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New EU Rules Will Limit Vacuum Cleaners To 1600W
AmiMoJo writes "New EU rules are limiting vacuum cleaner motors to 1600W from 2014/09/01. The EU summary of the new rules explains that consumers currently equate watts with cleaning power, which is not the case. Manufacturers will be required to put ratings on packaging, including energy efficiency, cleaning efficiency on hard and carpeted floors, and dust emissions from the exhaust. In the EU vacuum cleaners use more energy than the whole of Denmark, and produce more emissions than dishwashers and washing machines."
In the EU, 240V outlets are the standard not anything special. Generally appliances (at least in the UK) have up to a 13A fuse in them, and you may have a higher capacity hard wired circuit for the stove (the dryer is almost always just plugged into a standard wall outlet).
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In the US our consumer-grade vacuum cleaners are already effectively capped around the same wattage. The standard household electrical outlet is rated to provide 15 amps and does so somewhere between 100 and 125 volts. That's 1500-1875 watts as the maximum any single device clet an expect to pull without requiring a special outlet. Nothing in reality expects the higher end of the spectrum because it's by no means guaranteed.
Somehow we get along just fine, residential or commercial, with pretty much the same as what this limit allows. /me awaits some Brit who's come to explain how their 240v 13A outlets allow them to suck the carpet right off the floor with their cleaners.
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In the EU 230V outlets are standard (IEC 60038). 240V is UK (as always, they absolutely have to be different from everyone else) and Cyprus (as a former British colony).
Actually, most of the former EU countries used to have the 220V standard, but it was raised to 230V so it would be more compatible to UK.
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The UK has not changed it's 13 Amp plugs but the domestic circuits can be up to 40 Amp, on the continent they are typically 16Amp, meaning you can pull up to 3600 Watts.
There are manufacturers selling 2000-2200 W. vacuum cleaners.
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My Roomba is using about 30 Watts for its vacuum and that is more than enough.
It was 240V +/- 6%. They did actually use those tolerances. Quite a lot of people had a supply lower than 230V or above 250V. Now it's 230V+10%/-2% which isn't a perfect overlap but only a few areas were outside of that range so it wasn't too much to fix.
My 2kW Miele is the quietest vacuum I've ever had, even at full power (which you wouldn't normally use). It about rivals my GPUs with the fans ramped up.
It's actually 230V everywhere in Europe. It used to be 220 with 240 in the UK, so the EU set standards that basically set it to 230 but with enough slop either way that both 220 & 240 were declared within standard. Then they started to slowly harmonise everyone up/down towards 230.
Where do you think UK electricity comes from? They import it from France, and don't bother converting it.