UKC

Just heard on the news (bbc 6 music) that the EU are looking to extend their "ecodesign directive" restricting the wattage of new domestic appliances to kettles and toasters.
What the hell are they thinking? it takes the same amount of energy to boil a set volume of water no matter how powerful the appliance is so it won't save any energy at all and plays straight into the hands of the EU brexit campaign.
Ahhhh,

In reply to gethin_allen:

It appears it's been put on hold ...
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/eu-pauses-plans-to-ban-super-...

In reply to Lusk:

Only a pause though, not a complete abandonment.

In reply to gethin_allen:


Not quite. There are varied levels of eficiency, and the EU 's intent is for manufactirers to put more effort into producing more energy efficient appliances which will save a lot of energy. This is nothing new and has been going for many years BTW.

More details here http://www.theguardian.com/environment/live/2014/sep/04/will-banning-high-p...

In reply to Mr Lopez:

No, there are not.

In reply to David Riley:

Yes there are

In reply to Mr Lopez:

Kettles are all 100% efficient, according to the law of conservation of energy.

In reply to David Riley:


Go away, think about the physics, and come back when you have found the correct answer.

CB

In reply to David Riley:


That's funny - the body of my kettle gets warm which requires energy, the heat and steam if gives off into the kitchen also require energy and sometimes the minimum water it can boil is more than I want so it is not 100% efficient.

In reply to David Riley:

No, Not all kettkles have the same degree of effciency. There will be variations for energy loss in heating the element and its associated resistance, that depending on element material, length, and thickness, then further energy is lost by heating the kettle's body itself, and that energy lost to conduction and radiation, vapour escaping the jettle will also mean a loss of energy, etc, And that's not even going in the energy efficiency of kettle's auto-shut-off when the water reaches the temperature, fill levels and capacity to work with less water inside, etc.

So no, not all kettles have the same degree of energy efficiency

P.s. Funnily enough, some of the most energy efficient kettles are those of higher power, which is why the EU is/was not planning to ban powerful kettles like all the papers claim, but they want to put minimum standards of efficiency in general for them to be sold in the EU, most of which are manufacturing related

In reply to elsewhere:

What you do with the heat is up to you. But absolutely all the electrical energy gets converted to heat, every time. Anyway, I have a plane to catch.

In reply to Mr Lopez:

Kettles are pretty efficient, The only inefficiencies I can see in a kettle are noise and heat released into the room.
These could be improved very slightly but, the heat going to the room is compensated for if you have central heating controlled on a thermostat and the amount of energy you are talking about with noise is tiny and cold be more than overshadowed by only boiling the correct amount of water.

In reply to David Riley:

yeah but would that kettle still be as efficient if it was on a treadmill?

In reply to David Riley:
All electric heating elements are near 100% efficient (sometimes a small amount of energy is wasted as light or sound). But you could reduce the energy consumption for most users by allowing the boiling of a smaller amount of water and by better insulation of the kettle's body and lid.

In reply to buzby:


Probably, but according to some it would struggle to take off.

In reply to David Riley:

An underpowered uninsulated kettle that never boils is also 100% efficient by that argument.

In reply to elsewhere:

It is in a scientific sense. But in a practical sense it isn't

In reply to gethin_allen:


Come on scientists, please prove me wrong that this is the most efficient way of making a kettle efficient.

In reply to gethin_allen:

And yet if what's in that article is to be believed

The energy consumption of a kettle depends on:

Thermal mass of materials that are heated while the water is heated.
Heat loss from external surfaces.
Ability to heat a small amount of water and no more than is needed.
Heat input continues after the water reaches required temperature (boils) until the automatic cut-out actuates.
Designs that heat to a pre-set temperature and then keep the water hot.

If best practice designs become mandatory, the study estimates an EU-wide saving of between 4.8 and 8.3 TWh/year by 2020.

So i honestly can't see what the problem is. It seems a study by the EU has identified some measures that would reduce CO2 emissions and household electricity bills, and they propose to use the EU citizens purchasing power to compel manufacturers to produce appliances to those standards. And yet instead of going "hell yeah! More money in my pocket for fags and super tennents!" people is going "and who is this EU fella imposing rules on the poor Chinese manufacturers so that i can save some money and incidentally the planet? If i want to waste my money generating profits for EDF while pumping CO2 to the atmosphere then i will bloody well do so!"

In reply to Eeyore:


my gran, who was a young adult through ww2 so she had thrift in her bones, would fill the a mug with water, then pour it into her little kettle never boiling more than she needed.

In reply to summo:


But then you'll never have enough to fill a cup (due to evaporation) and never have any spare to warm the mug first.

In reply to Mr Lopez:

But none of these design issues are controlled by the power output of the element which is what they are restricting. So cheapo kettle Co. could just make a really poor kettle with a really weak element and say they comply with the rules.

In reply to gethin_allen:


leaves room for milk and displacement caused by tea bag and spoon?

ps. can you tell me what volume is lost through evaporation in boiling say 300ml?

In reply to summo:

You can't do that with some designs of kettle because the element would not be covered with water fully.

In reply to David Riley:


You're confusing the kettle with the element. And confusing the conservation of energy with efficiency.

In reply to Neil Williams:


lift the lid and look inside before buying? And the smaller the kettle diameter the greater the depth for the same liquid. It's only boiling water, not hard to plan it out and buy something to suit your needs. My granddad was a dual trade electrical mechanical engineer so nothing was ever over looked.

In reply to gethin_allen:


As far as i could find, there is no such proposal to impose a power limit on kettles. That is an extrapolation from the hoovers measures done by the newspapers in order to have a big catchy headline

ETA: From that article i linked

"The focus on maximum power limits ignored the fact that the EU assesses all items for the effective ways to reduce energy consumption. Maximum power ratings will only be used where it is appropriate and can be imposed without impacting performance.

In reply to summo:


"Only boil what ye need." Was one of my gran's catch phrases.

In reply to gethin_allen:

If I wanted to design a more efficient kettle, i would actually want to increase the power so that the time spent losing heat during the time in use is minimised.

In reply to Jimbo C:

Not to mention the fact that if it takes too long to boil you might have forgotten why you put the kettle on in the first place.

In reply to Jimbo C:

Makes sense but...

... it may produce more CO2 by requiring a more powers station idling until the bigger/shorter surge when the ads come on during Coronation Street.

In reply to summo:

A quick bit of kitchen science.
Boiling a largish mug (374 ml) of tap temperature water (not exactly sure about temp as I haven't got a thermometer at home) in a brevil 2.8 kw kettle you lose 12 ml of water measured by weight.

In reply to gethin_allen:

I boil my kettle on my wood burner, so FU EU!





I don't actually, but maybe I should now I've thought about it.

In reply to gethin_allen:



Not much then, enough for tea bag and spoon displacement, but not the milk. So my gran is still correct, although I imagine the mug of water was never quite brimming. When you live to 90 that's plenty time to perfect making a tea.

In reply to gethin_allen:

Sounds a bit bizarre... ...however..
The energy efficient kettle I bought was such, presumably because of it's cup markings:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Philips-HD4644-Energy-Efficient-Kettle/dp/B001EHF3O...

However, I wonder whether this might have something to do with the grid load issues of simultaneous Kettle switch on?

In reply to summo:

I still think that all kettles should come with a chain and handcuff interlocked with the on switch (Polly put the kettle on).

Don't get me started on whether a kettle should have a tea or coffee mode though.

In reply to gethin_allen:
More kitchen science: I once did a small series of measurements with my electric kettle.
Effect of kettle was 2200 watt
Water volume: 1000 ml
Time to boil: 197 sec
433400 Joules spent by kettle
357000 Joules absorbed by water
Result: 82 % efficiency

Calculations
The energy spent was calculated from the stated effects multiplied by the time to boil:
Energy (Joule) = Effect (Watt) x Time (s)
The energy absorbed was calculated from the water volume converted to weight multiplied by the rise in temperature multiplied by calories converted to Joule:
Energy (Joule) = Volume (ml) x 1 g/ml x 85 (K) x 4.2 Joule/calorie.
The rise in water temperature was calculated from the boiling point of water minus the tap water temperature: 373K - 288K = 85K.

In reply to Sir Stefan:

How efficient is it to boil half a litre?

In reply to Mr Lopez:



You may want every tiny aspect of your life micro managed by a faceless bureaucracy in Brussels, others may not.

In reply to gethin_allen:

I think it's to incentivise the manufacturers to make them more efficient rather than just crank up the wattage.

also higher power maybe generally means less efficient? and it might reduce peak demand which saves on network costs?

In reply to gethin_allen:

I think it's to incentivise the manufacturers to make them more efficient rather than just crank up the wattage.

also higher power maybe generally means less efficient? and it might reduce peak demand which saves on network costs?

maybe have a read of the reasons for it, they'll be on line somewhere

In reply to Toerag:

In my little experiment the measured efficiency of my water boiler was:
200 ml: 64 %
500 ml: 83 %
1000 ml: 82 %
1700 ml: 82 %

In reply to gethin_allen:

That doesn't work for the warmer months CH is not required (most of the year in sunny Stretford). In southern Europe where air con is used more energy will be wasted.

In reply to Big Ger:

..and the prize for the most idiotic comment goes to...

BG


CB

In reply to Donald82:


They've pretty much gone as far as they can with most kettles as far as power increases go unless people want to start having 16A plugs in the kitchen.

In reply to gethin_allen:

so they have been cranking up the wattage and, if the regulation is brought in, they'll have to start brining the wattage down and so, the Eu's thinking goes, be incentivised to make more efficient kettles.

In reply to gethin_allen:

Only a moron would ban a kettle for being high power.

Three things divert energy from the almost totally efficient heating element from going in to the water. One is the thermal mass of the element and the container, another is evaporation of water and the last is heat loss through the container.

More power reduces heat loss as the water spends less time being heated. More power reduces evaporation/boiling as the water spends less time at warmer temperatures.

Want to improve kettle efficiency? Mandate a certain level of insulation. The end.

Electric kettle efficiency is very low down the list both national and EU policy makers should be working on when it comes to reducing CO2 emissions.

In reply to gethin_allen:
You could go up to 20A by fitting two plugs on your kettle lead! (and plug them into a twin socket)




Disclaimer: DO NOT try this home people! It's a version of the Widowmaker.

In reply to wintertree:


What if you don't have access to pump storage and by mandating slow boiling kettles you could avoid having to bring more power online for the post soap opera effect?

In reply to Jimbo W:


What's that got to do with this legislation? Legislation such as you suggest would be mandated at a country level, not EU level. I'm not aware of any reports of EU infrastructure suffering because of this and the rapid response sources are needed for other load balancing reasons and for black start.

Also a cursory look at the misery of underpowered electric kettles in the USA shows that people switch to gas stove kettles which are less efficient...

In reply to wintertree:

Silly me. There I was thinking that some things with potential systemic effects eg polution might be legislated at potential sources/causes eg cars.


Lack of evidence isn't evidence against of there being such a consideration. Besides, why would they suffer? Just because its readily achievable given current fuel provision doesn't mean its efficient in the long term and with reduced fuel choices.


Easy. Ban them too!

In reply to wintertree:


if it does reduce peak demand it's an advantage of lower power kettles and so relative to the impact of this regulation. this could be in terms of infrastructure and energy costs as it reduces the amount of capacity you need on the system.

maybe, the best solution is better insulated, lower power kettles and regulating wattage is a reasonable way to get there. no way of knowing for sure without to be honest.

also you're right that this could be done at nationally. but doing it at eu level improves the incentive to innovate

In reply to gethin_allen:

Stories like this emerging feels like a return to the 80s&90s when the Telegraph tried to start as many outrageous EU legislation myths as possible....

In reply to gethin_allen:

I reckon my fancy new kettle probably saves a lot of energy compared to the old one and not for any of the reasons mentioned in the articles. What I found was that when the kettle has a setting for 70/80/90 centigrade as well as boiling I nearly always use 90 centigrade instead of boiling.

I wonder if changing the shape of kettles to try and minimize the surface area of the top of the water or have a lid that sunk down to the water surface would help reduce heat losses from steam/water vapour..

In reply to wintertree:


but when taking into account the efficiency of producing electricity ?

In reply to Jimbo W:


That's where you are wrong then. As clearly stated a lower power kettle wastes more energy as it has the water hot for longer, so looses more heat.

You were clearly talking about legislation to reduce spikes in load and not energy consumption. Half power kettles will still make a giant load spike and will waste more energy. To remove the significance of a "kettle effect" load spike you'd need to drop powers by a factor of 10 or so, which would need 10x the thermal insulation to break even on efficiencies and would make a kettle so insanely crap nobody would ever use it. Ever.

The slow death of broadcast TV will put this problem to bed. Although nobody other than you is suggesting it as a problem and it's not driving the suggested legislation. There are other causes of load spikes and the responsive generation exists for them, not for kettles.

In reply to Jim Hamilton:


As opposed to the efficiency of producing and distributing domestic gas?

I suspect a thermally insulated plastic kettle with internal heating element is far, far better than a thermally conductive one (leaks more heat) with an external flame (lots of heat never even goes in to the kettle.)

Also, an electric kettle becomes more environmentally friendly as more renewables and nuclear (I wish) come on line, whereas a gas stove kettle doesn't.

In reply to wintertree:

A gas stove kettle normally last longer than an electric one though. What about the energy costs in producing replacement kettles or disposing of defunct ones.

In reply to Eeyore:


Pretty small I would think - a kettle costs very little compared to the cost of the energy that is spent powering it over a lifetime, and the cost of a generic unbranded item isn't a bad proxy for environmental impact.

In reply to Donald82:


Grid capacity is not determined by kettles. Really, it isn't.


I said nationally because JWs straw man was a nation without effective load balancing infrastructure.

Mandating lower power kettles reduces efficiency. Mandating better insulated kettles increases efficiency. I didn't think this would be a controversial statement. Shows what I know...

In reply to wintertree:

You're right - grid capacity is not determined by kettles.

However, TV schedules etc are carefully monitored by the NG in order to be ready for surges in demand due to . . . kettles being turned on.

1990 world cup semi final - spike of 2800 MW after the match - over a million kettles turned on.

Slightly off topic but - how many efficient peak response 2800 MW generators can you name? (Dinorwig is only 1700 MW)

In reply to ad111:


I can't name them but know there are two pumped hydro plants in Scotland. I've visited one long, long ago.

I think peak loading is going to be better met in the future with distributed batteries and smart grid stuff. A very effective and efficient solution would be for 300,000 electric vehicle chargers to just disconnect during the 3-5 minute load spike.

This isn't a solution now but will be one day. Most EVs will be plugged in and charging at home when the kettles go on.

Edit: this will be a small adjustment to the big bonus of EVs - a large enough fleet will help even out the much more significant diurnal variations and thereby increase both financial end energy efficiencies across the grid.

In reply to gethin_allen:

You don't need to boil the water. Tea is always too hot when first made. Turn that temperature down and instantly you reduce energy consumption. Tap water in uk is well treated now, no need to boil.

In reply to ad111:


Ffestiniog, Cruachan, Foyers... any respectable mountaineer would have crossed paths with all of them.

Although none are as big as Dinorwig.

In reply to Orgsm:

I would be banned from tea-making duties if I pulled that stunt at home. Actually... might give it a go. Heh.

In reply to wintertree:
Grid capacity is determined by, well, how much grid capacity you build. How much you build used be determined pretty much by peak demand. Now we have more intermittent generation it's determined by peak demand and constraint costs - Grid build until infrastructure costs equal (forecast) constraint costs. So peak demand still contributes to how much capacity you build. It also contributes to how much capacity is contracted to be available at times of peak demand.

Kettles do, I think, contribute to peak demand. So they contribute to how much gets built both in terms of network capacity and generation that can be relied on to meet demand when the winds not blowing and the sun's not shining etc..

Mandating lower power kettles may reduce efficiency of kettles but it might increase the over all efficiency of the whole energy system. I don't know if it actually will, or if it's a sensible measure compared to alternatives eg mandating insulation. But it's not as simple as just saying this measure will definitely reduce overall efficiency...

In reply to Orgsm:

You don't need to boil the water. Tea is always too hot when first made. Turn that temperature down and instantly you reduce energy consumption. Tap water in uk is well treated now, no need to boil.

No need to boil water for tea? Heretic!
As for tea being too hot, nonsense. Hotter the better and any self respecting tea drinker should be able to drink tea straight from the kettle!

In reply to FactorXXX:


I don't know about tea (never touch the stuff) but for hot chocolate/ovaltine 90 degree water or filling hot water bottles it is better. When we got the new kettle I thought the option to set the temperature to 70/80 or 90 rather than boil was just a gimmick but we use it all the time. It's also faster.

In reply to gethin_allen:

Out of interest I did a Google to find the actual technical recommendation for kettles:
https://www.vdma.org/documents/266687/344832/Ecodesign+WP3_Draft_Task_3_rep...

It doesn't say anything at all about limiting the wattage. It talks about using thick-film rather than wound heating elements (which have lower thermal mass), better insulation in the kettle body and switching it off faster when the water boils.

On the face of it this story about the EU banning high power kettles looks like a politically motivated lie.

In reply to wintertree:

I disagree. Because that purist obvious physical answer does not include moderation of human behaviour. If a kettle takes three times as long say to boil, you are far far more likely to limit the volume you want to boil to only that which is needed. In a Q like this discluding the influence of human behaviour, treating it like a controlled lab problem, would be plane wrong.

In reply to Jimbo W:

Or anyone with a gas hob (7 kW on a small burner) will switch to a gas kettle as our low voltage cousins in the USA do.

I'm not discounting human behaviour. A single cup of water boiled in a 500 W kettle will lose more than 3x the energy of that boiled in a 1500 W kettle. You've swung your justification round from the "kettle effect" and are now arguing against me on human behaviour grounds when it comes to how much someone boils. Only you are not arguing against me because that was not an argument I ever used...

Do people boil to much water? I've no idea, but there are better and more efficient solutions to the problem, like kettles that meter one cup at a time into the heating volume.

As I said, kettles are the least of our energy worries and it's plain stupid to use up people's patience and your political capital to lower their efficiency when there are bigger fish to fry.

As for limiting kettle power to make people boil one cup at a time, that's a frankly stupid plan for people who regularly boil 3-4 cups at once, like people with friends of family. You're going to make their boiling far more wasteful in return for achieving a saving through psychology on the fraction of 1 cup boilers who overfilled and are also going to change their behaviour.

To do that would be just stupid meddling.

In reply to wintertree:

Not being a restricted obsessive reductive thinker I looked to see possible reasons why energy efficient kettles might be a reasonable target for EU legislation. My wife who works on hydro / grid stuff agreed that reducing peak load might actually be a genuine reason, given kettles are a big contributor to some load peaks. Just keeping the mind open and not ruling things out in advance. I was mildly amused that you reacted as if starting the day falling out the wrong side of bed.

In reply to gethin_allen:

What a great thread, this question has crossed my mind in the past. I use an enamelled hob top kettle instead of an electric kettle and I always wondered whether it was more or less efficient.

Perhaps some curriculum setters could get this worked in to GCSE and A-Level maths and physics and we could get some fertile minds to correct us errant adults.

In reply to Jimbo W:


No you keep changing your view to totally different argument...

I have not once argued against energy efficient kettles. I'm all for energy efficiency. I've argued against your randomly changing reasons for lower power kettles. Totally different.

As for your wife's comments on peak load - I guess you skipped over the comments where I said reducing peak load will increase energy efficiency, and gave an example of how that might soon work, based on real research and real development in grid technologies. If you really think halving the power and more than doubling the duration (due to efficiency loss) of the "kettle effect" is going to affect the efficiency of our peak load balancing, that we have for larger reasons than kettles, then I suggest you think again.

As for your mild amusement at my reaction, you're reading things I wasn't feeling or thinking. I guess that explains your petty churlish personal insult at the start of your last message, but not your inability to read what I've written.

In reply to Donald82:


This is where I disagree. Take the drastic step -of halving kettle power. Now your 60 second 1 MW peak becomes a 130 second 0.5MW peak (adding some due to the extra losses of a less efficient by dint of lower power)

Rather unsurprisingly the total energy supplied by the peak load balancing is larger (or at best, the same) and the power delivered is similar. The efficiency of the rapid response systems varies little over a power range of 2, and the energy stored is the same regardless as the same water is being boiled. A lot of the losses occur in the pumping uphill stage of pumped hydro storage, and that is totally unaffected by the power of the kettles. The same ammount of water has to be pushed up hill, but the rate is then comes down at is varied.

Assuming the rapid response load balancing is needed for other larger reasons, which it is, halving the power and doubling the duration of the kettle effect is of little to no consequence other than using more energy.

Despite cries of "closed minded" from anther poster this stance is far from it. It is looking at the whole system.

The rise of smart and granular load shedding (electric heating, fridges, EV charging etc) and more distributed load balancing for renewables is going to make this totally irrelevant in the future, making high power insulated kettles the clear unambiguous winner. The gradual demise of broadcast TV as seen in diminishing peak audience figures also marks the gradual end of the "kettle problem"

The link Tom posted to the actual intent of the EU backs this up, and is what I first said that was then challenged with this lower power saves energy argument. For which there is no actual evidence or legal plan to lower power.

In reply to 98%monkey:


I worked this out a few years ago. The comparison I made was between a Le Creuset single walled stove top kettle, which I had on a gas hob, and a bog-standard no brand electric kettle. It turned out that the electric was rather more efficient (from memory, about 90% as opposed to 80% - I'm guessing rather better insulated) and slightly quicker, but the gas hob was rather cheaper because gas costs about a third as much as electricity, per kWh.

I'll tell you what I want, now I have a PV system: a variable power kettle. Not variable end temp, but variable power input, so I can glance at how much spare PV I'm generating and dial that into the kettle so I use only my free energy (whilst still being able to choose to override that and get high speed boiling water by importing from the grid when necessary).

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

In the British media? Good lord, whatever next!?

In other EU related news today - what the f*ck would Iain 'Nosferatu' Duncan Smith know about a "stride into the light"? Though if he would care to try it and subsequently burst into flames, that would be just fine by me.

In reply to wintertree:
In the long run it's capacity that's the main driver of costs here. It costs more to have 2GW of fast response than 1 GW of fast response even if the 1GW operates for more than twice the time. As I said above this is just a potential advantage of restricting power of kettles, and there may be other better ways to do this. So your position that it's not a good idea might be right, but the argument that this was definitely true simply because higher power kettles were more efficient is wrong. You did come across as a bit close minded or ill informed* to me too, but it's hard to tell on the internet.

*note your point about the fast response operating for longer

In reply to Donald82:


Well, if kettles ever become the driver for power capacity on fast response I'll reevaluate my position.


Well in the corner case where kettles dominate our rapid response power, and the energy lost in release to grid is significantly worse at higher release rates (not true) and is significantly higher than the energy lost when charging from grid (not true), then and only then does reducing the power of kettles increase overall system efficiency.

That is such a small corner case that...


Or just confident that I'm correct and trying to explain...


Do you disagree? The energy required to boil a a magic lossless kettle doesn't change with lower power. It gets more for a real world kettle at lower power due to increased losses.

If it comes from rapid response for a normal kettle, do you think a surge of kettles that's a bit lower power and slower to boil will give Sizewell B time to pick up the slack? If we go with your argument that it's coming from rapid response the same is true regardless of tweaks to boiling time.

I'm not sure why you and JW cling to this idea. Nobody else appears to be suggesting such drastic changes to alter the shape of a surge load from a cause that is disappearing whilst grids are - by much larger necessity than kettles - being upgraded to handle larger transient peaks of supply and demand more efficiently.

Like I said - if you want a more efficient kettle, insulate it more. I'm surprised the EU are also considering lowering the thermal mass of the element but it will help a bit.

There is no demonstrate evidence that lower power kettles will help load balancing or increase overall system efficiency. A cursory run of the numbers and a look at the spooling up time of different plant suggests to me that it's an absolute hiding to nowhere with no rational justification.

In reply to gethin_allen:

I carried out an experiment last year following similar arguments on another forum.

A litre of water takes forever to boil using gas but is far cheaper. I did this by taking gas meter readings.

A litre of water in a kettle takes more electrical power to boil than the calculations suggest.

Also EU involvement? An awful lot of our electricity is supplied by France.

In reply to wintertree:


I don't have a view except to be open minded and not to assume that EU legislators are introducing such a plan because they have NO legitimate reason.


I didn't say you did.

In reply to DancingOnRock:


At a maximum of 2GW.
We peak around the 50GW mark.

In reply to Jimbo W:


As Tom linked, EU legislators are not legislating lower power kettles. They're advocating better insulated kettles with lower thermal mass elements, the two things I said would increase efficiency, and which you replied to suggesting lower power had potential benefits.

I'm glad to see they're not advocating lower power kettles, because I stand by my initial comment - reached with consideration, science and evidence, not closed mindedness - that that would be idiotic.

In reply to Jamie Wakeham:


That's easy. Put it on a dimmer. As long as your PV can cope with that sort of switching load?

In reply to wintertree:
there seems to be evidence that lower power kettles would reduce peak demand. peak demand tends to happen in the evening and people use kettles in the evening....

reduced peak demand means reduced required generation and network capacity, which reduces long run costs. this is true regardless of whether that's fast response capacity or not and regardless of whether the kettles can help with balancing (which I don't think anyone is suggesting.... but maybe the EU should require them to be smart kettles!)

also, the main driver of fast response costs is capacity. so it's really really silly and ill informed to suggest that a lower but longer peak is as costly as a higher shorter one. which you did.

please tell me you're not an engineer

In reply to wintertree:

Really? Not what R4 was reporting on the news a couple of hrs ago. But yes, of course reducing thermal losses is an obviously good idea. I was making no comment on that, merely being open minded to why lower nominal power inputs might be being targetted. In any case, those things (kettle insulation / thermal mass) will effect the overall energy per unit time used by the kettle.

In reply to Donald82:


What. Evidence.

The energy required to boil water is the same regardless of power. Well actually more is needed at lower power, but we'll let that slide in your favour.

Energy = power * time.

Slightly lower power means slightly longer peak demand and slightly increased total energy usage.


Do you not read a single thing I write? The peak of the "kettle effect" is not as big as other peaks that we have load balancing for. It does not dictate generation or distribution capacity:


No it's not silly as, and I repeat, kettles do not dictate the maximum power output of our load balancing /rapid response generation.

So assuming the capacity is there for other reasons, then you are plain wrong to call me silly, especially with pumped storage for reasons I have already given and you have already ignored. Why not go back to not reading what I write and letting loose with the insults some more...

In reply to gethin_allen:

You're all talking a complete load of twaddle, any of you that had lived in the real world would know that the overwhelming factor relevant to kettle efficiency is whether it is watched.

In reply to althesin:

If you didn't watch it, it wouldn't exist!!!

If you do watch, it never boils, therefore, go and drink beer.

In reply to wintertree:


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup

In reply to Jimbo W:

They are just secondary peaks (shall we say), the biggest peak occurs daily between around 6-7pm when everyone gets home from work and turn everything on. Plenty of graphs available online.

In reply to Jimbo W:


Yes and your point is, caller? With the exception of historic events from a passed era of TV watching habits and a royal wedding, the effect issmaller than the load balancing capacity that we have for other reasons. The link says the record "kettle effect" surge was in 1990 - there is more rapid response capacity now and less TV related demand. Guess what? Kettles do not dominate load balancing. It's there regardless.

Size of problem is decreasing, size of load balancing is increasing. We don't need to make our kettles less efficient and slower at their purpose to fix this problem.

Turning a 1 minute 800 MW surge into a 2 minute 400 MW surge is neither here nor there when the plant has to be specified to a much larger capacity for its other load balancing duties and for its "black start" capacity.

Not sure why you can't just drop this absolutely rediculous idea given the total lack of evidence of anyone anywhere in the grid asking for lower power kettles to let them take dinorwic apart and replace it with a smaller capacity plant. Which they can't do as the capacity is needed for other reasons.

In reply to wintertree:

Well. Again assumptions. Now you're dealing with kettle's as if they're the on target of lower power and improved efficiency. They are one part of a long EU list.

Ps hsve you managed to start a fight in an empty room before?

In reply to wintertree:

when peak demand happens people will be using kettles, hence peak demand will be higher if kettles are higher power. this might mean more 'standard' capacity or more fast response capacity or both. either way capacity costs money, you can't just look at total energy.....

In reply to Jimbo W:


Come again?


I literally have no idea either what you mean or what you are infering.

All I am doing is repeating the same reasons why I consider it madness to decrease kettle power to address a perceived problem that wouldn't be solved by decreased kettle power and stating that decreasing kettle power would make efficiency worse not better.

I honestly don't understand why 2 people are clinging so desperately to defend lower power kettles when it looks like the only actual reference to a lower power kettle is press manipulation of the public and the actual plan is towards more efficient kettles regardless of power rating.

In reply to wintertree:
If 20 million households put on their kettles at the same time that is 36GW. Total UK generating capacity is 85GW. So it's hardly something to be ignored as insignificant is it?

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/4...

In reply to Donald82:


Oh my god. We have the capacity for other events at other times and they dictate the capacity and it is more than that needed for kettles and kettles just are not a problem and we need more balancing for other reasons and less people are watching the same program so the problem is getting smaller.

Comprende?

In reply to Orgsm:


Except it doesn't actually happen there is no evidence of this happening on such a scale and the effect is much smaller than the number you give - about a factor 15 - and getting smaller all the time and our load balancing capacity is going up for other reasons.

In reply to Orgsm:

Fortunately there exists something called diversity.
Everything isn't on all the time, otherwise we'd have cables xyz times bigger everywhere.
If you wanted to crash the Grid though, 20 million kettles switched on at once at a random time, would probably work quite well!

In reply to wintertree:

So your contention is that we do not need to build anymore generating capacity in the Uk?

In reply to wintertree:
You're confusing what we need for balancing, ie to meet sudden changes in demand, with what we need to meet peak demand. the former is fast response type stuff, the latter is all non intermittent capacity, not just fast response

we have to have non intermittent capacity to meet peak demand. that peak demand is made up of lots of things, including kettles. if kettles were less powerful peak demand would be a bit lower and we'd need a bit less capacity. we might have enough capacity anyway in the short run, but in the long run we need to build new capacity. the amount we build will be determined by forecast peak demand.

reducing peak demand reduces costs in the long run

understand?

In reply to Lusk:

Would we though as that'd be spread over the entire grid. What's the max current a cable on a pylon cable can handle, and the substation it connects to, and how many households does a substation handle?

In reply to Orgsm:


Where the hell did I say that? I didn't. Lower power kettles need more generating capacity as they waste more energy!!

I said we are building better load balancing. I said more efficient kettles would be just tickety boo. I said kettles do not dictate the scale of our rapid response capacity. None of these are mutually exclusive and none of these say anything about future generating capacity one way or another.

In reply to wintertree:


I don't think you understand the difference between energy (kWh) capacity (kW) is.

capacity is determined by peak demand, not total energy. so if you have lower power less efficient kettles you have more kWh (energy) but less kW (capacity)

I'll try and locate your coat for you!

In reply to Orgsm:

If it was a totally unpredicted event, it would.
Generation must meet demand to quite tight limits, both under and over generation, something to do with supply frequency for starters.
It's getting way out of my area now, so I better say no more!

In reply to Orgsm:

Have you seen Wintertree's coat?

He's away home to to ponder the difference between a kW and a kWh.

In reply to Donald82:


We have excess capacity for the kettle peak now. The kettle peak is decreasing. Our load balancing capacity is increasing. There is zero evidence to say we need to build new capacity for peak kettle demand in the future and plenty of evidence to say we will need less.


Yes and kettles have little to nothing to do with this in the long run as

1) kettles are decreasingly synchronised. I have said this before.

2) smart goods - EV chargers, fridges, electric heating etc will far outweighs kettles. Peaks magically disappear and efficiency goes up as a result. I've said this before. Plenty of R&D and legislation waiting in the wings.


Far better than you, it seems.

In reply to wintertree:

No they wouldn't as they'd reduce peak demand. It's the peaks that drive capacity. It's a bit like a server where you place a peak workload of 120% CPU capacity on it for an hour. It grinds to a halt, do you upgrade the server?mAnother approach is you smooth that peak , and avoid the upgrade. Same with electricity generation.

In reply to Orgsm:


It depends on the capacity of the substation and the cable.

20million kettles would be, I think, about 30-40GWs. Peak demand is about 60GW... so I think we'd be screwed unless maybe if it was in the middle of night.

In reply to Donald82:


Proof that you are not reading what I write... I wrote earlier "energy=power*time". You do understand that what you call capacity is power, right?


Yes and, get this, capacity is not dictated by kettles


Yes and, because, wait for it, we have more capacity than needed for the kettles it's less efficient! Because we have the capacity regardless, and more energy is used.

In reply to wintertree:


I'm not talking about peak kettle, just kettles contribution to peak



okay so they have less impact but they still have some


people will probably still have their tea when they want to have it, so this won't apply to kettles

In reply to wintertree:


you said..... "lower power kettles need more generating capacity as they waste more energy!!"

In reply to Donald82:


No it doesn't.


It doesn't matter what time of day or night it would happen, if it wasn't seen coming, the Grid would crash.

In reply to wintertree:

Should have said "only target" not "on target".
Sorry, I'd just fallen down the stairs and was a little shaken.

In reply to Donald82:


Yes and it's not a problem now so won't be a problem when it's less of a problem.


Just to be clear, you are now saying that when kettles are all de-synchronised, making them lower power will reduce peak demand?

Desynchronised kettles driven by human demand - that is turned on at unpredictable individual times within a predictable peak hour or two - will consume the same power over a whole population regardless of the power of an individual kettle. Slower to boil means on longer means more on at once across the population.

I think I've just found where you are muddled.

Edit:


Yes. This is true. Kettles, plural. Think about many kettles being turned on at random times within a peak hour. Now think what happens if each kettle is lower power. It's on for longer. More kettles are on at once. Increased inefficiency means each one is on for even longer, meaning even more are on at once. This uses more power and more energy.

In reply to Big Ger:


Good lord - are we in for more of this stuff every day between now and June??

F*ck me, who seriously cares what the wattage of their kettle is?? I certainly want someone to be doing some research into the optimum balance of convenience and environmental impact for all domestic appliances and making sure that those manufactured strike a good balance, and since I can't see the manufacturers, consumers, or our domestic government doing it, that leaves the EU. Good on them.

jcm

In reply to wintertree:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup
https://www.nationalgrid.com/uk/Media+Centre/WorldCup2010/
youtube.com/watch?v=WCAzalhldg8&

Just the first 3 hits on google

In reply to Mr Lopez:


The link that shows the peak demand for a TV pickup occurred in 1990, 26 years ago? Like I keep saying, TV led demand is dropping, viewer figures are dropping, the grid and some loads are becoming smarter, the growth in renewables is driving more load balancing capacity online, this problem is going away not getting worse.


A piece of PR raising fluff from the media division for something that did not happen.


And none of them say "if kettles were lower power we would close down Dinorwic and save money".

In reply to wintertree:


ah, okay, good point - you really didn't make it clear that this was your point though. and I'm not sure it's clear that this will definitely increase peak demand though. it will depend on the coincidence of kettle boiling starting time at times of peak demand

In reply to Donald82:


Well, I'm glad that we have reached agreement. I thought it was blindingly obvious that average power across the population was what mattered and not an individual kettle in isolation, given that we were talking about national scale generation capacity.


Indeed it will. A typical pumped hydro peak is about 1.5 hours wide. Let's estimate 30,000,000 kettles in the UK. If each kettle is boiled once within that window that gives ~5,500 kettles being turned on each second. With such large numbers the role of coincidence vanishes as large number statistics take over.

(With regards the kettle estimate, if the entire daily hydro peak was apportioned to boiling mugs of water, it would equate to about 400,000,000 mugs of boiling water in 2 hours, or 100,000,000 kettles, so it looks like kettles are perhaps 10% or 20% of the hydro peak.)

To be fair, there is one regime in which lower power kettles do actually reduce peak load, and that's when they're so low power that they take longer to boil than the duration of the peak load event. But as that would be over an hour it also can be discounted as unpracticable.

In reply to Lusk:

Yes, agreed, if it was unexpected it wouldn't matter what time it was.

It "depends what size" was a response to this bit - "What's the max current a cable on a pylon cable can handle, and the substation it connects to, and how many households does a substation handle?"

In reply to wintertree:

not sure we're quite in agreement yet. I'd need a worked example to prove to myself that peak demand will definitely go up. I still think it depends on kettle coincidence... it won't be flat across the half hour even with the big statistics

In reply to Donald82:


The peak is closer to 90 minutes in width. An individual kettle is on for 1-2 minutes.

So, a worked example. 90 minute peak period. Each kettle is on for 2 minutes. Each kettle draws 1 kW when on for that 2 minutes and 0 kW when off. There are 30,000,000 kettles. Each is turned on once at some point in that 90 minute peak period. At any one time, there are (2 / 90) * 30,000,000 = 666,666 kettles on, drawing 1 kW * 666, 666 = 0.66 GW.

Now, we halve the power to 0.5 kW. That means each kettle is now on for twice as long to heat water the same, 4 minutes. There are still 30,000,000 kettles each going on once. So at any one time there are now (4 / 90) *30,000,000 = 1,333,333 kettles drawing 0.5 kW * 1,333,333 = ... wait for it .... 0.66 GW.

The only way that peak power of a kettle makes a difference to peak power delivery is if all kettle activations are all concentrated to within a window of similar duration to their activation time. If that was the case, and given that the curve of pumped hydro delivery during peak is flat for 60 minutes, and given that kettles have an activation time of order 2 minutes, then you have a set of circumstances that can only be explained by kettles forming an insignificant portion of the load. We know that is not the case, so we know they are spread out over the whole peak period.

In reply to wintertree:

you're assuming flat kettle use across the 90 minutes... peak won't last for 90 minutes

In reply to wintertree:

Catherine of Braganza has got a lot to answer for!

In reply to Donald82:


Have you actually looked at any data at all?

Hydro has a 1 GW 120 minute peak with a flat top.
Pumped Hydro has a more complicated profile, the peak is perhaps 2 GW over 60 minutes and 1 GW over 120 minutes.

Look at the plots here http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk

Now, you could argue, the kettle demand is much more concentrated in time than the supply peak, but for that to make sense then either (1) there would have to be a much smaller, taller peak for the kettles (there is not) or (2) kettles would have to be a very small fraction of peak load (hence unimportant).

In reply to summo:


Yes but most people do overlook that kind of thing. As such making a kettle that cannot boil only a cupful of water illegal does hold some, err, water as a concept.

In reply to wintertree:


I've spent many a day climbing on clogwyn yr oen watching the electricity that must have been roasting sunday dinners being generated.

In reply to wintertree:



So, what I need is an insulated, high-wattage, desynchronised kettle so it will boil as quickly as possible but not when anyone else is boiling one?

In reply to David Riley:


#physicstrollftw

In reply to Dave Garnett:


Spot on. Well, even better is staggered timing so it starts the instant someone else's finishes... Large number statistics more or less does that anyway.

Although the legislation and R&D under consideration is looking at putting load control smarts into things that won't be noticed by people, like fridges and EV chargers.

In reply to wintertree:


Having already combined queueing and tea drinking into one quintessentially British technology, presumably it will also apologise for not responding instantly.

In reply to Big Ger:


Sigh. I'll put you down as an 'in' then. Okay?

In reply to Lusk:

Sure, but the EU list concerned has dishwashers, ovens, washing machines etc on it too. The Kettle is just one of many contributions to load, nobody is saying it is unique, are they?

In reply to Sir Stefan:


Since you measured everything else might it not have made more sense to measure the real part of applied power rather than simply accepting the nominal rating is correct? Would you have believed the efficiency calculation if it had come out at 105%?
jk

In reply to Jimbo W:

Ovens certainly are quite inefficient with a very large amount of waste heat. Another case where, possibly at the expense of the window, the insulation could be improved substantially.

Really, for near enough all cooking appliances, there should be no heat experienced outside unless the door is open.

In reply to gethin_allen:

Surely the most efficient kettle is one that isn't being used - drink less tea and do your bit!

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:


Surely not!
jk

In reply to gethin_allen:
A bit of fact checking revealed that this story is a complete tabloid fabrication.

There is no kettle ban.

The EU executive simply commissionned a report investigating the energy use and lifetime of various electrical products in order to shape future energy savings regulations.

For some products this means limits of the wattage when increased wattage does not increase performance and is there purely for marketing purposes ( that was the case with vacuum cleaners for example ).

For other products (such as kettles) this may be just about making them more durable so that less needs to be manufactured.

In reply to jkarran:


I agree, but I didn't have a multimeter at my disposal. Just a stopwatch, a thermometer and a scale. The latter was used when I measured the gas consumption to estimate the efficiency of my Primus Eta Lite (72 % against the claimed 80 %).

In reply to summo:


Most older kettles had a seperate element that wouldn't actually get immersed by one cup of water.

In reply to GrahamD:


of course, but that would depend on the size, or diameter of the kettle. Think of those little kettles you often get hotel rooms, I've never inspected the inside (scary thought), but I imagine not all of them have plate bases either.

In reply to Mr Lopez:




The problem is that the bureaucracy and implementation of such stupid rules waste more energy that it could ever spare

In reply to pavelk:


Have you got some data and numbers to back that up? How many Watts does one bureaucrat consume an hour? What's the percentage efficiency of a bureaucrat implementing a hypothetic rule and how does that affect grid peak times? Would it be possible to reduce energy wastage by employing only bureaucrats who are 5'6" or smaller? And most importantly, are the benefitial effect of the CO2 savings on global warming offset by the ambient temperature raising significantly in the surrounding area of a percentage of individuals from all the hot air and burning rage this measures may generate, while being fanned with the tantric mantas of "faceless bureaucrats", "bring back the empire", and "roooneeeyyyyyyyyy"?

In reply to DaveHK:


My gran had similar catchphrases, until my grandad glued her false teeth together.

In reply to summo:

Way back when, little jug kettles weren't an option - kettles were basically big wide bottomed things with massive round three pin input connectors. I remember the innovation that was the jug kettle !

In reply to GrahamD:

I was not quite recalling an era as far back as round pin plugs and bakelite switches..

In reply to summo:

I remember my Mum 'plugging' the iron into the light fitting with a bayonet adaptor!

In reply to wintertree:

Hi, I'm not sure the peak of pump storage or other generation is relevant here. And I don't think it's about 90 minute peaks. It's simply the effect on peak demand and how that effects total network and generation (of all types) capacity. But....

well, I think you're point that the effect of longer heating time meaning more kettles are on will outweigh the effect of reduced power is right.

Apologies for implying you were an eedjit earlier. I genuinely thought you were confusing power and energy. My mistake.

All the best, Donnie

In reply to Donald82:

The only question of relevance is: are all the kettles' turning on times synchronised to a time window longer or shorter than their remaining on time? If it's longer, then peak power demand over the whole country remains unchanged when individual kettles have lower power and the same efficiency, and rises for real world lower power kettles due to their decreased efficiency.

Now, are the activation of millions of kettles at the end of a TV show synchronised to more or less than 90 seconds? That's where the shape of the 90 minute peak comes in - the lack of a giant 90 second spike indicates that kettles are desynchronised over that period. As does a basic observation of people and their habits.

Edit: I think the grid ham up the kettle effect as a nice PR story but if anyone has actual data I'd love to see it. In reality it's kettles, lights, ovens, microwaves, showers, computers, all sorts of things.

Best wishes and no worries.
WT.

In reply to Mr Lopez:










Have a like from me for your staggering display of common sense. Id give you two but the EU has put a limit on likes because of the additional resources consumed by the UKC application at the server which could destroy the ozones or fry a panda...

Or something.

In reply to Mr Lopez:

..., are the benefitial effect of the CO2 savings on global warming offset by the ambient temperature raising significantly in the surrounding area of a percentage of individuals from all the hot air and burning rage this measures may generate, while being fanned with the tantric mantas of "faceless bureaucrats", "bring back the empire", and "roooneeeyyyyyyyyy"?

The problem is that those "faceless bureaucrats" (maybe as well as you?) think that ordinary people are stupid and need an enlightened superman to manage their lives - mainly banning "bad things". But it's only straight way to hell as about a billion people face living under rule of more advanced form of them. No society in history ever enhanced by bannig and regulating.

In reply to pavelk:

Not necessarily "stupid", but yes, people need an "enlightened superman", or "Leviathan" to ban bad things. I'm sure you agree with really bad things like murder being banned? How about lead in petrol? So where do you draw the line?

On the contrary, regulation is pretty much the purpose of society. We choose society over anarchy so that we can be protected from people who aren't willing to act in other peoples interest. Well I do anyway.

In reply to wintertree:


Well I heard about it after my wife visited people during her degree involved with predicting and controlling power in anticipation of such peaks. Of course you are right that life is less controlled by TV breaks now, but then we aren't just talking about kettles, and neither are the EU in their long ecodesign list. Neither is anyone saying that the overall envelope of energy for 1 kettle, or many kettles, is different if boiling the same volume of water over 2mins versus 10mins. Given that the ecodesign directive explicitly recogises kettles have efficiencies of greater than 80%, and that there isn't much scope to improve that efficiency, what do you think their targetting of kettles is about? My question, and it was a question, was about whether reducing the power utilisation was of any value. Power being energy used per unit time. Clearly the overall energy used is not going to change to boil the same water.

The questions is, whether it is valuable for the EU and energy providers to have consumables using a lower energy per unit time, and thus a lower power. I thought this might have to do with peaks, and the requirement to bring on additional sources of power when peaks (due to everything, kettles, washing machines, dishwashers, ovens, computers etc) of which kettles are just one of many causes, necessitate, and especially in those areas which don't have access to pump storage across Europe. I had in mind the situation in Eigg where individual households are limited to 5KW at any one time. Is there not in the forseeable future, potentially anticipated by the EU, a time when dominance of renewable sources occurs, coal and gas are sensibly de-emphasised, nuclear is still there in the backdrop, and some countries do and some countries don't benefit from pump storage in which household limits on peak use of power become relevant. Thus not having a 3kW kettle, a 11kW shower, a 2kW hoover +oven +hob +TV +computer etc on simultaneously is not helpful. A reduction to a 1kW kettle in that situation combined with a reduciton to an 8kW shower plus a reduction to a 1kW hoover etc etc are helpful in terms of sustainable accord of consumables with the future of provision of power. You haven't really addressed what I was getting at. Nobody disputes that a kettle boiling for longer will have more time for heat loss and thus be more inefficient.

In reply to Hooo:


And most of us prefer that regulation to be moderated, constricted, and constructed by UK politicians, not by the faceless bureaucrats of the EU.

In reply to Donald82:


My original question wasn't to do with utilisation of pump storage, which is relatively efficient, but rather having to bring on additional power sources when pump storage is not available, which is much less efficient. Forget kettles which are just one among many ecodesign directive targets, think all consumables as people get home from work if that's better. If you could reduce your overall power envelope needed for all household consumables consuming power, of which reducing a kettle from 3 to 1kw is just 1 example, might that not effect the sources of power needed? For sure, the overall energy needed to heat the given water isn't going to change, for the kettle, but that isn't my point. Lower power on for longer is better if that given power can be provided under lower levels of power provision....

In reply to Big Ger:


Disagree. I don't trust our Govt an inch to move us forward towards a more Green environmentally sustainable future.

In reply to Jimbo W:
Just heard a mention on the radio it is about balance of supply and demand in which the supply is increasingly fluctuating due wind and solar. They were talking about pumped storage and in the future batteries (Telsa home storage?) to manage supply and demand maintaining 50Hz continously.

Hence as renewals increase it may be necessary to reduce fluctuation in demand or pay for more pumped storage etc.

In reply to elsewhere:


Thanks. Which station was that? That's what it seemed likely to be about.

In reply to Jimbo W:



As I said in another thread; "It seems that those who are pro-this legislation are saying; "Well I want Green policy, and we have a Conservative Government, so it's great that it's being imposed on us by the EU.""

In reply to Jimbo W:

Radio Scotland

In reply to Big Ger:


Happy to be caricatured like that provided you are also happy to be seen as part of the "who gives a f*ck about our children's future and what we leave behind for them" brigade!

In reply to Big Ger:


Not relevant to my post, but OK, I'll bite.
Why would you prefer UK politians to do it? Assuming regulation such as this is based on evidence - that overall it will improve things for the majority - then surely it's best to impose it over the widest area?
The only reason I can think of why people would prefer regulation to be controlled more locally is so that they can restrict the regulations in accordance with their own self interest. Doing stuff in your own interest without regard to others is exactly the sort of behaviour that society is supposed to restrict.

In reply to Jimbo W:


Sure, if that means I'm just someone who would prefer legislation made at UK level, have at it.

In reply to Big Ger:


Ok. At least we now know it's down to self-interest, and must be resisted.

In reply to gethin_allen:

The EU are really going about this in completely the wrong way.

To save energy it would be much more sensible to have a ban on tea imports altogether and make tea from birch, or pine needles, ditto a coffee ban and use acorns. Maybe add synthetic caffeine to both if people can't get over their addiction to insecticide.

In reply to Hooo:



You know what they say about assuming.


Or that they can have some guarantee that legislation is made that suits our country?

Or to ensure their vote and their voice gets heard?

There are 751MPs in the EU parliament, we have 73 of them, 24 of ours are UKIP MEP's who have vowed non cooperation. How much democracy do you think our 19 Conservatives and 20 Labour MEP's are able to get us against those other 712 votes?

I'm sure you are all for the EU as it is agreeing with your green views, what if the EU were voting to put (for example) nuclear power stations in all EU countries? Would you be so keen on EU democracy then?

It’s all well and good to think the EU a good thing when it agrees with your prejudices, but would you be so accepting if it did things you disagree with?

In reply to Jimbo W:


Oh well.

In reply to Jimbo W:

Well, you've changed your tune quite a bit....


Actually, I have. We were both talking about kettles. You were wrong.

All the other things you now talk about reducing the power off, this can be done through increased efficiency - better vacuums, waster water heat exchangers on showers. Kettles, not so much.

Of course I think it's a good idea to reduce overall and peak loads. I clearly have talked several times about improved efficiencies of and when peak load is balanced through load shedding and not pumped storage. Not my fault if you don't read that.

And, I have clearly explained above in reply to Ducan how decreasing the power of kettles increases the power draw of kettles on the national scale, both in normal use and peak use, so long as the turning on times in the peak are dispersed over more than 2 minutes. You had been contesting this but now you're bringing all other appliances in to fix that incorrect argument.

Reducing the power of appliances only decreases load if the reduced power does not reduce the useful work done by the appliance.

In reply to wintertree:


I haven't changed my tune at all!! We were talking about kettles in the context of the ecodesign directive. That's what I meant about YOUR ASSUMPTIONS; that kettles were a consumable in isolation, on their own being an issue. I never ever said or meant that. My point from the off was to think holistically about why the EU might be doing this. And it seems from what was on Radio Scotland earlier, I was right.

In reply to Jimbo W:


Your initial post to me at 11:04


In terms of thinking about what the EU stuff was about, Tom's link long ago showed it to be about increased efficiency and not lower power and I've noted this several times, yet you clung to defending the non existent and non helpful suggestion of lowering individual kettle powers.

I have since then been trying to explain that slower boiling kettles make the effect worse and had all but given up. Glad to see in your recent posts that you now recognise this and have swung round to arguing that black is blue instead...

In reply to wintertree:

Yes, quite, given that its a discussion on Kettles hardly surprising, but context boy!


I've read all the ecodesign documents including the back and forward about from manufacturers. I've found it saying that kettles are 80% efficient and further significant increases unlikely.


So if you live on Eigg, and you have 3kW vs 1kW kettle, it makes no difference to what you can put on at the same time.


Make what effect worse?

In reply to Hooo:


You are not right. Murder or poisoning other people is banned by nature law - you don't do it because you face the threat of retaliation and you don't need any superman to tell you don't do it. Our law system just took over it. Banning powerful kettles (or forcing people to buy biofuels, regulating opening hours, etc) is nothing like that. There is no evidence that such regulations ever brought more good than harm. They only give uncontrolled power to a selected group of people and this power could be easily misused anytime


Society regulates and protects itself without any superman very well as you can see in Guinea rain forest , remote Canadian settlements or wherever the Big Brother is far away. Anarchy is not imminence, we are social animals.

In reply to Jimbo W:


Has anyone at all apart from you been talking about an island of 47 people instead of national grids? No. Now you're just being silly.

Of course you want low power appliances if you're on a low power, off grid supply. Doh.

In reply to Big Ger:


If we didn't keep sending UKIP's uncooperative ass-clowns we'd have a much bigger say in what happens, one roughly proportional to our size within Europe. That seems fair to me.

How much say will we have when we have zero MEPs and nobody sat on technical committees steering standards we'll still have to comply with?
jk

In reply to Big Ger:


Not fair. All legislation is constructed in detail by bureaucrats (civil servants) - that's what they are paid for. The ones in Whitehall are no less faceless than the ones in Brussels - probably less so in fact - unless you find Whitehall civil servants less faceless because their faces speak your language better.

Martin

In reply to wintertree:


It was an analogy to try to illustrate what you seem to want to mis-understand. But I can conclude from your answer that you don't think that the EU are reducing power and improving efficiency because they expect the portfolio of power sources to be reduced, to become more intermittent, to be more dependent on local sources, and battery technology, despite what the EU are saying, and apparently in contradiction to the reasons given on the radio for these changes.

In reply to Jimbo W:


I haven't misunderstood anything sunshine. You were trying to create a justification for lower power kettles to reduce load on a national scale grid without apparently understanding the basic principles or thinking it through. You were wrong. It happens

Comparing an island of 47 people to a national grid is not an analogy when it comes to boiling water in kettles. If you can't understand why it is not an analogy, then I really can't help you. You may note that the other poster formerly in your camp went away and thought about it and came round to my view.


How you conclude that I have no idea, unless you ignore half of what I have written. All I said, and what you argued with, was that lowering kettle power does not lower power draw nationally. The EU is not talking about lowering kettle power, but increasing their efficiency. Over a population the same power and increased efficiency will lower peak power draw - a good thing.

Do try and remember what you were talking about and not what you are twisting this round to. You keep harping on about aspects of the future grid that may be more sporadic in supply and flat out ignoring my comments on smart appliances that show I understand that, realise that may be our future, and that we need to adapt.

Just not with lower power kettles. As that needs more energy and power.

In reply to pavelk:



Are you a teenager? Serious question! Because that sort of romantic viewpoint is acceptable in a young idealist, I had similar notions in those days too. But I'm afraid that the doctrine of the noble savage has been well and truly debunked. All the evidence (and there is lots of it) shows that homicide and other violations of "nature law" are far more prevalent in the societies you mention than they are in our civilised society. The idea of some idyllic society that civilisation destroyed is noting but a myth.

Are you seriously saying that no regulation ever brought more good than harm? Speed limits and seat belts haven't saved any lives? Removing lead from paint and petrol didn't have any benefits? The list is endless.

In reply to Big Ger:


What do you mean "Or"? you said the same thing as I did but put a positive spin on it!


I got to vote for one MP in the EU parliament, and one in the UK parliament. My voice is no louder in the UK than the EU.


Who's this "us" you refer to? I'm not in a group with you. The British people? Do we have fundamentally different wants and needs from people in other countries then?


Regardless of my or your beliefs, the scientific consensus is that the probability that global warming is real is high enough that it's worth investing in efforts to reduce it. The EU are going along with the scientific consensus, and I think that is the logical thing to do.
I'm not fundamentally opposed to nuclear power stations, as long as the evidence points to them being worthwhile in terms of benefits compared to risk.

In reply to felt:



Or just put a big tax on bunker oil globally, encouraging everyone to shop locally and limit some of the biggest polluters on the planet.

In reply to pavelk:


Right. Tell it to the Mayans or Easter Islanders.

Anyway, Lord Shaftesbury, in this case, the relevant society is at least European, arguably broader then that.

In reply to Hooo:

No I'am not a teenager. And I am not saying anything about the noble savage. Primitive societies are more violent than our western society but well organised and regulated societies may be equally as I experienced in my young days and many people suffer today.


German motorways have no speed limit and they are much safer than Polish or Czech ones (with speed limits). Why? Where is the evidence of regulation benefits? Ban human poisoning is application of natural law. The list is short, if there is any list. Kettle ban is nothing like that.
What I want to say is that if anyone wants to order some regulation (and thereby prevent human freedom) then he should prove very clearly that benefits are bigger than harms. It does not happen and will not because things with clear benefits people do voluntarily before they become forced regulation

In reply to wintertree:


No. I was using the topical example of kettles to ask a question about whether the ecodesign directive might have an interest in lower powered consumables, such as kettles, because of a desire to reduce power load of consumables.



No, you just don't want to expose your neck, preferring the bravado of arrogance. You could explain if my ignorance is the problem - I have no problem with being wrong, but you choose not to. My analogy purely was to illustrate that there are situations where power limits are real. I am not saying that Eigg is mappable to the f*cking national grid. I am saying that the desire to limit power and increase efficiency *might* have to do with the direction of travel, in the spectrum of sustainable power sources. Afterall, why do it.. ..its not for the past, its not for the present, its for the FUTURE. So YOUR, but more specifically, the EU's expectations for the EU are entirely relevant to this discussion. The kettle is one of many consumables discussed in the ecodesign directive. And in contrast to your discussion, the ecodesign directive documentations specifically states that the kettle's efficiency is already 80%, further significant increases are unlikely.... ....so I ask you again - given that they state that fact, why do they want to reduce the power consumption of kettles?


I don't have a camp. I'm just not in the reductio ad absurdam obsessive compulsive brigade.


It may well be the way you've written it, given that I'm not the only one having trouble supposedly understanding it. but I remain willing to be educated.


All I said was that as part of a spectrum of power drawing consumables, reducing those power sources might afford the opportunity of less requirement for putting on line sources of peak power sources, and specifically NOT pump storage (given its efficiency) given that many EU areas to not have access to that facility.


Eh? The same power is the same power.


How do we adapt? Might the EU want it to include lower power appliances?!


No it requires the same energy (+ a bit for heat losses), drawn out over a longer period of time. You're obsessed with kettles. The context is the ecodesign directive.

In reply to Dave Garnett:


Tell Saudis or North Koreans about benefits of well organised and regulated state then

In reply to Jimbo W:


Let's not get muddled. I said that lower power kettles are a stupid idea. You said


I explained to you repeatedly why lower power kettles does not help with this, and you have tried every argument under the sun to convince me otherwise. I do not need convincing as I am correct.


I have explained until I am blue in the face and you apparently refuse to read/think/address my explanation.


It is not an analogy. It is a totally different situation, and one that had had zero relevance on any of the discussion until you raised it. It's not to do with the quantity of power available either, but the number of kettles running at once. Which is likely to be ~1 on Eigg and >> 1 on a national grid.


Did you not read the multiple times I talked about smart appliances limiting power draw in response to variable demand from renewables? Did you not read the times I said that kettles are a bad example of an appliance to do so with?


Did you not read the repeat times I said I am all for more efficient appliances?


They do not want to reduce the power consumption of kettles. It is only apparently in your mind. You have ignored every reference I made to the link posted earlier by someone else - https://www.vdma.org/documents/266687/344832/Ecodesign+WP3_Draft_Task_3_rep... - go and read it and then tell me exactly where it says they want to limit the power of kettles. They do not. They want to increase product lifetime and increase efficiency.

Let me repeat it bluntly - only a total moron would lower the power of kettles on a national grid to reduce instantaneous, peak or average power draw, as lowering the power of kettles rises the instantaneous, peak and average power draw.


Do you think you're being clever and insulting at the same time sunshine? I am not reducing anything to absurdity (hey look I can read Latin). I am explaining why you were wrong.


I don't even know what that means.

>> > The EU is not talking about lowering kettle power, but increasing their efficiency. Over a population the same power and increased efficiency will lower peak power draw - a good thing.


You just don't get it do you? Did you skip over the explanations? Rather than telling me you're having trouble "supposedly understanding it", why not think about it a bit more. I'll put it really simply for you. A grid is not a single kettle in isolation, but many thousands of kettles all on at the same time. When a kettle is more efficient, it spends less time turned on. When thousands of kettles are on at random times the less time an individual kettle is on, the less kettles are on at once, and the less power is drawn.

Edit: To head off your next attempt at arguing this round in circles, this even applies to the post-tv show demand period, as the demand period is significantly longer than the mean boiling time of a kettle, meaning the same population behaviour effect is in play.

I'll repeat the really very simple explanation. When thousands of kettles are on at random times the less time an individual kettle is on, the less kettles are on at once, and the less power is drawn. Given the insults you've thrown at me about obsessive compulsive reductionist thinking it's quite embarrassing that you can't differentiate a single kettle from a large grid of kettles, or consider the implications of the laws of science at play (conservation of energy and large number statistics), which are not absurdly reduced thinking but are the baseline for all real world calculations.


Yes, but not with devices that are close to 100% efficiency as making efficient appliances draw lower power does not affect instantaneous, peak and average power draw. Until you understand this you are wasting my time and yours. With kettles, lower power means less efficiency thereby raising instantaneous, peak and average power draw.

>> > Just not with lower power kettles. As that needs more energy and power.

You still haven't got it, have you? It needs more energy ("the same + a bit more") and more power. I know you're really struggling with this point about power, and that it keeps driving you to personal insults at me, but think hard and see if you can understand it, and then you'll see why you are wrong.

No, I've only ever been talking about kettles, you're obsessed with arguing a wider context. I've never disagreed but you still do not understand about the kettles. Trust me, it's important.

Let's call it "Wintertree's First Law Of Energy Saving". When applied over a large population of highly efficient devices that are used sporadically and whose use is temporally de-synchronised compared to their activation times, lowering power draw of the devices does not lower the power draw on the grid, assuming the end user requires the same quantity of work to be done by the devices.

In reply to jkarran:


The old "democracy would be perfect if everyone voted the way I want them too", argument. I like that one.

In reply to wintertree:

Okay. The absolutes of laws. That's usefully cast in stone.
1) Is the energy efficiency of a kettle constant at different initial starting temperatures? What is the most efficient power input and how does that vary with initial starting temperature? Doesn't the most efficient power requirement reduce with increased water temperatures?
2) What is the lowest feasible power capable of boiling a kettle at 80% avg efficiency ignoring practical time constraints, i.e. where the power is sufficiently capable of exceeding energy losses?
3) Given that UK national grid data show peaks frequently reach 1/3 of past peaks and daily peaks are still a relevant part of daily programming, what are the necessary statistical distribution assumptions you have included in your model of grid peaks? How do they expand the typically short ~3min UK national grid peaks still typical in the UK?

In reply to gethin_allen:

The trouble with trying to regulate something like the power of a kettle is that ingenious people* will find a way around the problem.

At work we bought a filter kettle, the sort that has a hopper at the top and filters the water before boiling it. The trouble is that the hopper is too small and only holds about 1/3rd of the amount of water the kettle does. And that's nowhere near enough to make a pot of coffee. No worries, we're ingenious people*, we simply went out and bought a second kettle. Now we can run both kettles at the same time** and get our coffee twice as fast***.
Not only that but custom and practice says that having made the coffee you fill up the hoppers and flick the switches on so that the water's ready for the next time. Totally eco-friendly.

* Electronics product designers.
** Both plugged in to the same double socket. And often with the toaster running in the one next to it too.
*** Yes, I know 2 * 1/3rd isn't a kettle full but there's always some in there to start with so it ends up at more like 1 and a 1/3rd in total.

In reply to csambrook:


I'd have thought ingenious people would simply have bought a kettle that makes a full pot of coffee...


And here's why we'll never be able to compete with the Chinese

In reply to pavelk:


I agree entirely with this. So what's your problem with making kettles more efficient? It's not a world-changing benefit, I admit, but what's the harm? Infringing your right to buy crap kettles? I'd say the benefit is clearly bigger than the harm.


What planet are you on? People have an inbuilt drive to self interest, that's your "nature law". Most people will do things that have a clear benefit to themselves, even if it's to the detriment of others.
The point of supporting regulation is not because I want to be regulated, it's to stop people doing stuff that has a clear benefit to themselves, but a detriment to me. I'd love to be able to drive as fast as I like everywhere. But I'm glad everyone has to stick to speed limits.

In reply to pavelk:


You should have likened the EU to the Nazis, then we could have called Godwin's law and ended this thread.

In reply to Jimbo W:


I see you trying to swing the argument in yet another direction. Clearly the lower the starting temperature the worse the efficiency as its on for longer so more heat it lost.


Infinite. Or as large as possible without melting anything. You want to heat the water as fast as possible to minimise the window for heat loss.


It doesn't. It remains infinite.


No. No idea where you're going with this to be honest. Colder water means kettle on for longer means more loss. Lower power means on for even longer means more loss. Don't try and argue this because I am correct.


That depends entirely upon losses - efficiency - doesn't it. You could have a kettle that takes all day. People wouldn't use it. Perhaps you're trying to argue that a more efficient kettle could be lower power and perform the same as a current kettle - why, yes it could. Always agreed with that. Given current efficiencies however there is little scope for power drop whilst maintaining current boiling times.


Are you saying the problem is three times less bad than it used to be? Wow we'd better suddenly change things to fix it.


Feel free to share primary data on grid peaks and not PR articles. I've asked more than once. I've said I'm willing to admit I am wrong if anyone shows evidence of peaks in load of less than the average on time of kettles along with evidence it's caused by kettles.

In the mean time you remain the only person calling for the power of kettles to be lowered. Not the EU.

In reply to wintertree:


I could have put that higher - the efficiency is higher and the energy wasted is higher for a lower starting temp and a fixed target temp.

In reply to Hooo:

.... So what's your problem with making kettles more efficient? It's not a world-changing benefit, I admit, but what's the harm? Infringing your right to buy crap kettles? I'd say the benefit is clearly bigger than the harm.

You can hardly prove any benefit of more efficient kettles. Can you prove that efficient kettle spare more energy its operations than it's spent to make it more efficient? Can you prove that transporting, disposal or recycling more efficient kettle (made of more and more sophisticated material) doesn't cost more energy than it could ever spare? You can't because no one did ever count it. On the other hand the clear harm is that forced to buy more efficient (expensive) kettle I cant spend my money for something clearly beneficial and someone will miss my money I could not spend for his beer, service or whatever. The likely harm is bigger ecological damage in kettle producing countries

... Most people will do things that have a clear benefit to themselves, even if it's to the detriment of others.

Doing well means generally doing good. Adam Smith, sir Karl Popper and others showed it conclusively


Regulations can't prevent this. They just harm someone else and make the harm less visible

In reply to Big Ger:


Not really since the issue is them not voting.

In reply to Hooo:


Living in the country which suffered nazi and communist rule I know very well that EU is far away from them. But distorting economy by subsidies, forcing us to change education system, forcing us to make state officials absolutely irresponsible for their actions, forcing us to produce expensive and non-ecological power and burn expensive and toxic fuel (they call it the fight against global warming), moves slowly the EU very close to soft version of socialism we experienced in 80' - without political prisoners, yet

In reply to pavelk:

If you consider one single kettle, possibly not. On the back of a fag packet, saving a fraction of a penny every time you boil up is probably the same order of magnitude over the kettle's lifetime as the extra cost of buying a better kettle in the first place.

But this isn't about just one kettle. It's about the fact that from then on, everyone who designs a kettle will be making it more efficient. Very quickly the R&D costs will be covered, the increased materials costs will become negligible, and kettles will cost pretty much what they ever did. But now they'll be a bit more efficient.

Without the original impetus to make kettles more efficient, this would never happen, because people are inherently selfish - they want to buy the cheapest kettle that will do the job.

If we all thought like you, we'd still be driving cars with two litre leaded petrol engines, getting 20-odd mpg, and we'd point and laugh at the guy spending a small fortune trying to design a car that got 25mpg. It's very hard for an isolated national government to push for better standards on its own because people will just go next door to buy the old, cheaper model. If the whole EU mandates better standards at once, design is forced to push forward.

In reply to pavelk:


Of course you can, it's not even difficult.


Tell that to the next lot of families bereaved and left destitute by a sweatshop fire.


Yes they can, the problem is big, very big, it isn't insurmountable. We don't have to accept the horrible exploitation of others and our planet for our benefit, we choose to. I suppose at least you're being honest about your choice.
jk

In reply to pavelk:


Perhaps you could explain this more completely and less emotively, I'm interested. I presume you're talking about increased German Lignite consumption but I'm at a loss to see how that's the EU's fault.
jk

In reply to Jamie Wakeham:



If your argument is true, how could you explain invention of wheel, bulb, stem engine, combustion engine, propeller, penicilin, PC, microwawe, internet, facebook etc.? In fact, they were pushed by demand as well as most of inovation, not by any regulation.

In reply to jkarran:

I am talking about compulsory adding of rapeseed oil to diesel and obligatory subsiding solar power plants here in Czech.
To produce 1 liter of rapeseed oil costs 1,1- 1,3 liter of diesel and burning it produces more toxic exhalation than burning pure diesel.
Solar panels in Czech never produce equivalent amount of power to amount spent for their production and transport (not included unknown costs of their disposal)

In reply to pavelk:


That argument doesn't work so well when discussing environmental harm reduction in 2016. This just isn't something consumers are driven by, maybe one day it will be but for now we apply selection pressure to new shiny materials, flash blue lights so you can see the bubbles, trendy brand names, this season's colours... Not to a couple of percentage points efficiency improvement but that doesn't mean the efficiency doesn't matter to us, it does but most people don't understand why or care. We're rich, we can afford to spend an extra 0.2p/cuppa, all we really care about is that it's the big chrome one <insert celebrity name here> has in their kitchen in that <insert magazine name here> photo shoot. That's ok, we can't all be expected to understand these things, as can be seen above even highly educated people end up butting heads over the details. That's why we regulate.
jk

In reply to pavelk:

You're mixing up the process of invention and sales.

People invent new things because we are innovative creatures. They try to come up with new solutions to existing problems, or they try to find ways to improve exisiting solutions.

But getting people to buy these things is a different issue. If a product is the only solution to a problem it will probably sell well. But if it's an improvement on an exisiting solution, and it's more expensive, it will struggle to displace the original -especially if it's only a marginal improvement.

Take one of the things you mentioned - the light bulb. 20 years ago, everyone merrily used 100W incandescents. Remember the huge fuss made when CFL and then LED bulbs were brought to the market - they were too expensive, the light wasn't as good, the mercury will kill us all. And, yes, the first CFLs were bloody expensive, and had poor light, and took ages to warm up. But gradually they got better and cheaper - and a huge driver behind a product getting better and cheaper is increased sales. No-one will want to invest r&d costs unless they see increasing sales.

So the EU stepped in, and prevented the sale of 100W incandescents. That prompted lots of R&D towards their replacements, and nowadays I can buy LED bulbs that don't cost much more than the old incandescents, are frankly brighter and better, and use 5W and last forever.

What if the EU hadn't done this? What if just one country had banned their production? Well, you'd have got 100W incandescents just being shipped in from neighbouring countries. The pressure on that one country's industry to make better, cheaper LED lamps would have been massively reduced, because most people are greedy and a bit short sighted and they'd ignore the expensive LEDs and just buy the cheap incandescents. Neighbouring countries would love it as they'd get more exports.

In essence, if everyone was perfectly rational and long-sighted in their spending, you'd be right and we could let the free market deal with it. But they aren't. Look at the rush of morons to buy up more powerful, less efficient vacuums that actually produced less power at the nozzle when the EU started to legislate against them!

In reply to pavelk:

I can't talk about the rapeseed oil, but the one about solar panels never displacing their original CO2 debt is a myth. They do it by about year three, IIRC. (edit - thanks for finding the data, jkarran).

Disposal costs? My panels are guaranteed to still be running at 80% of rated capacity in 20 years. Even if they steadily drop 1% per year, they'll still be running at 50% capacity in 2065, and if I am lucky enough to still be here to think about it then, I doubt very much I would get rid of them. Unless roof space becomes the commodity in short supply, you'll just run these systems more or less until they die. By the time you finally do scrap them, they will have paid their cost and CO2 debts off so utterly comprehensively that they're going to be negligible.

In reply to pavelk:

http://info.cat.org.uk/questions/pv/what-energy-and-carbon-payback-time-pv-...

Perhaps Czech has *much* worse weather than the US or the Netherlands but 8 to 10 times worse, really? Are you sure of your facts because they sound a lot like the misconception (deception?) about wind turbines which have similar 'years to carbon-payback' figures.

Even if that were true it's not necessarily a sensible way to look at it (looking at PV lifetime costs in isolation), you need to also consider what it displaces. What does a modern gas turbine power plant cost in terms of embodied energy and what are the ongoing 'carbon' inputs to keep it running. Again, that might still be a relatively good choice if it's displacing a coal plant!

Sorry, I don't know anything about the cost of rapeseed production but I'd be interested in any link to the studies finding the combustion products more harmful than 'pure diesel'.
jk

In reply to Jamie Wakeham:


According to wiki, it looks as though Brazil and Venezuela started it off 2005, EU/Switzerland/Australia 2009 (Russia 2012, USA/Canada 2014)?

In reply to wintertree:


Not at all trying to swing things in another direction. Just following your lead of a nicely crystallised law, and am pursuing it. My back of an envelope calculation last night suggested the the lowest possible energy use, ie efficiency (E), is dependent on the temperature of the water and the external air temperature. By my calculations, the maximum power (P) being maximal/infinite is only true when Tw (water temp) is < or = to Ta (external air temp). As the water temperature increases the maximal efficiency (ie lowest utilisation of energy) decreases with increasing Tw. What's your function for the lowest possible E in relation to power (P)?

In reply to Jamie Wakeham:

I am sorry but your argument with bulbs is wrong. In time when old bulbs were forbidden only CFLs were applicable alternative. Now they are slowly replaced by better LED without any further regulation - just because market reacts to demand. Why you think it couldn't happen anyway?
By the way, Japan and New Zealand, together with many other countries have no such regulation and they use the same modern lights as we do (why?)
P.S. The incandescent bulbs ban is ineffective anyway and everyone can steel easily buy them as "heating elements" or "microheating" or however they call them

In reply to pavelk:


The difference in price between CFL and LED is relatively small. You had to take away the (extremely cheap) 100W incandescent to kick-start the process.


Perhaps one factor is that, in New Zealand, it's a bit tricky to jump in the car and drive to the next country? Any island economy is going to find driving these changes a heck of lot easier.


I'm sure you can. But they're not on the shelves of the big supermarkets any more, and most people are lazy.

In reply to jkarran:

Nice, but they forgot to mention network costs and spare power sources. Unfortunately we need most power at dark winter evenings when PV don't work. To install two sources for alternately switching is economical (and ecological) nonsense and to cover huge fields with solar panels to produce 0,5% of energy output is ecological vandalism at best.
Spain or North Africa might be another story, I admit

In reply to Jamie Wakeham:
CFLs are rubbish, every last one of them (though granted some are more rubbish than others). People would have gone LED anyway (once the price was right) because by and large they are not rubbish.

In reply to Neil Williams:

Undoubtedly. They are nowhere near as good a technology as LED, for all sorts of reasons. Even if CFL hadn't existed at all, though, and if LED had been introduced as the straightforward successor to incandescent, you'd still have needed some legislative push to kick off the switching process - at the very least it would have sped the process up significantly.

In reply to pavelk:

Your point was about embodied energy and you were out by a factor of ten at least. Feel free to move the goalposts however much you like, you're still wrong.


Technologies like PV already perform well but will work far better as part of a wider ecosystem of 'green' technologies and solutions: Grid scale storage, electric vehicles that can double as storage, low energy lighting and efficient homes, economic models that encourage smart (supply sensitive) consumption and managed load shedding, transcontinental high power grid connections. This will all come in due course, some is a growing reality already but it won't all come together at once. That some pieces of the puzzle are still missing is no good reason not to start lining the rest of them up. You can sit and wait for your revolutionary change, resisting the incremental advances happening around you or you can buy into that incremental change, benefit from it, help it become the revolution it surely will be anyway whether you like it or not.

You seem like a smart guy, it'd be a shame not to at least make an informed decision.


Uneconomical yes, certainly while ever fossil fuels get tax breaks (effectively subsidies) out of all proportion to the harm they do but it still makes sense from an environmental perspective. Again this is why we need strong regulation, it's where the market fails. Without regulation it we'd still be burning coal hand over fist in smog choked cities losing decades of our lives to respiratory disease and warming our world at an even less sustainable rate.


And there's the nub of it: stuff the science, not in my back yard!
http://www.greenrhinoenergy.com/solar/radiation/images/SolarGIS-Solar-map-E... the difference in insolation isn't as great as you might think (nor as great as the colours on this chart might imply, check the scale).
jk

In reply to Jimbo W:


Still not found any data to show that load peaks are of the same duration as a kettle's heating time and not at a bare minimum several times as long in duration then? That's all that matters for justifying your primary claim.


Okay, yes, things are more complicated when we consider the regime where the water in the kettle is colder than the air in the room, because the heat leak through the kettle wall heats the water until it reaches ambient air temperature. In this regime everything is reversed, to the point where a better insulated kettle decreases the kettle's efficiency.

You did not specify before that you were considering sub-ambient water temperatures although at some times of year and in some households that is a not unreasonable assumption.


C: Specific heat capacity of water
M: Mass of water
k: Thermal conductivity of kettle wall material * contact surface area / wall thichness
T: Temperature of water
T_air: Air temperature
E: Thermal energy in water
P' : Power going in to the water

Temperature change in the kettle:

dT/dt = P/(mC) - k * (T-T_air)/(mC)

I'll leave integrating this to get T(t) as an exercise to the reader along with the conversion back to energy, but will note the exponential in the solution, and the obvious meaning of that, namely that the inefficiencies only become significant as the water temperature diverges from the ambient temperature. Which is not the case where the water temperature is lowered further, as mains tap water is already quite cold and can't go much colder.

Working up a solution for an 1800W kettle heating 300g of water from 8oC to 75oC against an ambient temperature of 15oC, with a thermal conduction picked to yield an overall 80% efficiency of water heating, ~140 times as much energy is lost through heating the water above ambient compared to the energy gained from the environment when heating the energy to ambient. No matter what power you pick, more energy is lost in the heating above ambient than the heating to ambient. Assuming heating water to boiling point this is true for any ambient temperature of < 50oC.

All I can really take from your new line of argument is that it would be good to leave water in the kettle to equilibrate to room temperature before turning the kettle on - i.e. refill immediately after use, not immediately before. A good suggestion, and one that kettles that have an internal reservoir that dispense water out a cup at a time will often make people implement.

In reply to pavelk:


Adam Smith was a long way from saying there should be no regulation at all, and I don't recall Popper saying anything that extreme either.

Your experience of totalitarian regimes does explain your point of view, but you seem to have gone to a ludicrous extreme in the opposite direction. The answer is not a total absence of authority and relying on peoples natural instincts , it's a delicate balance between freedom and regulation.

In reply to jkarran:


My point was written wrong (my English is far from perfect and sometimes it's difficult to compose complex sentences for me so I was too brief). You need to count all costs from the first digging to get cadmium via costs of earthworks for future plant to costs of storage and spare sources and costs of disposal ideally. As far as I know no one did it completely to compare different sources of energy and it's probably impossible because it may differ from case to case but the real market price of power is an indicator that many costs (economical as well as ecological) of so called renewable are hidden. Something about CO2 expenses is here - unfortunately in German http://www.eike-klima-energie.eu/news-cache/solarstrom-in-deutschland-klima...


I don't think that is the point where market fails. It's more point where regulation fails - tax breaks for mining companies are form of regulation as well. USA switched from coal to more ecological gas without regulation just because of technological prospect. Compared to that Germany is launching new coal power stations despite all regulations. Unfortunately, they need them desperately because their power system is at the edge of collapse and they are to switch off all nukes soon.

Notwithstanding I know I am not going to convince you there is one more aspect. The required area each energy source needs to produce unit of energy. Robert Bryce calculated that Texas nuclear plant generates about 56 watts per square metre. This compares with 53 for gas turbines, 1.2 for wind, 6.7 for solar or 0.05 for corn ethanol. Those are huge and well hidden ecological costs because all this land can be left to nature ideally.
Pavel

In reply to Hooo:


I am not calling for total absence of authority I'm just more suspicious about orders and rules which can be misused easily. 200 000 pages of EU regulations which nobody really understands seems too much for me

In reply to pavelk:


they are now storing solar energy in salt, so there isn't a night time dip. http://www.solarreserve.com/en/technology/molten-salt-energy-storage

In reply to pavelk:

if every industrial estate had a turbine, if planning regs dictated that new houses must have a south facing roof at around 30-40degrees and panels fitted etc.. the energy could be generated without any rural green land being used at all and the power is generated nearer it's end user. There is sufficient roof space in the UK to meet the UK's daytime energy needs entirely through solar in summer. You can then run biomass plants in winter, using crops that were grown in summer. 100% renewable and that's not consider the various other forms of energy.

In reply to gethin_allen:

Can you be self sufficient in power with Solar panels and a turbine on your own property ??

In reply to pavelk:


That's exactly what you have been doing! That's why I was arguing with you. Here are the quotes from you that got me started:

In reply to arch:

The sunlight on an ordinary roof exceeds normal electricity consumption.

You need a big enough battery but in reality you need a grid connection or a generator for a cloudy week.

In reply to elsewhere:


and to boil a kettle?

In reply to elsewhere:


Or some flexibility in your consumption.
jk

In reply to elsewhere:

Indeed. My 5.8kWp system provides, over a year, quite a lot more energy than I consume. I've just checked, and that's true even using Jan 1st as a starting point (656kWh produced, 520kWh total consumption). Take that, solar nay-sayers!

In fact, if I had enough batteries to carry summer production into the winter, I could theoretically drive hot water and my minimal heating off it too (most of the heating is provided by the woodburner) so I could go completely off grid.

Boiling the kettle's no problem as my inverter gives 5kW. I just need to not boil the kettle at the same time as running the toaster and too many hair dryers!

The problem, of course, is the cost of battery storage. Given that I have a free connection to the National Grid, it's very very hard for batteries to make economical sense. It's far far simpler to allow ~4kWh of export per day, and import ~3kWh to cover when it's not sunny enough.

I'm holding off on any further storage solutions right now as I have a sense that they're going to get significantly better and cheaper over the next couple of years.

In reply to Hooo:


Three are rules and bans widely accepted by society. They usually protect personal integrity, property and reflect what most people consider right somehow. Those rules exist in every functional society and there is always some authority guaranteeing them. Even in group of people randomly selected (as castaways) some kind of those rules and authorities always appears. That's nothing like anarchy or absence of authority.
Other rules, prohibitions and orders should be very well justified (and accepted widely) before they come into force.
EU laws and regulations as well as most of our national ones are nothing like that. They usually protect an interest of some dedicated group pushed through intricate and opaque law system. That is something I feel as massive retreat from democracy and towards what I define

In reply to summo:


We do tend to romanticise our countryside as a green idyll, in reality it is often a sea of pesticide dependent mono culture fed on synthetic fertiliser and stripped of hedgerows that once connected the remaining habitat patches. I don't see solar panels displacing some of that as a bad thing at all.

That said you're quite right about the turbines and a solar roof (of some sort, could be passive heat, hot water, PV or a hybrid) really should be mandatory on all suitable new build and not just on the south faces. While these pay back quicker they concentrate the supply in a spike around noon, by including E&W facing roofs you spread the generation out over the morning and evening without needing any storage.
jk

In reply to jkarran:

Can you delay a hot meal or heating until the sun comes out next week?

Generally not, hence the need for a grid connection.

In reply to elsewhere:


If you really had to but you wouldn't want to be doing so routinely. Some things are less essential and or time pressured, you could for example delay a washing machine run or hoovering to manage your reserves until you have a power surplus and some reserve built up. I said some flexibility, obviously some drains like winter lighting are not so flexible and I am assuming a reasonable amount of storage. The point is that there are three parts to the equation, input, storage and output. We have some control over all of those by choosing collector/accumulator size and managing consumption. Grid connection is not essential, decent planning and engineering is, careful management can help.

I'm not saying we should live off grid, the grid makes a lot of sense where it's accessible but it's quite possible to do without it.
jk

In reply to jkarran:

Panels that track the sun exist, but they are cost prohibiting in all but the best locations.

In reply to pavelk:
So you are saying there are three distinct types of rules, with clear dividing lines?
1. The ones that are natural, that everyone agrees on.
2. Ones that are not natural, but are very well justified and accepted widely.
3. Ones that only benefit a special group and are pushed through by the EU.

I think that's a very naive view, and the lines are much more blurred.

Pollution is banned by rule 1 yes? Everyone agrees that putting poison in the air or water supplies is wrong.
But we still pollute, because we couldn't have our modern society without it.
So the question is not a straightforward one about a "natural" law. The question is whether the benefit we get justifies the pollution. If lots of people get a large benefit then we accept the harm done, if the benefit is smaller than the harm then we don't. It's a complicated calculation that involves weighing a benefit to some people against harm to others.
So who do you think should decide how much pollution is acceptable and make the rules?

In reply to Jimbo W:



Hi, I think I was replying to someone else