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Domestic Appliances Guzzle Far More Energy Than Advertised, Says EU Survey (theguardian.com)
Chrisq writes: An EU study has found that many electronic devices and appliances use more energy in real-world conditions than in the standard EU tests. Often the real world figures are double those in the ratings. Sometimes this is achieved by having various optional features switched off during the test. For example, switching on modern TV features such as "ultra-high definition" and "high-dynamic range" in real-world test cycles boosted energy use in four out of seven televisions surveyed -- one by more than 100%. However some appliances appear to have "defeat devices" built in, with some Samsung TVs appearing to recognize the standard testing clip: "The Swedish Energy Agency's Testlab has come across televisions that clearly recognize the standard film (IEC) used for testing," says the letter, which the Guardian has seen. "These displays immediately lower their energy use by adjusting the brightness of the display when the standard film is being run. This is a way of avoiding the market surveillance authorities and should be addressed by the commission."
My boss slaps a folded-over InfoWorld magazine onto my desk, thick enough to kill a rat with in those days. He says with obvious glee, "How bout dem apples?" It is Steve Gibson's INFOWORLD column of March 8 and Gibson (with obvious glee) has caught a manufacturer of Hercules graphics cards red-handed. The standard WinBench program had conducted a series of tests --- and in one particular test of text display, in which the phrase "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog's back then sat on a tack" is continuously painted on the screen --- the card performed oddly spectacularly. It was that one score that when combined with the others, ranked the card above the competition. Suspicious, Gibson changed a single letter in the test phrase and the card's score dropped to a reasonable range. The card was apparently recognizing that a test was in progress and 'cheating' by failing to actually over-write this static text repeatedly.
I love the comment by the manufacturer when Gibson contacted them (read it!) but what intrigued the industry the most was that the cheat was not to be found in the Windows driver code, it had been embedded into the firmware of the accelerator chip. In the next Winbench version the test phrase jumped around the lazy screen's back during the test, rendering the cheat obsolete.
Has anyone done an energy study to estimate how much energy is consumed by EU "market surveillance authorities" and even the EU apparatus itself? Perhaps if we recognize the EU as a special case and stub the whole thing out with a rubber stamp, people will be able to watch HD television and toast four slices of bread at once and with former EU personnel in the workplace everyone will be able to work one less day a week with same pay.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
See: Goodhart's Law, "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure".
In this case it was obvious a long time before the VW thing that the power consumption figures were understated, although the specific usage of defeat devices of the kinds being described is new. Anyone who has deployed some of those power monitors that sit between an appliance and the socket to see how much power a given device is drawing over time will be well aware that peak, average and idle power draws for a given device are typically above those stated, and often by a considerable margin. The only real question here is why it took so long for those that were doing the regulatory tests to realise that something was amiss and dig a little deeper - more average Joes complaining after deploying smart meters in efforts to go green, perhaps?
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
This shouldn't be a problem because we should be living in an age of abundant energy, thanks to nuclear power. This is only an issue because the EU is pushing solar and wind, which simply doesn't meet society's needs in terms of cost, consistency or overall output.
Due to the failure of solar and wind, the EU has to push for lower power consumption, which is leaving us stuck with worthless products. They've limited the maximum power consumption of vacuum cleaners, which means it now takes longer to vacuum your room. They've limited the maximum power consumption of televisions, which essentially killed plasma leaving you with a choice of crappy LCD or a product from LG (God no!).
Like most of the EU, their power policy is completely broken because it's based on ideology rather than practicality. They'd rather have something completely broken that matches their ideology than something that works (like nuclear) but they despise for some irrational reason.
Increasing the cost of bringing an appliance to market might not be too bad a thing. Have you tried to read reviews for white goods recently? The manufacturers churn models so quickly that by the time one has been reviewed it's no longer being produced and so you have to just hope that the next model has similar characteristics. Giving manufacturers an incentive to keep them on the market for a bit longer would be beneficial to consumers.
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They do, it has been long known by anyone over 30, oh millennial. They also continue to use power if they are turned off but plugged in, physically unplugging unused appliances will noticably reduce an electricity bill. It's one reason rechargeables are not a panacea, one must still charge them. Again, this is common knowledge to anyone born before 1978. I think we were actually in better shape in terms of understanding these things 30 years ago, the seeming magic of 21st century tech makes people think it actually IS magic. Nope. It's the same as its ever been, it's just more well-hidden from the user now. Kvetch and pontificate all you like, but it's true.
Your test will perform X, so we'll do good at X. And on nothing else.
So you just need to make your test comprehensive. If the car emissions test had involved fitting measurement devices to real consumer's cars at random, the cheating would have failed.
The EU vacuum cleaner tests are a good example. They test on multiple surfaces with a very good approximation of house dust, so the cleaning ability, energy consumption and emissions are all measured accurately. The main criticism is that they only measure with empty dust bags/bins, but the next version of the test is going to fix that.
You cannot build cheap TVs that have all sorts of features, great resolution, high contrast, fast switching and so on, and don't consume much power.
History demonstrates that to be untrue. TVs have been steadily getting more and more efficient over the years. CRTs became LCDs, CCFL backlights became LED, the image processing chip lithography got smaller and more power efficient, even as the amount of work increased. Standby power decreased by orders of magnitude too, and there were even savings from including set top box functionality into smart TVs. Most of them use ARM processors, which have got much more efficient mainly thanks to phones and tablets.
All the while the image quality has been getting better too. Contrast improved a lot when the change from CCFL to LED was made, for example.
The purpose of these regulations is to make sure manufacturers don't do what happened with vacuum cleaners. Bigger, more powerful motors because consumers equate big motors with better cleaning. In fact most of them just produced more heat, while cleaning much worse than Japanese models that used 1/4th the power, because in Japan consumers were prioritizing good cleaning and low power consumption. So now the EU puts a star rating on vacuum cleaners to show how well they clean, while limiting the motor size so that the manufacturers actually have to innovate instead of just applying more and more suction until it rips your carpet up.
This is why we have brush bars now. Available for decades in Japan, but not in the EU because consumers only cared about MOAR WATTS.
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