Trump's plan to eliminate Energy Star could raise utility bills for American families, experts say

[nismo91]

Personally it's nice to have a product with energy-star but not a must.

I agree with everyone here, I'd pay more for idle consumption than early replacement. my biggest beef is with the obsession of inverter in pretty much everything. used to be, only the expensive fridge are inverter based. used to be, only the expensive washers are inverter based.

after years of using them, I've came to the conclusion that the first thing to break will be the motherboard itself. the manufacturer claims it's a power supply issue. where I live the grid must've not been "dirty". but it's not just one or two appliances and it's not just me. friends and family reported the same thing.

problem is, these inverter based appliances have many boards that costs a lot to both diagnose and replace. so once I got a 3yo fridge broken down, and the official tech says, you gotta replace this board. but then there's still a chance the other board is broken too. if you want to be 100% sure you gotta replace 3 parts and that's the same cost as buying a new one.

anyway about 12 years ago me and cousin each bought a fancy samsung washer with an LCD screen. mind you a literal color screen with language you can select. people would've bet the LCD will be the first thing to break. nope. both our machines had the motherboard replaced in just over 5 years. meanwhile the screen is still good for the first 10 years, before polarizer damage (sunburn) occurs.

so manufacturer can somehow make a motherboard that fails earlier than the screen itself. amazing.

 

[VectorVortec]

In my experience, energy star has become a warning label that means the appliance won't be able to do its job, because some bureaucrat (not appliance engineer) is making very poor decisions. For example, the washer doesn't use enough water to get your clothes clean, because we are running out of water. To compensate for the lack of water, the settings should be turned up one notch higher than needed. Or the window AC has 20% less cooling capacity, because that made sense to some bureaucrat, so you need to run it longer to get the same amount of cooling. But none of this means anything to the bureaucrats who push numbers to justify their jobs. We should let engineers design appliances. Then let the best appliance win.