27 Nov
2014
27 Nov
'14
11 a.m.
On 11/27/2014 06:17 AM, Mouse wrote:
(But it has its own downsides, like not working with
glass pans - I
have a glass skillet....)
It's more serious than that. The cooking utensil has to be
ferromagnetic. So, my substantial investment in 18/10 stainless steel
cookware is out; however, cheap 18/0 stainless works fine. My Le
Creuset porcelain-over-cast iron are fine as are my All-Clad stainless.
I have a considerable inventory of older borosilicate Pyrex (not the
cheap soda-lime that passes for Pyrex nowadays) as well as pieces of
Corning glasswre that are more than 40 years old. Those get relegated
to ovenware and storage. Fortunately, better makers of cookware are now
starting to laminate a steel insert into pot bottoms. Given the low
thermal conductivity of glass, I've wondered if cooktop use can be
justified But induction's come a long way since Princess Margaret
started using it.
Interesting! What _does_ account for most of the
draw? Are you in an
area where electric is common as the energy source for routine heat?
Thinking about my own experience, I'm fairly confident the ranking goes
heating (if electrical), computers, cooking, and then everything else
is down in the noise - and that's for me personally; most people don't
have nearly the computer load I do.
Other than living space heating, I understand that a water heater
accounts for a substantial part of an all-electric home's energy
consumption. Lighting also used to be high on the list, but since CFL
adoption has picked up, I don't think that it accounts for the load that
it once did. Eventually, LEDs can be expected to supplant CFLs.
I've wondered about that. SMPSUs draw no current
most of the cycle,
drawing heavily on the peaks, without the smoothing effect of the mains
transformer present in (most) non-switching supplies. This is almost
nothing like most historical load, which is mostly either resistive or
inductive. I'm curious whether it has a significant effect on the
grid; do you happen to know?
"Dirty" harmonic-laden current from SMPSUs is a problem. But that
problem also arises from the lowly CFL. Right now, the problem is being
mostly ignored. I read an interesting paper that suggests that HVDC
for large server farms may be the best answer in that case.
--Chuck