[Greenbuilding] [BULK] Re: [BULK] Question about appliances

[Lawrence Lile]

-- The difference in energy use of Energy Star appliances is relatively
small on some specific appliances because the E* program forced the industry
to do better.  It was not that long ago that an E* fridge was 30% more
efficient than the federal minimum standard.  It turned out that it was not
that big of a leap for manufacturers to come up with models that could
perform at this level consistently so EPA had to revise their standard. So
now E* fridges are only 15% better than federal minimums -- because they
succeeded in raising the baseline.  So an Energy Star fridge bought today
performs 15% better than a standard new fridge and 40% better than one
purchased in 2001.  A similar thing happened with room air conditioners.


Aha!  So that's why I'm not seeing such a huge leap.  When I was looking in to this, I was looking mostly at one manufacturer, Maytag, and within the last year. In their case I didn't find much difference at all in Energy Star vs normal washers.  THe savings were on the order of $5 a year, which I decided was "in the noise" i.e. to low to be worth considering. Maybe their regular washers are really pretty good!
 
--Lawrence