First they came for lightbulbs

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , Andrew escribió:

Anything that tastes good is bad for you.

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , Chris Hogg escribió:

No, because they get lovely fresh bread (not sliced, homogenised crap, but rolls, croissants, etc.) from a local bakery every day. That's my experience of Poland, Germany, France, Holland, and Spain anyway.

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , Mike Tomlinson escribió:

Showing 0.83% at 1835. They must have lit a briquette.

[tim...]

when I lived in Italy, in the summer you had to buy your fresh baked bread in the morning

if you didn't, it was rock-hard and inedible

tim

[Steve Walker]

But will lower powered kettles, ovens, toasters and other heating devices lower demand? The power of each will be lower, but as each will need to be on for longer, there is likely to be a greater overlap and therefore more operating at any one time. It *might* have an effect at the ad break in a major event, but that's about all - and that is already planned for and places like Dinorwig are brought online for the surge.

[polygonum]

I agree. Our current kettle makes that very easy because of the way the light interacts with the window in it.

So a kettle which makes it extremely easy to put in exactly the right amount of water. Perhaps it could incorporate a means of weighing the water content?

[Steve Walker]

Mine is pre the power reduction, but has two power settings. It always defaults to the lower power and that usually does everything, so we rarely select the higher setting, but there are occassions where switching it to the higher power does help. That was surely a sensible compromise?

[polygonum]

The Kenwood TTM310 or similar take most pitta adequately well. They can also warm through fresh or frozen croissants and quite a few other individual bread products.

Sadly:

Currently unavailable. We don't know when or if this item will be back in stock.

And I absolutely refuse to sell or give away either the one in use in the kitchen or the brand new spare sitting in our loft.

[charles]

There was a song about that "It's illegal, immoral or it makes you fat"

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , Tim Streater escribió:

Great article, thanks :)

And, on cue, from the latest Private Eye:

[Steve Walker]

Could be a good idea.

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.

Sensible to encourage good efficiencies for these.

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.

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.

Already very efficient.

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!

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Ok. Probably mainly industrial.

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).

[Steve Walker]

But if you use high powered kettles, the heating time is short and losses will be minimal. If you also use the right amount of water, there will be no real stored heat for next time either. It would make sense for an office kettle though, as people tend to fill those and turn them on after they've made a drink, so that the next person will find a nearly boiling kettle.

[Steve Walker]

Yes, but it is a relative measure. Even the best of those lower powered vacs may not have as much suction as one that would be a little over the limit - and that might matter.

[Steve Walker]

I completely agree about home made stews and slow cookers. Wonderful taste and texture and great to come in from work or elsewhere at pretty much any time in the evening and to be greeted with a wonderful smell and just be able to serve up and eat.

[Steve Walker]

Not if they can drive too. Great way to share the driving!

More seriously. It is surely reaching the stage of reliability now (especially if we are thinking of self-driving cars even being allowed on the roads) that we could dispense with a physical connection for steering and actually have cars and trucks that you could unclip the controls from and swap to the other side?

[polygonum]

I am struggling to think of a use for a 500kW fan...

(But not as much as I'd be struggling to pay the electricity bill even if it were 100% efficient.)

[Steve Walker]

Well it wouldn't. Boiling absorbs energy (latent heat of vapourisation) and when you switch off you stop adding energy.

[Steve Walker]

From my experience of French bread, you have to go out and buy it in the morning and again later in the day, because any you've bought in the morning will have solidified by mid afternoon.

[polygonum]

I can already switch beam to suit LHD. (I think it isn't actually 100% - rather it avoids blinding oncoming but doesn't operate quite as well as true LHD headlamps.)

It would also be rather sensible for high intensity rear lamps and reversing lights to also be able to switch appropriately.

Other than security issues (you wouldn't want anyone playing about with your settings while you are driving, would you?), it should be quite simple to achieve. Until someone changes a rule somewhere... Or forgets the unlikely possibility of the tunnel train having to reverse back and disembark everyone - but the headlamps are still on LHD settings...

[Tim Streater]

Yes. They tend not to have electric ones which turn themselves off.