 | Oil breaks $100, hits new all-time high | TOD: Australia/New Zealand | The Bullroarer - Friday 22 February 2008 |  |
6 comments on The Bullroarer - Wednesday 20 February 2008
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Concerning energy ratings, I've never found them particularly useful. After all, they're comparing exactly equivalent machines only.
So my 420lt fridge will only be compared with other 420lt fridges, not 330lt or 510lt fridges. Mine might be just the best of a bad lot. And if the design is the only one in its class - say, a 52.5cm plasma screen - it'll get a 5-star rating.
It'd be much more useful to give a plain old wattage, and kWh/day rating. Something like,
"This product is 500W, and will use 2kWh if used for 4 hours a day."
Or maybe we could just dispense with the whole silliness, and put, "Mate, it's a fucking plasma telly, it uses so much power Chopper Read is turning in his blowtorch for it."
This criticism applies even more so to ground source heat pumps. They apparently use the efficiency formula absolute delta T over T max and claim wonders. Better just to look at the average wattage.
I want to do a brew up of tomato salsa as per Vasili's Garden but the ripening is out of sync. I may make part batches and keep them in a currently switched off chest freezer (rated three and a half stars). They reckon this is bad practice in energy terms not sure why.
At least the solar people are not making over the top claims. 3GW out of Australia's installed 50 GW of power generation sounds doable, though a lot more expensive than un-carbon-taxed coal.