Hacker News Reader

Comment by ido | Hacker News Reader

Off-topic but what's wrong with electrical kettles? was her position to not boil water or to use a different kind of kettle? My Kitchen has electric range so I doubt using a non-electric kettle on it would be any more efficient.

View on HN

There's nothing wrong with electric kettles, in fact they're probably the most energy-efficient way of boiling water.

I've taken to boiling the required amount of water in the kettle when I boil rice or anything similar. It's much faster, too.

It's also a good idea to boil a full kettle once in a while, and pour the remaining boiling water you don't need down the drain. It helps break up fat deposits and kills bacteria that cause bad-smelling drains, and the environmental impact is much less than using drain cleaner. And for the love of your drains, don't pour grease in there!

The main argument against them was along the veins of that it draws big amounts of wattage in an initial burst and that we must use "slower" and thus allegedly more sustainable tech.

Which is ridiculuous because every electrician will tell you that your home-grade fuses and the switchboard of your house/block handle such loads quite well without much additional strain on... anything, really.

I quickly wrote her off as a virtue signaller back then.

yeah it sounds like "I sorta once half-heard some thing or another so it must mean electric kettles are forever bad".

For better or worse this is standard practice for how most people get their beliefs about pretty much everything. Some people are more discerning in who they believe and others more skeptical but a lot of people will just add random fact to their knowledge base because they heard it from someone they know.

Well, you could make a point that if everyone has powerful appliances at home then the network has to be robust enough to handle quick changes in power needed. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup

So, in a sense, boiling water with gas has less externalities.

EDIT: You can of course also argue, if we can't have powerful appliances why bother with electricity at all. I'm just saying it's not an issue that can be so easily dismissed

The problem with the "TV pickup" is the synchronicity of the use, not the power of the device. Kettles used throughout the day won't have that problem.

The TV pickup problem, while valid, unjustly shifts the blame.

The regular citizens have put the work to buy the TV device, and continue to put the work daily so they can pay the power and cable bills.

What else would you have them do? They work hard and maybe the TV is their way to unwind. Why, again, is the citizens' fault for putting the work needed to buy their entertainment device and then making them feel guilty for using it?

I pay electrical bills. In my eyes I do my part of the bargain, the rest is their problem -- that's what we pay for, to get a stable service while they sort out the details. A fair business transaction.

> I pay electrical bills... they sort out the details

Then why are you even commenting in a thread about what can you do about climate change? Let someone else figure it all out and send you a bill!

We all already do that, don't you think?

I am talking about most eco tech articles that I've seen -- they are a blatant PR propaganda and rarely informative.

Well, electric kettles are sort of a problem for british energy system which had someone watching BBC 1 and 2 for a decade (IIRC) in the evenings so they could handle peaks in a national grid at the very first minute of pauses between shows.

As I mentioned in another sibling comment here -- that's not my problem. I pay my bills and the rest is for them to figure out. I work, I buy my tech fairly, I don't see what else I could do.

I am not a law regulator, I am not a technician, I am not an environmentalist. I buy tech because it helps me save time and effort in my busy day. It's the corps and the governments responsibility to make sure the tech is eco-friendly, not mine.

I wasn't saying that electric kettles are making any noticeble impact on environment (imo), just that they could be a problem in certain circumstances.

> It's the corps and the governments responsibility to make sure

* that my car doesn't do 70mph in 20mph school zones * that my gun doesn't go off when I'm pointing it at someone innocent etc.

> I buy my tech fairly, I don't see what else I could do.

Have some personal responsibility and seek out eco-friendly tech to buy.

> that my car doesn't do 70mph in 20mph school zones * that my gun doesn't go off when I'm pointing it at someone innocent etc.*

Why such a huge strawman?

> Have some personal responsibility and seek out eco-friendly tech to buy.

I do have personal responsibility. I work, I don't dodge taxes, I buy stuff with my own money. I try and research but most of what we hit on the internet are PR pieces. But I won't research for 1 month something that I might need tomorrow.

It is strain on the grid they are worried about I think.

I know what are they worried about. But us the citizens keep our end of the bargain: we pay the bills. I am not limiting my usage of a very convenient tech like an electric kettle because they want us to pay AND to think about not straining the tech they have with the money we paid.

I mean seriously, how far will the guilt-tripping of citizens go? When will it stop?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com