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Comment by redtriumph | Hacker News Reader

I hail from a Tier 3 city in India [a]. Due to mismgmt. or exorbitant electricity prices, several folks would end up stealing electricity from the main line.

Electricity distribution companies would keep on increasing prices to make up for lost revenue from stealing. On other hand, stealing kept on increasing.

In recent years, huge chunk of public have pivoted to installing solar panels for water heater etc. When I was a kid, solar water heater was found only on upper middle and politician's home. Now it's very common. This is welcome progress and inadvertent good for environment since the real motivation is to free self from manipulation of electricity companies.

a. Tier 1 would be state capitals, Tier 2 would be prominent cities in that state, Tier 3 would be rest of district headquarters.

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>Footnote 1

I have never heard that before, cities like Ranchi can hardly be described as "Tier 1". The HRA classification given on the Wikipedia page[1] is much better guide to what my intuitions are on what people mean by tier 1-3.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classification_of_Indian_cit...

> [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classification_of_Indian_cit...

Finally someone starting from the bottom of the latin alphabet to categorize something that can grow over time (i.e. Delhi becomes even bigger, much more bigger than other X cities, it will move to a W category).

Yes, I'm looking at you, European energy classes system and yours A+++++++++ classes.

If you look at the previous classification it was A/B/C as well, they had to learn it.

Yeah, but at least they did learn. In Europe they keep adding the A/B/C/D/E/F/G scoring system to more and more things with the excuse - I guess - that people are now already used to it.

On the other hand if you had "8" how would you know if it's good or bad? It is not intuitive, especially if you keep adding more.

And the scale needs to be changed regularly anyways because the criteria are not the same, so a 8 now would not even be guaranteed to be a 8 tomorrow.

The European system already resets the scales after a while (for instance the new ones don't have a + yet) and it is not just about changing min and max but many things are reevaluated based on new knowledge, so an item that was B can no be D while another one that was C stays C. Be it number or letters it is a breaking change so you might as well go with the intuitive system that matches most people's intuition

> On the other hand if you had "8" how would you know if it's good or bad? It is not intuitive, especially if you keep adding more.

You will know that, when measuring something, the higher, the better, for whatever definition of "better" applies (less CO2, less Watts, more good nutrients etc). If the scale changes, or the definition of "better", you now have "9" appliances, which will be better than "3" appliances with their 15 years old label still attached to them. With the current system you have to check "oh, it's A+ from 2017, I need to check the actual numbers anyway".

And yes, I understand that those labels are mainly directed at new items bought right now, and only as "local" comparison. And that if you sell a "new" appliance today manufactured 5 years ago and the labels have changed, you need to update the labels on it. Still, it's cumbersome. You either update the scale ever 2 years or keep adding "+" for a while.

EDIT: also, houses. those fuckers tend to last for tens of years while being sold and bought all the time in the meanwhile.

On the other hand, today's system you're led the believe that A is good, when in fact A++++ is good and for certain things A is fairly bad.

Further when you change the scales you can't compare old and new. Is my A+ rated fridge better or worse than a new A rated fridge. Is it worth me updating it?

A system of 1 to 5 can scale upwards. Alternatively set A as the best possible score as allowed by the laws of physics.

Is this like bra sizes? I’m out of my element here..

No, the other way round. Well, actually it depends on your aesthetic canons.

My favorite is American Wire Gauge: 0, 00, 000, 0000

"This gauge system originated in the number of drawing operations used to produce a given gauge of wire."

> exorbitant electricity prices,

Yeah, no. There is no state in India that has exorbitant electricity prices for domestic consumers. Virtually every state discom sets the base tarrif below cost. People steal electricity because they can, not because they can't afford it.

just because something is sold below cost, doesn't mean the costs aren't exorbitant.

This may be true today. My memory of prices is from early 2000s when electricity distribution was still a mess financially.

I'm skeptical there has ever been a time when discom finances have not been a mess.

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