Energy v cost, do people really not know the difference?

[petebuiltit]

How would a battery maintain our mechanical syncronous cooker clock?

LoL

 

[morqthana]

Obviously timers are useful - cook at this temperature for this time, or even slightly more complex, e.g. A° for X minutes, then B° for Y minutes, and so on, but how common is it for people to use delayed start for ovens, microwaves, etc?

Do the appliances need to know what time of day it is?

And even if a delayed start is wanted, how hard would it be to use a timer to say "start in X hours" compared with "start at Y o-clock"?

 

[morqthana]

Well, for a start, I can think of plenty of other items of domestic electric equipment which would pose at least as great a danger if they 'restarted after a power cut without people knowing', but which don't have such 'NVR' functionality. In any event, even if things (like cookers) do have such functionality, there's no reason why it has to stop the clock 'being maintained'.

The problem is not in having to, say, press a 'reset' button (which would be trivial), it's that the clock loses its memory of the time. When main-powered equipment has a clock, one generally expects there to be some (batter or capacitor) 'backup', so that it does not 'forget' the time if it loses mains power.

All true.

I'm not so sure about that. I think that many people (including myself) would probably find it very irritating (and potentially confusing) to have a clock displaying the incorrect time.

Only for as long as you choose to regard it as a clock which is going to tell you the actual time.

It wouldn't be so bad if, after being "re-started it at 00:00" it continued to display that time for ever, but once it 'starts ticking' it will display an actual time which, on occasions, might be close enough to actual time to be potentially confusion.

For that reason, I suspect that many people would 'feel compelled' to reset the clock to the correct time, and that that would represent a lot more than a 'trivial deterrent' to turning the equipment off completely

Until they teach themselves to let go of that compulsion.

A compulsion which can never truly be satisfied anyway, if you have more than 1 oven, etc, as how do you start the clocks on multiple appliances running at exactly the same time? The HH:MM might agree for most of the time, but they'll not change in sync.

I guess you could move from one appliance to the next, using the time on your phone to set each one at a precise minute. But really?

And then what do you do if you're listening to a DAB radio in the kitchen and your appliance clocks don't match the time signal?

For that reason, I suspect that many people would 'feel compelled' to reset the clock to the correct time

Just let it go, and b r e e a t h h....

 

[ericmark]

My cooker has so many safety features, auto switching off rings after a set time, or is a set temperature is reached, child lock, which my children loved to set, so my wife could not use the cooker, it will not switch on unless something which will be attracted by a magnet is on it. And will not run after a power cut until the clock is set. The hobs do not get red-hot, so much safer than gas.

As to no volt release, I have used active RCD's for that.

I don't have a smart meter, so I hooked up a Shelly EM clamp on the meter tails and it records electric used and shows live usage. It's good to see how power usage changes over the course of the day, plus switching things on and off and watching the change in power.

That is actually better than a smart meter, as it can go around the consumer unit tails, so show what is being used. The smart meter shows zero most of the time, as house supplied from solar or battery.

I am sure, a sensor on many of the circuits from the consumer unit could help, when lights are left on, etc. I have my smart lights set to turn off at dawn, to limit how long they can be left on for. But don't want them to switch off when required.

Lights are a problem, as often found they don't use what it says on the packet or bulb. I have one of these

which uses far less than it says, and had fluorescent fittings using far more than they say. Also LED replacements for fluorescent tubes.

And even if a delayed start is wanted, how hard would it be to use a timer to say "start in X hours" compared with "start at Y o-clock"?

Near impossible, when I got off-peak, I looked at starting things using plug in timers, but their safety feature will not let them start when power returns.

The oven timer we do use to turn off the oven, in case we forget, but you can turn hobs on with timers, so setting up a cooker to cook a dinner to be ready at a set time is not an option unless the whole meal cooked in an oven.

We have a pressure cooker which can be programmed, not seen it used in years, when we moved from resistive to induction hob, we found stainless steel will not work, as not attracted by a magnet. So we got a stand-alone pressure cooker, we also got a plastic microwave pressure cooker. However, it seems the pressure used in a pressure cooker is not standard, the old one was one atmosphere, (14 PSI) but the new one was only 7 PSI so a lot slower, also the only one when finished, would be removed from the hot plate and put in water, this one can't do with a stand-alone unit, the electrics don't like it.

So one needed a new cook book with all new times, the same problem with air fryer, and over where you can select where the heat comes from. Closed door grilling works well, but you need to know how long to cook for. Mrs Beeton cook books should have helped, as written before gas, and I think electric ovens, so solid fuel cookers had a damper to change how the oven was heated, but it seems someone has rewritten them, they have gas mark settings, how when the gas oven was not invented when she wrote the books?

I look at the kitchen today, and most of the items did not exist when we were in school, and anyway, I was a boy, we could not do domestic science, what ever that was. Mixing tartaric acid and bicarbonate of soda and putting it in the sugar bowl may be?

 

[fixitflav]

There was a piece on TV, this morning, which suggested that the on all the time clock display, of a microwave oven, actually costs more per day, to run, than actual cooking in the oven. Our microwave, tends to get perhaps 4 minutes per day of use, on full power.

That's surprising, if it's true (can't believe everything said on TV!) but my microwave has no clock, just one knob for power and one for a mechanical timer. I've had several microwaves with a clock and various automatic controls and the electonics have failed after a fairly short time. Nowadays I go simple, and cheaper.

 

[fixitflav]

sugars and fats attracts energy far more than water in a microwave

Is that so? I thought it was the water which does it, as unlike suger and fat, it has a polar molecule. But I haven't done any tests.

 

[JohnW2]

Only for as long as you choose to regard it as a clock which is going to tell you the actual time.

I think you're overlooking 'human nature'/ 'psychology'. If one is constantly exposed to something which is 'displaying time', there is an almost unavoidable expectation that the time it's displaying is at least roughly correct.

A compulsion which can never truly be satisfied anyway, if you have more than 1 oven, etc, as how do you start the clocks on multiple appliances running at exactly the same time? The HH:MM might agree for most of the time, but they'll not change in sync. ... I guess you could move from one appliance to the next, using the time on your phone to set each one at a precise minute. But really? And then what do you do if you're listening to a DAB radio in the kitchen and your appliance clocks don't match the time signal?

As above, the 'almost unavoidable expectation' is that what is staring one in the face is displaying a time which is 'at least roughly correct'.

 

[JohnW2]

Obviously timers are useful - cook at this temperature for this time, or even slightly more complex, e.g. A° for X minutes, then B° for Y minutes, and so on, but how common is it for people to use delayed start for ovens, microwaves, etc?

Many moons ago I had a secretary who was a very orthodox Jew, who was not allowed (amongst many other things) to touch electrical switches etc on the Sabbath. However, h!
er house was absolutely full of time switches, in particular ones which switched on all sorts of cooking appliances at different times, so that 'everything was cooked and ready' for her post-Sabbath meal

She was pretty offended when I suggested to her that this was "cheating"

However, in general I would agree with you - in most cases, cookers do not need to know the time. Many other things (like fridges!) certainly don't need to, but many new-fanged appliances seem to insist on trying to tell one what the time is

 

[JohnW2]

How would a battery maintain our mechanical syncronous cooker clock?

It obviously couldn't (without a large battery and inverter) - but any remotely modern (let alone new-fangled) appliance would not have such a clock.

 

[morqthana]

I think you're overlooking 'human nature'/ 'psychology'. If one is constantly exposed to something which is 'displaying time', there is an almost unavoidable expectation that the time it's displaying is at least roughly correct.

You'd be surprised how quickly and easily one can let go of that expectation.

 

[morqthana]

She was pretty offended when I suggested to her that this was "cheating"

Then there's the "cheating" of the eruv?

Did you ever discuss with her, re the heating of food, the Physics meaning of "work"?

However, in general I would agree with you - in most cases, cookers do not need to know the time. Many other things (like fridges!) certainly don't need to, but many new-fanged appliances seem to insist on trying to tell one what the time is

Ignore them.

You know you want to.

If I want to know the time I will nearly always refer to the device I carry with me. I keep it strapped to my left wrist so that it is accessible pretty much instantaneously.

 

[JohnW2]

Is that so? I thought it was the water which does it, as unlike suger and fat, it has a polar molecule. But I haven't done any tests.

As you say, it's polar molecules that will be heated by microwaves. Water is by far the most common highly polar molecule and I think that many of the others in that league are 'inorganic' (things like hydrogen sulphide, hydrogen fluoride, ammonia etc.). However, I believe that many other molecules (including 'organic' ones) are to at least some extent polar. Sugars and fats have been mentioned. I certainly seem to recall that some sugars are pretty polar (because of large numbers of OH groups), but I don't know about fats.

One of the practical difficulties, of course is that, being invariably 'biological' in origin (deriving from plants or animals) virtually all foodstuffs have a pretty (or very) high water content, so it's hard to know exactly what molecules are getting directly heated.

I've just done one experimented. I took a small quantity of 'granulated sugar' (sucrose) and first made sure it was dry by cooking it in an oven for a good while. When it had cooled back to room temp, I microwaved it on full power in a "900W" microwave oven for 5 minutes and it only became just about perceptibly warm. With the same microwaving, a similar mass of water would undoubtedly have totally boiled away.

 

[JohnW2]

You'd be surprised how quickly and easily one can let go of that expectation.

I'm far from convinced that I could, and I think the same may well be true of many others

 

[morqthana]

Try it and see.

 

[JohnW2]

If I want to know the time I will nearly always refer to the device I carry with me. I keep it strapped to my left wrist so that it is accessible pretty much instantaneously.

Same here, but that's not the point. I don't look at cookers or any other appliances to find out what the time is, but nevertheless do find it very irritating to be confronted by a display of wildly incorrect time.