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A comment on I won't connect my dishwasher to your stupid cloud. Parent comment

Re:I won't connect my dishwasher to your stupid cloud by madaxe_again on Tuesday March 25, 2025 @04:24AM (#43469059)
The weird thing about eco modes is that they often don’t use less water or power. I live off grid, and just as a function of my setup I know exactly what consumes what. My Bosch dishwasher, on a normal 70C dish cycle, uses about 4.5L of water and 1.6kWh. On eco mode, it uses 8L of water, and 1.8kWh. Takes twice as long though.

Similar with my AEG washer - a 40 degree cotton wash uses marginally more water than a 40 degree eco wash, but less power - and is 25% quicker.

Honestly, it’s not clear what the economy is supposed to be. Intensity of demand? Except on each appliance the heater runs at the same rated wattage when it’s heating - just different patterns of usage on eco mode, more off and on.

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Re:I won't connect my dishwasher to your stupid cloud by amiga386 on Tuesday March 25, 2025 @08:16AM (#43470313)
That's a really weird thing. In the EU, not only is Eco mode mandatory, and must be the default mode, and you can't label any other mode "default" or "normal" to sway the consumer to use that instead... but it's also how the appliance's energy rating is calculated, and it's displayed prominently on every device sold. It would be madness for a company not to put their most efficient settings on Eco mode.

https://energy-efficient-products.ec.europa.eu/product-list/...

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv:...

You can also see there that they're tracking the effects of their regulations and measuring how much less electricity and water is used. The regulations also set minimum standards for cleaning, drying and energy usage so you can't sell products that look efficient but require everything washed twice, nor can you even include a resource hog mod.

And it mandates the availability of spare parts for a certain number of years, and access to repair information, so you don't just junk the whole object.

I can only imagine "Eco" mode being worse than other modes in some place where there's not good market regulation.

I just checked my own dishwasher, and its Eco mode uses 9L of water and 0.83kWh per cycle. Other washing modes use 9-17L water and 0.9-1.5kWh per cycle... so it does conform to the regulations.

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Re:I won't connect my dishwasher to your stupid cloud by rightbyte on Tuesday March 25, 2025 @05:13AM (#43469313)
Is 70c normal? Wont that mess up plastic items?
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Re:I won't connect my dishwasher to your stupid cloud by account42 on Tuesday March 25, 2025 @08:02AM (#43470202)
It's fine for anything rated to be "dishwasher safe" IME.
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Re:I won't connect my dishwasher to your stupid cloud by randallsquared on Tuesday March 25, 2025 @08:36AM (#43470459)
Yes, it's normal (should be above 65C, anyway). Yes, even "dishwasher-safe" plastic items often warp or discolor in a normal hot dishwashing cycle. I wouldn't put anything plastic or fragile in the dishwasher, but virtually everything in the kitchen is ceramic, glass, or stainless steel, so.
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Re:I won't connect my dishwasher to your stupid cloud by gambiting on Tuesday March 25, 2025 @05:50AM (#43469518)
Just as an anecdote - that's not my experience, and I have a smart power plug to measure it too. On my Bosch Series 6 dishwasher, Eco Mode comes consistently in at 1.2kWh per cycle, while the intensive 70C cycle is around 1.6kWh. I have no way of measuring water usage though, but in terms of energy the ECO mode is really the most efficient.
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