1600 W maximum on vacuum cleaners from from Sept!

[Noxvayl]

I'm not sure if you missed post 297 of mine, on page 19, or not Saracen but I don't think we disagree at all. I completely agree with what you have said, but everything you have said relates to moderate regulation where there is no hardline ban unless justified by some really good information, which power limits are not justified by in my mind. I mention my previous post because it relates to power production as a more serious concern.

I go back to power production because according to very smart people, Tesla is founded on this principle, we can create energy abundance. In other words there isn't a problem of consuming too much energy, there is a problem of artificially low energy production that is caused by a lack of upgrading done in the energy production sector. America are facing this issue with broadband where ISPs are telling their shareholders that they have no intention of wasting money on upgrades... how can investing money in the very livelihood of your business be considered a bad thing? Incentives in that market are seriously messed up, as it seems they are in the energy sector of this country and many others in Europe.

My main issue with this directive is not the end which they are using for justification, it is that those ends won't be met with the means they are using and it is a waste of everything we have available to us to pursue these types of directives; all they do is restrict us, they don't help when you look at the larger picture. South Africa has lived through an energy crisis; the recent nature of it is likely to cause them to prioritise energy production over consumer energy reduction policies; the stats from the site I linked to back up my assertions of energy universally rising regardless of how serious you get about consumer energy reduction policies. China are aggressively pursuing better energy production policies as are Germany and Japan due to recent events that have instilled enough fear in them to wake up. I have no idea how to wake up our politicians, MEPs and MPs, but we need to because they are ignoring the big picture, which they are in charge of; we can handle the small problems, industry is really good at that and consumers tend to support it, but when going into such details in daily lives we can easily lose site of the big picture; politicians are failing miserably at their role within society, which is to maintain policy that achieves the bigger ideals the society wishes to strive for but none of us can do that individually.

To try and be as coherent about this as possible: my point of contention is that any consumer policy to reduce energy consumption is futile because we literally can't keep making policies for every new electricity using device that gets invented; energy consumption is rising and won't stop, not even if all devices were strictly regulated. Understanding that energy consumption is an inevitable part of our society stops me thinking that regulation of consumption is going to help and turns my attention to producing enough energy to provide for the projected increase in energy consumption. I would still buy LED bulbs over Incandescents, and would have done even without the ban, simply because they are better in every way I can think of. Energy ratings help give consumers not technologically minded information that is useful in a way they are familiar with and it tends to work, really well, due to our psychological behaviour.

I don't think regulation is categorically bad, but I do think that regulation of energy consumption for citizens is because we have the capabilities to produce energy abundance; we lack the will to do it and seeing people we vote for doing things like this directive which doesn't fit with the policy that would work extremely well is extremely annoying to me, which is why I've kept up to date on this thread.

At the moment we waste so much money on things that don't achieve the goals we aim for and no-one bothers to stop and ask why the hell we don't stop doing them. This goes back to the God complex our society suffers from; I don't mean God in the religious sense of the word, I mean it in the authoritative lets stop thinking because they are thinking for us sense. Of course this discussion shows we don't suffer from it at Hexus, otherwise there would be no discussion here, but it is a serious issue and I totally agree with (verbatim almost) the TED talk linked to.

Damn it Saracen, you are rubbing off on me... I guess it is a good thing though, just need to get quicker at making these longer posts because my typing is slow. Practice makes perfect

[Saracen]

I guess there's a couple of issues in there, Nox. First, the "thinking for us" point.

I regard myself as a relatively rational consumer. But .... who doesn't? I mean, however bright someone is, I'm sure they regard themselves as making the right decision when buying something, or they wouldn't buy it. Me? I'm reasonably bright, well-educated, I don't typically make spontaneous purchases, and I do careful research. Then, I buy the one I want.

My decisions are sometimes based on a rational process, but sometimes, I want what I want, and use rational arguments to justify to myself what I've already decided to do. So, at heart, I'm still a consumer quite capable of making irrational decisions based on wants, not needs, or best-buy.

Case in point, starting out looking for a decent second-hand car at about £15k, and having seen a nearly-new M3 on the dealer forecourt, I said (like a complete idiot) "Can I just give that a quick test drive"?

The salesman, with what I now regard as a wry and distinctly knowing smile, said "Sure. I'll get the keys". Well, that was that. 30 mins of test drive, and 20 minutes of order-filling later, new M3 on order. Queue three months of impatient waiting in anticipation. Rational? Like hell. Fun? oh, hell yeah.

Sometimes, if authorities want something to happen, like seatbelt wearing, they have to regulate, or despite it being rational, to the point of perhaps saving our lives, many people still won't do it. Hardly rational?

Second, the argument about not saving power because trends are up in other areas, with 'extra' and new devices. Well, true, but I see that as false argument. We-re going to get those extra devices come along anyway. So, if that happens without cutting usage elsewhere, where we can, power usage would be even higher still.

So the real choice is power taking account of extra devices, with savings where we can, or power taking account of extra devices, without the available savings.

What would be authoritarian, and obnoxious, is if government didn't act to save power usage where it's practical and relatively easy, but instead, outright banned all those new devices because of power usage. For any given level of generating capacity, you can only use it once. Every kWh saved by having effective but low-power vacuums, we can run a kWh of new devices without having to increase generating capacity.

I think it's a simple calculation. If low power cleaners are as effective, and we can do an hour's worth of cleaning for 1.6kWh, as opposed to 3kWh, then we've saved 1.4kWh of capacity every time every one of us does it. And, a kWh here, a kWh there, and pretty soon, you're talking about real savings.

I hate to go on about my freezer, but the current one, motor running, uses about 25w, compared to the 130w the old one used. That 105w saving, multiplied by millions of freezers, all adds up. And then, light bulbs, vacuums, etc.

[Noxvayl]

No argument that savings accrue Saracen, but they happen naturally when people upgrade so I am not worried about consumer usage... I didn't upgrade my computer because regulations encouraged me to do so, I did it because I wanted to; neither did regulation force AMD or Intel to improve their technology... I am far from arguing for a free market, I think that is nonsense and my listening to George Soros has helped improve my market knowledge, but I feel the attempt to control consumer consumption is a futile effort.

I've yet to see a first world country seriously consider using any 4th generation nuclear power plants, not even USA... India and China are in the process of designing and building them, Bill Gates is funding a specific design he feels is needed going forward and South Africa had already made plans to have one built (would of been first in the world) yet political decisions got in the way and screwed things up. My concern, which I feel should be a more pressing issue for the EU, is that we have a lack of energy policy that provides what we require to meet demand. Reducing demand is futile in my mind; we will suffer through blackouts until the supply meets our demands as South Africa has already done.

I guess my gripe comes down to how control is exercised and whether something better could be done, even if the "better" I talk about is planning 20-50 years ahead instead of the short term nonsense we see happening now. The case for reducing energy use is much weaker than making energy production more efficient. the issue, for me, is about sustainability (not the greenwashed kind watercooled talks about) and the major lack of long term planning that happens in our society that is required to achieve it. Energy abundance is a topic I like not only because it is interesting but because I feel the technology is available for us to achieve it and many others agree with me (more likely I agree with them). Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Peter Diamandis, Sergey Brin, Amory Lovins to name a few I have heard speak about it in the west, none of them politicians... I'm sure there are more working with India and China who are leading the technological development of ideas that have been around for a while now that can help us achieve the goal of energy abundance.

As you can tell I watch loads of documentaries, TED talks and similar channels on youtube. What does that have to do with energy usage or production? Well I feel we are wasting our time regulating appliances because we are technically capable of creating more electricity than we know what to do with; unfortunately we don't have the system in place to make that happen. I don't want to get rid of regulation or argue against it in all circumstances, but in the case of electricity I steadfastly believe, and feel that my home country is a case study in how not to tackle the energy crisis, that regulation of appliances is unnecessary and wasteful.

My post about South Africa shows the radical notion of giving people energy efficient things for free can't maintain reduced energy consumption. My knowledge of new technology being put into practice at the moment tells me we have an energy abundant future that desperately needs to be invested in otherwise it is only going to take longer to get here. At the moment I feel too much focus is on the short term; business can handle the short term but I don't trust it to think about the long term in any other means than the businesses own survival, which is not always consistent with what needs to be done.

To sum up with a metaphor: I feel that the EU is using blue tack to try and plug holes in a dam instead of building a channel that can accommodate the flow expected when it breaks. It will break, it already did for South Africa, and I feel we are sitting ducks with the way we are going about preparing for when it does.

I guess what I'd like is a system of innovation that when put together gives everything we have and then some, something like this:


There is good reason it is the only TED talk to exceed ~20 minutes... I think it is because it is the best case we have for a sustainable future. Moonshot idea, yes; feasible... I think so.

Regulation yes or no... meh. Give me the specifics because it is a thorny issue, but be sure to have a damn good reason for regulation and not some trumped up sustainability nonsense (clearly I feel the vacuum ban is not up to the task of a good reason for regulation). Since you mentioned another example I'll address it briefly: I feel that regulation with regards to seat belts was a good decision, there are complicated reasons for this but they stack up in favour of regulation because the alternative is not yet ready (self driving cars and car sharing are promising though).

[Saracen]

Well, I can't disagree with a lot of that, but in part (large part, IMHO) the short-termism in planning approaches is a consequence of "democratic" systems, where we, the people, get to re-select leaders every four or five years, meaning that those self-same leaders have every reason to worry about doing what will get them re-elected, and not to worry too much about something (like commissioning nuclear power stations) where they'll draw all the flack for the decision now, and somebody else gets the electoral benefit (if there is any) in 20 or 30 years time. Exceptions would be vanity projects, like HS2.

So I s'pose we could say we get the decision-making we deserve. But the alternative would be some form of semi-dictatorial long-term government that, once elected, we couldn't get rid off. The cure would be worse that the problem it solves.

As for savings accruing by upgrading, as and when you do, yup. Exactly. That's what these regs are about. When you upgrade, only lower power models will be available, but provided they do the job, what's the problem? But unless high-power models are banned, mamy people will upgrade to them whether it's logical or not. Hence .... regulation.

[Noxvayl]

I don't think long term governments are the cure. I have many ideas for what could constitute a better governmental system but they all require the option to change the government if necessary, which should be an option for us more frequently than we get at the moment. What I'd like to see is some comparisons that details how well a government has performed which seems to be lacking from any political discourse. Why don't we get news of how well a governments plan has worked out and what problems they managed to overcome? We seem to get the opposition pointing fingers which is often unhelpful because it is them saying nothing like politicians do best. My issue with governments is that their is no accountability at the moment, once in power they do whatever they fancy, sometimes it works but there seems to be no learning from mistakes.

"..., what's the problem?" Well, it is unnecessary and wasting our resources. There will be no problem for me choosing my next vacuum cleaner, and no problem me choosing the next device they tackle. The problem is that they don't learn from mistakes or bother to even check to see if what they have done is beneficial. They just do whatever they think is best and then leave it as if it couldn't of been improved upon or learnt from. What this directive achieves is the same as a fart in the wind, no way to know if it works or not and all sorts of ways of claiming that this was the cause of other things which can't be proven.

As mentioned many times in the thread, there are better ways to encourage people to make better purchasing decisions; reducing their choice and forcing companies to change through regulation is not the best one. Efficiency standards for vacuums could be used that help relate system power to the usefulness of the vacuum for one, giving mamy people more information is actually helpful and doesn't cause them to resent the decision you made. Another way to help make household as a whole reduce their energy consumption is purely psychological, tell them how they compare to their neighbours using stats. Again no regulation needed and there is evidence to suggest these schemes work where as I don't know of any evidence to suggest regulation will work considering there is already evidence of people buying more efficient household items already.

Got to go to play some golf, will find the evidence later. There are better ways to address this issue without regulation, even if focusing only on this isolated issue. With better ways to do things available it is silly to accept, and not complain about, regulation when it is likely to only cause more problems due to the blunt nature of the instrument.

[kalniel]

I don't think long term governments are the cure. I have many ideas for what could constitute a better governmental system but they all require the option to change the government if necessary, which should be an option for us more frequently than we get at the moment. What I'd like to see is some comparisons that details how well a government has performed which seems to be lacking from any political discourse. Why don't we get news of how well a governments plan has worked out and what problems they managed to overcome? We seem to get the opposition pointing fingers which is often unhelpful because it is them saying nothing like politicians do best. My issue with governments is that their is no accountability at the moment, once in power they do whatever they fancy, sometimes it works but there seems to be no learning from mistakes.

That's kind of the polar opposite of what Saracen is saying And I kind of agree with him - if only they did concentrate on long term what's best for the country, but because it's easy for us to change them they are focusing an awful lot on just being accountable to the public with an eye on the next election.

Of course the answer is that the electorate ought to wise up and vote people in based on long term plans as well (and ability to work with plans set in place by an opposition government). But sadly even intelligent people fail the prisoner's dilemna.

[Noxvayl]

He did specifically mention long term governments... difficult to think he means something other than that when those are the exact words mentioned. The alternative doesn't have to be a dichotomy of what we have, which was what I wanted to convey, but seem to have failed doing.

I agree that voters fail, and can't be left out of the problem we are in. I disagree that the prisoners dilemma is an accurate account of how we behave because we tend to be more generous than expected when put to the test: http://www.ia.ucsb.edu/pa/display.aspx?pkey=2538. We are slowly realising that generosity is a natural aspect of us, we need to start working towards encouraging it rather than encouraging the darker, competitive, side of our nature.

When analysing our behaviour outside of isloated events we are starting to find that compassion trumps the prevailing theory of chaos being the driving force behind how crowds act: http://aeon.co/magazine/psychology/c...r-at-our-best/. It may seem tangential but as a group we tend to pull in our own directions if there is nothing to unify us, but when the chips are down and we all face the same danger we put aside petty differences naturally; we need to somehow tap into this innate ability to cooperate and work together for the better of everyone to help improve the system we are in.

I have more but I'll stop there. Essentially I don't think it is a futile effort to fix the system we are in and I think it starts with us getting accurate commentary on how governments perform so we have the necessary information to decide whether or not the people we have voted in are doing the job we need. We need to get away from the us vs them mentality, unfortunately the way politics is going is making the divide bigger and more troublesome as far as I can tell.

When I talk about accountability I don't mean being voted out, I mean being held accountable for their decisions when they get it wrong. I don't know of many instances where politicians admit they are wrong and hence the negative feedback required to help correct course is lost somewhere. Perhaps I miss it because the way they talk beats about bushes on different planets to what they are actually talking about it is so difficult to unpack, but I feel mistakes need to be addressed and learnt from and the current system doesn't seem to be allowing that learning and improvement to take place.

We need to stop seeing people as infallible, understand that we all make mistakes no matter what we do, and begin to make decisions based on who shows willingness to try things out and correct for mistakes made in trying to achieve a goal. We didn't hit the moon by succeed all the way, the Apollo missions failed their way to the moon correcting their course the entire way. We need to stop fearing, and voting against, failure and start using it to help us do things better. The first message that gets across when studying Engineering is the message of "you are going to fail, deal with it." We currently ignore it and I find it hard to accept.

http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_harford

[Saracen]

He did specifically mention long term governments... difficult to think he means something other than that when those are the exact words mentioned. The alternative doesn't have to be a dichotomy of what we have, which was what I wanted to convey, but seem to have failed doing.

....

I think what kalniel meant was by by saying "I don't think long-term governments are the cure" it sorta implied I'd suggested it was, and while that might cure short-termism in politicians, that cure would be worse that the problem of short-termism.

[Saracen]

Oh, and this is what I love about HEXUS .... from vacuum cleaners to political systems in one, easy thread. What next, relative merits of Edmund Burke, JS Mill and Bentham?

[Noxvayl]

I think what kalniel meant was by by saying "I don't think long-term governments are the cure" it sorta implied I'd suggested it was, and while that might cure short-termism in politicians, that cure would be worse that the problem of short-termism.

And I agree with that... I probably edited out the part where I said that because I swear I wrote it.

[DanceswithUnix]

I take the point you're making, Dances. It would be a mistake to argue lower motor power must be more efficient, but that's not my contention. My contention is that, to do a good job of cleaning 1600w is enough, and that excess over that is, first, unnecessary, and second, must be inefficient use of resources if other machines of 1600w or less manage the same job with less motor power.

Please stop saying 1600W. That is a stop gap transitional limit, the actual limit is 900W.

I don't think I am explaining myself well. Let's try another tack...

Let's say this legislation had been bought into force 30 years ago. Politicians pushed manufacturers into producing the best design they possibly could, and nailed down power requirements to 900W. All those designs would be based on cleaners with a bag. Would the bagless cleaner have still been invented? The DC01 was well over 900W, my DC04 is I think slightly lower power but still well over. Of course *now* the technology is refined to the point that Dyson says 700W is plenty. But could he have managed it from day one? I suspect not, the more hurdles there are to jump the more chance a new design has of tripping and not getting to market. So legislation 30 years ago could unwittingly kill off a useful technology before it even started because it couldn't predict the future. We have no idea what the next jump in technology would be, so we can't legislate for it. What we can do is not put pointless barriers in the way.

Here is my prediction: This legislation will make cleaners more expensive, or alternatively cheap cleaners worse. Dyson uprights are 700W already, but for nearly £400. That price will come down, but that will take time, and in the mean time there will be cheap cleaners which will be very badly made despite legislation to prevent that because people want devices under £100 so stuff will be cut out to get there. But if you are looking at £400 for a cleaner anyway, then robotic ones start looking interesting.

So I think this will lead to a surge in robotic cleaners. They use batteries with all the inefficiency involved in charge/discharge cycles. We have superb vision and an idea of which rooms to clean, whereas they will patrol unused bits of floor using power for no benefit. But they won't use more than 900W during charging, so that is fine. Overall power use will increase.

Remember the utopia of LCD TVs predicted years ago? They are far more efficient than CRT, but only per square cm. When people switched away from CRT, they went from a 22" screen to a 42" screen, so overall power use went up. Habits and uses change, not always in predictable ways.

Mind you, I always fancied a robotic cleaner

[Noxvayl]

Mind you, I always fancied a robotic cleaner

Oh yes, not having to do it yourself is preferable

I have thought of designs for a house with higher pressure inside to reduce dust getting in. Prefer stopping it from getting in than constantly taking it out. I suspect that would require much more power though...

[Saracen]

Please stop saying 1600W. That is a stop gap transitional limit, the actual limit is 900W.

....

The limit now is 1600w, which is what I'm talking about, not what it will be 3 years from now.

Speculation on what Dyson would or would not have invented is just that - speculation. We can never know.

And manufacturers have three full years to develop products to meet that 900w limit.

As the EU point out, average power consumption has gone up ftom under 1300w to dome 1800w over recent years, in no small part due to high-power low efficiency cheap models from China, with consumers seduced into assuming that more power = better cleaning, and it does not follow that that is true.

What matters is effectiveness at cleaning, how effective the machine is at not redistributing dust back into the air (I.e. design, filtering, etc) and, to a lesser extent, noise.

The trend over recent years demonstrates that the market itself will not srlf-regulate to combat low-efficiency high-power models, but if high power modrls are simply banned, those vompanies using the marketing con of simply offering ever higher motor power will have no option but to up their game, or get out of the market. And then up it again in three years.

[DanceswithUnix]

The limit now is 1600w, which is what I'm talking about, not what it will be 3 years from now.

Speculation on what Dyson would or would not have invented is just that - speculation. We can never know.

And manufacturers have three full years to develop products to meet that 900w limit.

As the EU point out, average power consumption has gone up ftom under 1300w to dome 1800w over recent years, in no small part due to high-power low efficiency cheap models from China, with consumers seduced into assuming that more power = better cleaning, and it does not follow that that is true.

What matters is effectiveness at cleaning, how effective the machine is at not redistributing dust back into the air (I.e. design, filtering, etc) and, to a lesser extent, noise.

The trend over recent years demonstrates that the market itself will not srlf-regulate to combat low-efficiency high-power models, but if high power modrls are simply banned, those vompanies using the marketing con of simply offering ever higher motor power will have no option but to up their game, or get out of the market. And then up it again in three years.

The limit was set at 900W, it seems that enough companies begged for reprieve that a temporary limit was set at 1600W. The limit was set several years ago, so they have already had 3 years to develop a 900W model. If the limit was staying at 1600W then I really don't think I would have an issue.

As for "As the EU point out, average power consumption has gone up ftom under 1300w to dome 1800w over recent years": once again, power consumption is irrelevant, energy consumption is what matters, and I haven't seen figures for that.

You left something out of the what matters in a cleaner. Cost. I don't see how these regulations will lower costs, and I don't see why vacuum cleaners should be only for the rich, as poor people can have asthma too.

A quick look on Currys website, the cheapest <900W model is the Hoover Blaze at £160, some £100 more than the cheapest model and for all that money you only get a 1 year guarantee.

I will admit that on the surface a 2300W bagless cleaner seems bonkers and over the top, but as I have not yet tried vacuuming with 300AW of suction I won't dismiss it out of hand. Dyson claim that their 1400W model removes more dust from carpet than any other cleaner (and quote the testing standards used), but again you pay a *lot* of money for that efficiency, more than I think my parents would want to pay out of their pension.

[Top_gun]

Because they were told to by product marketing/accountants. Yes, that really happens. A cheaper product can gain more market share, or perhaps a competitor is undercutting them by 10% and gutting their sales. So you knock some cost out and do the best you can.

Please note that engineering is by nature all about compromise. There isn't any black and white here, so there isn't a "good Miele cleaner" suddenly becomes "bad Miele cleaner" unless you accidentally mess something up along the way. So perhaps they knock some cost out, on a usability scale of 1 to 10 perhaps they drop from an 8 to a 6, now they can keep their market share. The alternative could be to lose market share, that falls straight through to the bottom line and now you are in a financial mess. See HTC for a recent example of how good products that get excellent reviews doesn't lead to financial success.

TLDR summery: A dented reputation is better than shuttered doors and everyone out of a job.

Well it seems you're taking a generic argument and then applying it to Miele. Very simplistic if you ask me. First of all, Miele is a two-family owned business in Germany where they do not answer to shareholders or anybody for that matter to make short term decisions. They are not run by marketing or accountants since one of the owners has studied industrial engineering.

[DanceswithUnix]

Well it seems you're taking a generic argument and then applying it to Miele. Very simplistic if you ask me. First of all, Miele is a two-family owned business in Germany where they do not answer to shareholders or anybody for that matter to make short term decisions. They are not run by marketing or accountants since one of the owners has studied industrial engineering.

My only assumption is that as a successful company Miele employ competent product marketing people and accountants.

Have you ever spoken to someone who is good at product marketing? That isn't anything to do with sales, and saying what they do is very simplistic is one hell of a mistake.

I am an engineer. If it is something like a quality or performance issue then I fix it. If it is a feature/cost issue, I defer to those that predict and track the marketplace including all the competing products for a living because that is the skill they are hired for. If they tell me to strip features or cost, then that is what I do. I will no more tell them what the product should cost than they would tell me how to ramp up a brushless motor against a given load.

Having been in a variety of very cross discipline engineering roles including management, I had to Google "industrial engineer". Still not sure where I would use one.