| (110V: I'm just copying/misremembering, I don't live there. There are places in the Caribbean that do use 110V.) > Your dryer example seems like it is running on gas? This is part of my horror. You can't imagine that an electric drier might only use 600W? Try [1]. From the EU site of all rated driers [2] (click "Models distribution") 23% of driers on sale are this efficient. A further 44% with A++ rating are around 900W. (Note the measurement is of the energy needed to dry a load of clothes to the required standard, the maximum power draw is related but not a criteria.) The worst one is still only 2300W! From a 2013 news article "Europe's Clothes Dryers Consume Half As Much Energy As America's" [3]: > The study, which was funded by the Super Efficient Dryer Initiative (SEDI), concluded that Europe's heat pump dryers can dry the same amount of clothes as North American conventional dryers using only about half as much energy. The catch is that European heat pump dryers also took about twice as long to dry a load of laundry as North American conventional dryers. I'll add that American driers appear to be cheaper to buy. > house sizes ... naturally our appliances are larger and more power hungry That explains the AC -- though I can still criticise the waste of energy heating/cooling two, three or four times as much space per person -- but it doesn't explain the drier. Do you wear twice as many clothes as I do? [1] https://www.siemens-home.bsh-group.com/uk/productlist/laundr... [2] https://eprel.ec.europa.eu/screen/product/tumbledriers [3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2013/06/11/euro... |