New dishwashers take a long time because they can be more energy and water efficient if they leave more time for detergents to degrade grease and the other stuff on dishes. If you don't have the time to wait for a slow cycle you use a fast one with the usual tradeoff of time vs money.

> New dishwashers take a long time because they can be more energy and water efficient if they leave more time for detergents to degrade grease and the other stuff on dishes.

Yes, I know the reason, but now say it in a way that doesn't make the assumption that the rule is rational: EnergyStar continued to increase the efficiency requirements to the point where the only option manufacturers had was to make the default cycles much longer in order to get the same performance [1]. Every dishwasher therefore has a button that reverts to the pre-regulation mode, but it's usually named in doublespeak.

Somehow I doubt that dishwashers are driving the power consumption curve in the US in 2025. But this is what bureaucracies do, unless given a self-destruct date.

[1] for example, what's preventing EnergyStar from requiring that the water be cold? That would use way less energy!

it seems that maybe there’s a misunderstanding on what energystar is and how modern dishwashers work, which would you like explained first?

I’m completely missing your point. Your original comment has been flagged so I don’t see it, so I’m missing context.

I, and I would guess most consumers, are perfectly fine with the trade off of taking longer at lower cost (energy and water). I run mine overnight so it doesn’t matter. This is what I want as the default.

On the few occasions I need it to run faster and am fine with the trade off of higher cost, I press a button and it’s there.

What’s the problem?

It was flagged? Ridiculous. Abuse of the flagging system.

My argument, in a nutshell, is that we don't need a government agency mandating energy consumption limits for home appliances, and moreover, getting rid of government agencies that do X rarely means that we get less X.

The fact that you would be perfectly happy choosing a more annoying appliance for lower overall energy consumption is merely validation of my belief that, when it comes to this kind of thing, the market is better than a government bureaucracy.

> getting rid of government agencies that do X rarely means that we get less X.

Do you have any examples where that has been the case?

>The fact that you would be perfectly happy choosing a more annoying appliance for lower overall energy consumption is merely validation of my belief that

I have re-read my own comment multiple times and I am not seeing where I said that I would be an annoying appliance at all. In fact, I say the exact opposite that the appliance is doing exactly what I would want it to do for trade offs. Are you replying to the wrong comment?

> Do you have any examples where that has been the case?

I'm not exactly sure what you're asking, but the department of education comes to mind as a bureaucracy that has no net influence on the amount of education occurring.

(not totally fair, since the department of education is little more than an inefficient way of allocating block grants, but it's a particularly amusing example.)

It's not either or. The market being comptutational device needs information inputs to run, which government mandates are very helpful for.

This coming from the administration that uses tariffs to force production to be happening in one place over another doesn't seem to be motivated by free market absolutist position either.

Where do you see energy star mandating anything besides disclosure?

If you want to be certified, sure, but that's voluntary.

The only thing energy star is going is mandating companies inform their customer so the customer can decide and compare products. The free market is making you dishwashers use less energy, not energy star

> If you want to be certified, sure, but that's voluntary.

Sure, it's "voluntary" in the sense that if you don't do it, you won't be picked up by any major distributors. How many non-Energy-Star appliances do you see at Home Depot and Wal Mart?

(Edit: also, federal procurement requires certification. So you know...if you don't ever want to sell to the government, go ahead and ignore the certification.)

That sounds like the market at work? Government doesn’t control what private companies stock, so it seems they’ve gotten some signal that the majority of their customers prefer energy-efficient products. If you’re a non-mainstream consumer, things are always going to be harder for you.

When you insert a giant labeling bureaucracy in the middle of it, then point to consumers doing what they would have done anyway, then no, it’s not “the market at work”.

It’s a bit like making a Department of Deliciousness, and “voluntarily” labeling every cookie sold as part of the SweetStar program. My goodness…people like certified delicious products! Let’s hire more people…

> How many non-Energy-Star appliances do you see at Home Depot and Wal Mart?

I just did a search for dishwashers on Home Depot's site.

166 dishwashers are Energy Star certified out of 310.

Of standard-size only dishwashers, 136 out of 241 carry the Energy Star certification.

That's a not insignificant portion of the dishwasher market that has not done this thing that you put in scare-quotes as "voluntary" and are still carried at the number two reseller of major appliances in the US. Walmart is not a significant reseller of dishwashers.

At Lowes (the number one reseller), 396 out of 539 built-in dishwashers carried the Energy Star certification.

> Sure, it's "voluntary" in the sense that if you don't do it, you won't be picked up by any major distributors.

But now you’re describing market forces.

> How many non-Energy-Star appliances do you see at Home Depot and Wal Mart

I shop at lowes, not home depot or walmart, but lots.

Look at all the fridges lowes sells: https://www.lowes.com/pl/refrigerators/4294857973?goToProdLi...

There's 994 total, 554 are energy star certified. Just over half.

To take it even further, if I shop only what's in stock at my local store, there are 17 options. 11 Energy Star certified.

There's no absence of options if you don't care about energy star certifications.

Good news. EnergyStar isn't a mandate.

So dishwashers can get the same performance for less water and energy usage, and you easily can push a button to trade energy and water efficiency for speed, and your problem is what?

The idea that manufacturers wouldn’t just make energy and water hogging dishwashers now is naive at best. Making something run well using less resources costs more money up front, even though the total cost of ownership is lower. If you don’t have to make them efficient and you don’t have to display how much energy or water they use and how much that would cost, then you can massively undercut anyone that does those things, even though the consumer would end up paying more over time.

> Somehow I doubt that dishwashers are driving the power consumption curve in the US in 2025.

But of course it isn’t just dishwashers, it is practically every home appliance. If every house was using 10% more energy, that adds up to a lot. It doesn’t mean that data centers aren’t also a problem, but abandoning a program that saves energy doesn’t fix either problem.

>for example, what's preventing EnergyStar from requiring that the water be cold? That would use way less energy!

Is that something you are worried about or was discussed? Or is that just a ridiculous made-up scenario trying to paint a reasonable regulation for nonsense?

Re: Cold water requirement. It's not as ridiculous as it may seem. --In the 70's, we were told (in the US) to not flush the toilet after peeing. --We also were told that driving at 55mph was the optimum, most fuel efficient speed for all vehicles under all circumstances. --In the 2000's, my kids were urged to watchdog our family so that we didn't leave the tap on for more than 10 seconds while brushing our teeth. --In the 2010's, light bulbs that emit warm tones of light were apparently outlawed to save energy. I could see cold water becoming a thing.

Incandescent bulbs have a color temp of about 2700K and you can currently purchase LEDs at that same temp.

They are talking about the CFL bulbs (compact florescent), which have that cool colored industrial look lighting. Like all their examples, it is a grain of truth spun into ridiculousness. Most of the development of CFLs was in the 1970s because of the energy crisis. In the 1990s, they were promoted for use by the government and power companies, with rebates and other subsidies. The government didn’t start banning incandescents until 2012, after warm light LEDs had been around for a long time.

But 2700K CFLs have existed for several decades as well, even in the 90s.

> The idea that manufacturers wouldn’t just make energy and water hogging dishwashers now is naive at best. Making something run well using less resources costs more money up front, even though the total cost of ownership is lower.

Really? You sound like someone who would pay for such a thing. I bet there are more of you!

> If you don’t have to make them efficient and you don’t have to display how much energy or water they use and how much that would cost, then you can massively undercut anyone that does those things, even though the consumer would end up paying more over time.

Nobody said anything about getting rid of the stickers. We can still require stickers, just like we require food has labels on it. We don't need a sprawling certification system encompassing everything from telephones (sigh) to roofing materials and the government bureaucracy that defines it.

I just do not agree with the libertarian mindset. It is a “tragedy of the commons” situation for me. We live in a complex society and share/use the same resources and infrastructure, and the net effect of individual use can be huge. Power grid capacity is a perfect example, where each individual using a bit more energy doesn’t cost them much directly and there is little market pressure one way or the other. The overall effect requires higher infrastructure spending, that everyone pays regardless of if you use a bit more or less energy. Never mind how much pollution comes from energy production, and we all breath the same air. “The market” is absolutely terrible at solving for indirect effects like that.

I also don’t have the time, energy, and knowledge to be an expert on every single thing I buy or use. I know nothing about roofing materials, so having some bare minimum standards and left and right limits balancing societal harm/good and individual choice is perfectly reasonable to me.

Natural resources and infrastructure are a shared resource “owned” by everyone, collectively known as the nation. Protecting that value is what the government should be doing.

I think you'll find this is a result of the phosphate ban in the 90s. Detergent got less effective, so cycle times got longer to compensate. Same problem with clothes washers. A spoonfull of trisodium phosphate goes a long way, as long as you're ok with algae blooms downstream.

The content of detergent doesn't affect the cycle times programmed into the electronics.

If you press the "non-bureaucracy" button that's on every modern dishwasher (usually labeled "quick wash" or a similar euphemism), you get a 'normal' cycle time (which works just fine, regardless of detergent), but at the cost of not being EnergyStar compliant. This is a product design that is entirely the result of government regulation.

I'm not seeing your point. Are you arguing that giving consumers a choice between a slow cheap cycle and an expensive fast cycle is somehow a bad thing?

> Are you arguing that giving consumers a choice between a slow cheap cycle and an expensive fast cycle is somehow a bad thing?

No. I'm saying that you don't need a government bureaucracy mandating it. Moreover, you definitely don't need one mandating ever-more-strict energy consumption limits on energy uses that are not driving the consumption problem, which inevitably run up against hard physical limits (e.g. warm water works better for washing dishes).

Take the argument to the point of absurdity: should we have an EnergyStar rule on doorbell efficiency? The same line of reasoning applies, but by golly...if we had one, I'm sure we'd be sitting here arguing about why doorbells have to be barely audible in order to save the planet.

Companies arn't going to spend money to implement modes that save electricity unless they have to. The motivation can come about as a result of market competition or governance. Sometimes you need governance because of market dynamics, e.g. monopolies.

A better fix would be to expand the scope of Energy Star. I'm sure you'll still be able to find a suitable door bell just as easily as you discovered the quick wash button on your dish washer.

And, to take your argument to absurdity, we'd still have lead paint and no nutrition labels.

Another reason the market won't fix energy consumption on its own: externalized costs (onto the consumer's power bill).

What is one of the most market-effective US regulations?

Requiring a standardized EnergyGuide appliance label for average yearly energy costs. (Aka the yellow label https://www.energystar.gov/products/ask-the-experts/whats-di... )

What did companies do before that? Installed the cheapest, least-efficient parts, put marketing copy on their boxes about how they were high efficiency, and then passed the costs onto unknowing consumers.

> Take the argument to the point of absurdity: should we have an EnergyStar rule on doorbell efficiency? The same line of reasoning applies

Except it doesn't really, because doorbells use very little current in pretty much any configuration. Appliances use a lot of current in most configurations, hence why many of them require a 240V/20A circuit versus the standard US 120V/15A circuit. Hence why the Energy Star program focuses on appliances.

This is a real stretch as slippery slope arguments go. Pick something better.

The point of the doorbell metaphor was to illustrate that we're (over-)regulating a tiny sliver of the problem, and ignoring the big issues.

To this point, you're making a big leap, going from "current consumption while running", to "overall energy usage". How many times a day are you running your dishwasher? I guarantee mine isn't in the top items in my life that consume electricity, in aggregate.

While EnergyStar may have been a good idea when it was created (when energy prices were lower), it's no longer necessary in a world where cost of use significantly exceeds the cost of the appliance itself during its own lifetime. And if that isn't true, then you really have to ask what you're doing in the first place, regulating the energy use of an appliance that doesn't use much energy?

I think there are certain aspects of EnergyStar that make sense -- the little label that tells me how many watt-hours an AC uses helps me compare products, so fine. Keep the little sticker. But it doesn't require an agency making silly rules about how much energy any dishwasher, doorbell or dongle can use. Let the market decide.

> How many times a day are you running your dishwasher?

At least once, sometimes twice, very rarely 3 times when my wife is doing a lot of baking or making candy.

Google says dishwashers can draw between 1200W and 2400W. Asking the same source puts a doorbell at 10W to 40W. 2 orders of magnitude less. The dishwasher consumes massively more power than a doorbell.

How many times a day is your doorbell ringing? Does your doorbell ring for a couple hours on each press, like the length of a dishwasher cycle?

You're fixated on the absurdity of the doorbell example. It was intended to be absurd. That's the point: reductio ad absurdum. Government bureaucracy is squeezing efficiency out of places where it really doesn't make much difference, because that's what bureaucracies do.

Said differently: precisely how "efficient" does EnergyStar need to make dishwashers, or microwaves, or whatever else, before the gains in theoretical "efficiency" are offset by the compensating behaviors of the users working around the brokenness of the system?

I can replace your microwave with an easybake oven, powered by LED lamp, and it'll be "efficient" in terms of operating current draw, but...

I don't think the examples you are giving are taking your argument where you want it to be. Nobody has replaced a microwave with an easy bake oven. They aren't the same thing at all, and nobody is proposing such a thing nor the equivalent anywhere else.

Maybe not, but they replaced dishwashers that used to take 1 hour to clean a load with ones that take 4+ hours.

except, by your own admission, nothing has been replaced?

you can still push the quick wash button.

the only difference, is that the default choice trades off cleaning time for energy savings.

what is your argument against consumers having a choice?

You think improving efficiency of a 1000W+ appliance that runs for 2hrs at a time is not making much difference?

Don't know what to tell you on that...

Doorbells should actually provide power draw figures. I had to upgrade my doorbell transformer to support two Nest video doorbells, and they run 24/7, so I’d guess that they actually take more aggregate power than the dishwasher that I run once every couple days.

Doorbells are an extra pain for consumers to measure power draw for - you can’t easily use a kill-a-watt metre as you have to hardwire them to a low-voltage power source.

I don’t want my video resolution capped for energy-draw reasons, but I’d absolutely like to have some specs on typical power draw so that I can adequately compare doorbells.

I can't find watt info for the Nest wired doorbells, but the battery-powered version of the same comes with a 7.5W charger.

Let's round that up to 20W just for the sake of argument, maybe the wired ones draw a lot more.

doorbell: 20W * 24hrs = 480Wh

dishwasher: 1200W * 2hrs = 2400Wh

Your doorbell takes 5 days to use as much power as your dishwasher does in one cycle. 2 doorbells is still 2.5 days. So no, they are not using more aggregate power than your every-other-day dishwasher usage.

> dishwasher: 1200W * 2hrs = 2400Wh

I don’t expect this is accurate napkin math for my dishwasher. It’s rated in the range of 240 kWh per year for four loads per week, which puts it under 1200 Wh per load - and that’s for for the standard wash cycle, and I use the “Energy Saver” cycle (which does use extra water, but less energy.).

> should we have an EnergyStar rule on doorbell efficiency?

Probably. The traditional setup uses a 120->24 transformer sitting there burning a couple Watts the entire time, waiting for the few seconds when the doorbell gets turned on. A modern switch mode power supply can use less.

Ideally there would be a standard for practically wiring homes with 48VDC or 24VDC so there is only one centralized idle power overhead, rather than making every single "smart" controls gadget need to step down on its own from 120 (170) volts. Then a standard doorbell would use no power when the button is not being pressed, as you're imagining.

Both of these things are dependent on network effects (ie markets are sticky), which is why talking in terms of standards makes sense.

Your whole premise is wrong. Energy star doesn't make a company do anything besides disclosure.

> manufacturers don't have any incentive to start producing power-guzzling appliances when power costs are increasing

That's only true if customers can know how much energy their devices are going to use. Energy star forces that disclosure and that's it. Market forces are done everything else. Consumers prefer lower energy costs and devices that voluntarily achieve an energy star certification

Also, "takes like 4 hours to finish a load", I have a new dishwasher, there is no combination of settings (except adding a delay) that will make a load take four hours. Max I can get is 2:36

Yes, and I'm not sure what the parent refers to when they say "non-bureaucratic mode", but if they mean literally turning the dial to another wash setting and this is supposed to be evidence of the outrageous inconvenience this program presents to the American consumer, well then they should not take offense if one considers their views to be the comical indignations of a "libertarian snowflake". And this is from someone who constantly switches the machine to non-default subhour wash programs 90% of the time (clothes not dishes).

I’m neither a libertarian, nor am I a snowflake…and the argument I am making has absolutely nothing to do with the presence or absence of a specific button.

When there is a huge government bureaucracy that is devoted to writing and implementing “efficiency standards”, then I question the value of the expense.

Y’all do realize that other countries with energy efficient appliances don’t have this program, right?

(It’s almost like it isn’t necessary to achieve the same outcome.)

The second sentence in your initial post is literally whining about how dishwashers take 4 hours to finish unless you put in non-bureaucratic mode, as if this some huge inconvenience to the American household. And since you feel no need to clarify what you meant by "non-bureaucratic mode" in your additional comment we can only conclude that you were referring to literally turning a dial or pressing a button. Overblowing a minor inconvenience is the literal definition of a snowflake in how it's colloquilly used.

Having failed to demonstrate convincingly how this greatly imconveniences the American household as consumer, you pivot to the inconvenience of the American household as taxpayer. But any serious discussion of that point requires you to discuss the concrete cost of this certification program compared to all other government services. This, you also do not do.

As for other countries not having this program, what do you think the purpose of the "EU energy label program" is?

Mischaracterizing my argument, and then attacking that mischaracterization is called a straw man.

My argument is not about dishwashers. It's not about specific buttons. It's that removal of this particular government bureaucracy is unlikely to lead to any bad outcomes, because it has long ago stopped doing much of anything that actually impacts energy use, and instead focuses on things like making your dishwasher work worse in the name of efficiency. A classic story of bureaucratic imperative.

Even if you do think it's doing something, you have yet to adequately explain why it needs to be done by the government.

The EU has had Ecodesign regulations for a long time, and the Brussels effect [1] does the rest.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brussels_effect

The Ecodesign regulations are pretty new. The EU used to just join the US's EnergyStar program until there was talk of getting rid of it in 2018. Canada, Japan and Switzerland still join the US's EnergyStar program. I have no idea what the GP is talking about with the claim that most countries don't have the energy Star program.

Maybe China? But I feel like China has pretty strict regulations about a lot of things.

> Canada, Japan and Switzerland still join the US's EnergyStar program.

I can't speak for Europe, but I know Japan well. It may have "joined", but there is literally no awareness of the program. You don't see the symbol on appliances here, and I'm not sure anyone would know what it is, if it appeared. They simply don't need such a program to have efficient appliances.

One thing the government does do is offer rebates for people upgrading old appliances. One might ask whether the money spent on EnergyStar would be better put to use on these kinds of direct incentives.

https://www.energystar.go.jp/

I've only seen "EnergyStar" in Europe on the BIOS screen of older computers. I knew it was American, but until this HN post I thought it only applied to computers.

The EU's energy labelling scheme grades appliances on a scale, and gives the estimated annual electricity usage. I'm sure it's effective, as it makes clear why the cheapest appliance might not be a good purchase.

https://energy-efficient-products.ec.europa.eu/ecodesign-and...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_energy_label

I'm not certain, but I think the rating would be either performed or certified by an independent laboratory, i.e. a private business, so the government bureaucracy is limited to defining the specification/tests.

(And incidentally, my dishwasher defaults to the "Eco" programme, which takes 3½ hours. I don't care as I almost always run it overnight, and it's one button press to choose a faster programme.)

> the comical indignations of a "libertarian snowflake"

Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.

> Energy star forces that disclosure and that's it.

Incorrect. The far bigger part of the program is certification:

https://www.energystar.gov/about/how-energy-star-works/energ...

(There's also the scoring system, though I don't know if that falls under certification.)

This is how the efficiency requirements become de facto mandates. Federal procurement, among other things, requires energy star certification. There are even mortgage discounts for energy star certified buildings.

You do know that energy star certification is voluntary, right?

Nobody forces manufacturers to get certified, they do it because the market prefers it.

Energy star does not force manufacturers to be certified. I can walk into my local appliance store and walk out with a whole kitchen full of uncertified products if I wanted too.

It’s “voluntary” except for all of the different ways it’s been written into regulations, from federal procurement all the way down to local government.

But if the market prefers it, great! Do it without the need for a government bureaucracy! Organizations like Underwriters Laboratories don’t need an arm of the US government to exist.

If the market prefers dishwashers that are slower then you don’t need the government creating that certification.

How do you propose to solve the information asymmetry where customers in an appliance store can't tell how much it will cost them on their energy bill to operate each appliance?

I think looking at how much it costs to operate an appliance without looking at how well the appliance does its job is relying on incomplete information. I can make a dishwasher that costs 0 to operate but doesn’t clean the dishes. Therefore I think the whole system is flawed and useless and shouldn’t exist.

Do you also think we should do away with mandatory fuel economy disclosures for the same reason?

Information on performance is usually provided by third parties like Consumer Reports, Car and Driver, and other review services. Government provides and mandates quantitative statistics as a public service; private parties take care of the qualitative and subjective analyses (i.e., opinions).

No, information about power of cars is widely available in the specs sheet of the car (torque, etc). Therefore there is the chance of a fair and useful comparison.

That suggests you would support even more mandatory disclosures from appliance manufacturers, as opposed to reducing information by killing off the Energy Star program.

Exactly. Either full information or none. What exists now is useless. The current system can give good scores to dishwashers that force you to rinse all dishes before you put them in the dishwasher or that you have to run twice, making you waste time and energy.

That's not my experience. I have a relatively new Energy Star-rated dishwasher (KitchenAid) and it works great. The trick, as re-discovered by Technology Connections, is to take advantage of the prewash cycle and use a bit of prewash detergent along with the main wash detergent, and not use too much.

Check out the discussion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHP942Livy0

> can give good scores to dishwashers that force you to rinse all dishes

That's just simply false. Read your dishwasher's manual. It'll tell you not to pre-rinse dishes.

Why do you think that information is widely available?

Perhaps it's because there's a government program requiring it's disclosure and specific testing process?

If MPG labeling laws go away, what makes you think Ford will continue disclosing those values? And if they do, why wouldn't they start declaring MPG values driving downhill in a windtunnel giving the vehicle a tailwind?

You don't have to look too far to find those examples. Go to your local dealership that has some of the super duty trucks for sale. Notice how their spec sheet where the MPG is disclosed says "MPG testing not required" or something similar. Now how are you supposed to compare two trucks from the same brand, much less across two brands?

No third party certification is involved in those vehicles. Why do you think a third party would get involved in passenger vehicles if we relax the disclosure laws?

It would be advantageous to manufacturers if that information is not present. Consider then why it is.

What these "free market" idealists fail to recognize is that the free market only works when consumers are informed. Yes, ideally consumer should buy products that are higher quality or cheaper and that should incentivize the market to produce products of that nature. Yeah, in order to do that though consumers need some measurement of quality.

It's like advocating for the free market by saying used car dealers should be able to dial back the odometer. That's not free market economics. It's actually the opposite, these people are advocating for a less-free market.

You’re getting downvoted because you’re making a few mistakes. 1) Energy Star is not a mandate, it’s a certificate if you want it. 25% of dishwashers are not ES at Home Depot. 2) Dishwashers are slow for a few reasons, a big one is gov’t stopped use of strong detergents. The new one needs time to dissolve foods. 3) “why solve X when Y is still a problem” is always a weak argument. 4) “markets will solve it” doesn’t always work because the individual cost of an energy guzzling appliance is a few extra dollars, but the collective cost is high.

The difference between appliances in 1970 vs now is immense. My dishwasher is so quiet we double check if it’s on. It uses less water than handwashing. Even the Chamber of Commerce (big business lobby) asked them to keep Energy Star.

False; my brand new dishwasher from Bosch takes approximately two hours and ten minutes to complete a load of dishes on the standard mode.

EnergyStar on GPUs wouldn’t be that bad nowadays!

I actually sort of agree. If you're going to put the regulations in place, at least do it where it matters!

Why is it that every time libertarians win a victory for my freedom my life gets harder and worse?