Energy Star Ratings Tell Lies.

[gunug]

This guy bought a Sony television that had an Energy Star rating that said it only consumed 0.1 watt when it was sleeping and it turns out it actually averaged 15 watts (moving from a fractional watt to as much as 20 watts).  It was lying. There is also some discussion about MACs (which do better once you actually know they're sleeping):

QUOTE

About two years ago I figured out that my iMac was not going to sleep even though the screen was blank and the LED was on. A bit of sleuthing brought out that a constantly-on LED meant only the screen was sleeping, while a dimming and brightening LED meant the system was sleeping. My LED was constantly on! It took some more detective work to figure out that my mail program, Eudora, was the problem. Qualcomm had stopped supporting it, so it hadn’t been updated to work with the new Mac OS (10.3?) and prevented the Mac from sleeping.

It’s therefore particularly annoying that my new iMac dispensed with that LED entirely, so now I have no way of knowing its sleep status! I currently have my power meter on a new external disk drive and can tell when the Mac is sleeping because then the drive also goes to sleep and draws less power. And there have been times lately when it should have been sleeping based on no activity within the specified timeframe, but was still awake at the system level. (The screen was blank, though.)

http://www.deviceguru.com/energy-star-or-black-hole/

I suppose if we're serious about this we should buy a watt meter and complain when things don't add up:

http://www.energystar.gov/

[jcarter]

We bought several of these little meters, and they are great for figuring out what goes.
https://www.chooserenewables.com/xcart/prod...=266&page=1
I got mine from Amazon cheaper, but couldnt find the link today.

Also we bought a Bosch dishwasher, which has no heating coil in it and no drying cycle.
We thought we would be ahead, but alas, we have to run our hotwater faucet to get the hot water up into the pipe to the
dishwasher, so that it wont be using the cold water which lies in the pipe.
Then it wont dry at the end of the cycle, but that is easy, you just have to remember to prop the door open and let them dry overnight.
Not easy if you need to do 2 loads back to back.

So both our kids went out and got the Kenmore dishwashers WITH the heating coil.
Jane

[Xairbusdriver]

QUOTE

I suppose if we're serious about this we should buy a watt meter and complain when things don't add up

Or maybe read the directions for your Mac?

"Heating coils" are also available for the "hot" water line in any location. Instead of using a large tank, constantly keeping 40-80 gallons of water hot, the little heater, located just under the 'hot' water faucet, turns on when ever the need for hot water occurs (hot water faucet is open). These kinds of water heaters are very common in Europe and much of the rest of the world, their nothing new...

As for the water in a dishwasher, that water should be very much warmer than what you ever want to come out of a faucet. That's the whole point of having a heater in them, in the first place. They are not for 'warm' water but hot water that is needed to kill the bacteria in the dishwasher, before and after it 'cleans' the dishes! The same coil simply also heats the air inside the washer when the cycle is complete. Most good washers have a cycle that does not even use the drying cycle, some allow washing with only the warm tap water ( although I'm not sure why anyone wold want to do that. ).

I take any kind of government rating system with several grains of salt. First, who knows how realistic the tests are? Second, who knows if the machine you buy has exactly the same specs as the one tested? Third, who knows if there is anything wrong with the machine you are using hat may be using more power than you think? Finally, are you sure you're even using it as prescribed to get the power use you want?

Of course, there's never the possibility that a manufacturer would ever fake a test or build units for sale that are known to be less than the models tested...Right?! Sure, we could ask the 'government' to keep better follow-up checks on these things but don't we have some more serious and important things we'd like the government to be doing? I know I sure do.