Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Going green. On The Clare Byrne Show. With Repack. Repack members. Repackaging the future and valuing resources. Find out more on repack.ie.
Now, today we are going to focus on energy labelling. So from your home and its BER rating to the energy rating on your washing machine, what do all of those labels mean? Saif O'Neill, climate researcher and lecturer, joins me. Hello, Saif. Thank you very much for coming in. This is a bit of a minefield, isn't it?
Chapter 2: What is the main focus of the episode on energy labelling?
The whole labelling right through everything I mentioned there, BER on the house, right through to you're getting a new appliance and you want it to be efficient and and climate friendly. So we need to know exactly what the labels mean.
Yeah, thanks so much for inviting me in. I love talking about energy and these ratings. They're really important in telling us in advance, before we make a purchase... what the likely cost of running an appliance is going to be.
So the first thing to say is that the ratings A to G on most appliances that you will see in hardware and kind of appliance stores are completely different from the BRRRR rating. So the BRRRR rating on your house refers to the energy performance of the fabric of the house, essentially.
So it doesn't tell you anything about what your electricity bills are likely to be, because you could plug everything in and charge everything up all the time and end up with high bills, even if you're in an A-rated dwelling. So they're very different. So the A on the house doesn't mean the same thing as A on the washing machine. So the energy labels that apply to appliances vary.
You might remember a few years ago, you saw a lot of A plus and then A plus plus and A plus plus plus.
Very confusing.
They were very confusing for people. So what the EU did was these labels are all set by the EU. So they're standardised across the EU and they apply to each individual product, not a brand.
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Chapter 3: What does the BER rating on homes signify?
So individual brands of washing machine manufacturers, they might have many different types of washing machine and they perform to different standards. So they rescaled the energy labels then now. So everything is A, B, C, D, E, F or G. You don't have any more of the A plus thing. So A is obviously the best and the most efficient and it will cost less to run.
Yeah, but that's what I wanted to ask you. Does that mean if I need a new washing machine and I buy an A rated one, that it is going to be cheaper to run than the C or the D?
It should absolutely mean that. That's what the whole point of the energy labelling is. It's to give you as a consumer some control over your energy costs. Because once you buy the appliance, you're locked into its lifetime. Unless you decide to discard it, which would be a bit of a waste of money, you're going to continue to use it until it doesn't work anymore.
Now, the more expensive appliances generally have a longer life. They're tested and the aim of these high brand or highly rated appliances would be to have them last for up to 20 years in some cases.
So sometimes it is worth paying the extra, not because of the energy savings so much, but because of what we call the total cost of ownership, that it's going to last longer, you'll have less maintenance and you'll get longer life from the machine because they are big
investments and you know yourself how awkward it is to actually move them around as well they're very big and awkward yeah and you want it to last a long time but if you have a washing machine now and you're using it right now and it's 15 years old are you really wasting a lot of money on the energy it's going to take to run that machine
Well, that's where you can actually do a bit of homework and research yourself. You can actually look at the appliance and if you can't find any evidence of what the rating is or was, because it could be an older machine, you can look it up. The manufacturers have information online relating to all their appliances and their energy rating.
And you can even use, I would recommend people use, you know, some of these AI sort of applications software things to actually calculate what the running costs are.
But the other thing is, I think, in order to make the most use of these energy labels and understanding how energy works, we need to add up all the things that we're spending, we're using electricity for at a household level and then translate that into what appears on our actual bill and understand how to read the bill, because otherwise you're
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Chapter 4: How do appliance energy ratings differ from home energy ratings?
I can't understand any of the information on it. So you really, in order to read the data, in order to access the data, you actually have to have an account with ESB Network. So all the information, no matter who your supplier is, goes to this one portal in ESB Networks.
So if you're not already a customer of Electric Ireland or whatever, you need to actually set up a separate account with them and you need to have your NPRN, which is the... The meter number, essentially, and that's on your bill. It's on the top right of your bill. So once you have that data and you put it in, set up an account, you can read the smart meter data.
And it's a lot of interesting information there about your consumption and what times of the day you're using energy more.
But it's not going to tell you what appliance is using. No, it's giving you the time when your energy use is high and low and so on.
Yes. Exactly. But that's more information than you would get if you didn't have a smart meter. And the other thing about having a smart meter is that you can avail of different tariffs. So if you don't have a smart meter, you have a flat rate essentially that applies at all times of the day and it tends to be higher.
And you may or may not have a night meter, in which case, you know, if you don't have one, you're not able to get the benefit of a lower rate at night time. So a smart meter allows you to benefit from rates that can vary quite dramatically depending on the time of day.
But if you have an electric car and if you're organised enough to have your washing machine on late or at night and your dryer, if you use one, your dishwasher, the night rate can give you huge savings, can't it?
Yes, it's usually about half the cost. And that makes a big difference, say, if you compare the cost of charging an EV with the cost of filling a similar model with diesel, especially at the moment. So even though electricity is expensive in Ireland, there's no question about that. It's still a much cheaper way of actually getting your car charged.
powered up essentially to take you from A to B. So there's no question about that. The other thing to say is that you need a smart meter to receive export payments if you have a solar panel. So you can get solar panels without a smart meter, but you can't receive the export payments, which is a bit of a bummer.
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Chapter 5: What changes have been made to EU energy labels?
That would be the old rating. But I mean, I'm a big fan of that brand myself. I've had a lot of those machines and they tend to perform very well for a long time. So, you know, basically it's about, if I was buying a secondhand machine in that kind of situation, I would look up the manufacturer's information and I would find out exactly what it costs to run in terms of kilowatt hours.
And you multiply that by the unit rate of electricity used Now, depending on what time of day you're going to use it at and you can work out quite straightforwardly what the running cost is. But as I said before, the biggest thing with the difference between an A and B washing machine is if you go for a more premium brand and sometimes they can be quite a bit more expensive.
It's the lifetime cost of that machine where you get the saving rather than the saving per individual load or per year.
Yeah, you could get a cheap machine that is a low energy user, but it'll last you four or five years.
Exactly.
And that's a problem.
And they're expensive. You're still looking at a few hundred euros. And the same is true for, there's low heat pump dryers because a perception is still amongst Irish people that a dryer is an extremely expensive use of electricity.
They're very cheap to run, the heat pump ones. They are. But they take a long time to dry your clothes. So if you're in a hurry, you might...
because they don't use as much heat. So anything in terms of your appliances that generates heat or has to move things or that requires a fan is going to use electricity. So that's why an air fryer is more efficient than a convection oven for small amounts.
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