles, you may be needing a lot of computing
power, so limits on consumption are again no use. Higher speeds also
means higher losses, so you can't simply mandate efficiency either, as
the higher speed may be a necessity and higher losses may simply have to
be accepted.

What would be useful is a hibernate mode that can return to full
operation instantly - and I don't mean even short start-up times. We
have a home server that does a number of things. It is quite powerful
(and power hungry), as at times it has had to host virtual machines
carrying out normal home server functions, while also acting as a domain
controller, simulated PLC I/O, scada server, scada clients and network
monitoring computer - for software testing purposes. Most of the time,
though it would actually be ideal if it could hibernate, but wake in a
fraction of a second to pick up email or make a file available or stream
music or video on demand and then go back to sleep.

air conditioners and comfort fans

Good to improve efficiency, but I hope that they don't simply ban more
powerful models. A small, low powered fan is fine on your office desk,
but isn't much use when you want to keep two or three people cool on a
settee, but need the fan pretty far away, so as not to obstruct the floor.

fans driven by motors between 125W and 500kW

Ok. Probably mainly industrial.

dishwashers

Again, this could be self-defeating. Increase the efficiency by reducing
power and water use and you are likely (in the real world) to have to
choose say the 2 hour wash instead of the 1-1/2 hour one all the time to
ensure that everything actually comes out clean. So more consumption
(and more heat loss).