Forgot your password?  


Appliances | Research & Encyclopedia Articles

Print-Friendly   Order the PDF version   Order the RTF version
About 16 pages (4,704 words)
Appliance Summary

Purchase our Appliances


Appliances

Introduction

Appliances refers to a vast array of devices that account for about 35 percent of overall energy consumption in the United States. As was pointed out in an early California Energy Commission hearing determining the scope of the law that delegated to that Commission authority to regulate the efficiency of appliances, Webster's Unabridged Dictionary(2nd ed., 1979) defines appliance as "something applied to a particular use; a device or machine...." This broad definition allows products that use energy directly or indirectly for virtually any purpose to be considered as appliances.

This review adopts the broad perspective, recognizing that the primary policy mechanisms applied to improve energy efficiency—minimum efficiency standards, incentive programs, normative and informative labeling programs, and technology-driven market forces—can address a very wide variety of products.

Examples of products considered appliances under U.S. federal law, most recently modified by the Energy Policy Act of 1992, include residential products such as refrigerators, freezers, clothes washers, dishwashers, water heaters, heating and cooling equipment, televisions, computers and their power supplies, showerheads, toilets, plumbing fittings, and cooking products. Also considered appliances under U.S. federal law commercial and industrial appliances such as air conditioning and heating systems and their components, water heaters and storage tanks, boilers, lighting system components such as fluorescent lamps, ballasts and fixtures, in addition, incandescent lamps, and motors.

This page contains 201 words.

Purchase our Appliances article Appliances article
Read the rest of this article.
This article contains 4,704 words (approx. 16 pages at 300 words per page).
Ask any question on Appliance and get it answered FAST!
Answer questions in BookRags Q&A and earn points toward
discounted or even FREE Study Guides and other BookRags products!
Learn more about BookRags Q&A
Copyrights
Appliances from Macmillan Encyclopedia of Energy. Copyright © 2001-2006 by Macmillan Reference USA, an imprint of the Gale Group. All rights reserved.

Join BookRagslearn moreJoin BookRags

Join BookRagslearn moreJoin BookRags