Recommendations Coffee Machines
Summary
According to GfK more than 18 million coffee machines are sold in Europe every year. For comfort and quality reasons there are strong trends towards espresso fully automatic machines and espresso portioned machines.
These comfort products however account for large, unnecessary energy losses especially for the permanent preheating (keeping warm). With relatively simple measures such as auto-power-down, better insulation of boilers or flow-type heaters, energy saving mode, low or zero standby, and the reduction of the thermal capacity of the heating unit the energy efficiency of coffee machines can be strongly enhanced.
If in the next years 100 million coffee machines in Europe were replaced by energy efficient models, every year up to 10'000 million kWh or about 2'000 million Euro electricity costs could be saved.
Policy recommendations in short:
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1. Coffee machines shall not end up with weak and legally not binding requirements in the Standby guidelines: additional actions with MEPS and an EU-Energy label are needed.
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2. Implementation of ambitious Standby guidelines: very important, but not sufficient
- Delay time for Auto-power-down(default): max. 30 minutes
(pressure coffee machines and filter coffee machines)
- Delay time for Auto-power-down (programmable): max.1h
(pressure coffee machines and filter coffee machines)
Note: many coffee machines can be programmed on 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 12 and even 15 hours! (Topten research January 2012)
- Auto-power-down is not allowed to be deactivated by the user or any other function.
(pressure coffee machines and filter coffee machines)
Note: Several models offer this function (Topten research January 2012)
- More Information: Topten-comments to “Amended Guidelines for SMEs 1275_2008_March 2012” (guidelines were briefly discussed on 18th April 2012 on the brick of the Consultation Forum of “domestic and commercial kitchen appliances and on online labels”).
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3. Introduction of MEPS: in addition to the references in the Standby guidelines, which are not legally binding
- MEPS should comprise not only standby but also other points of relevance. For coffee machines shall be set requirements particularly on
- Standby (legally binding of the Standby guidelines)
- Maximum limits regarding energy consumption and/or efficiency class
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4. Introduction of an EU-Energy Label: service for consumers, incentive for industry
- The label shall be based on revised IEC 60661 and on the results of the planned Round Robin Tests.
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April 2012, Josephy, Bush
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