Standby Product Profile - Clothes Dryers

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Background

In 2002, the Ministerial Council on Energy released "Money isn't all you're saving" a long-term strategy to address excessive standby energy used by consumer appliances and equipment. This strategy is also known as the "1 Watt" standby power plan.

Summary

This standby product profile covers Clothes Dryers. Clothes dryers all operate basically the same way; a fan distributes heated air through a drum that rotates the clothes placed inside it. In Australia clothes dryers are powered electrically and have an average expected life of around 18 years. Dryers come in a range of capacities starting at around 3.5kg up to 13kg with the Australian average being 4.4kg. Dryers differentiate themselves with a variety of features such as touch or manual controls, reverse tumble, delay start, temperature control, heat free cycles etc. However there are two features that are key to classifying dryer type:

Vented or Condenser dryer - In a vented dryer warm, moist air leaves the dryer through a hole or pipe at the rear of the unit, while in a condenser dryer the moisture is extracted from the air and either held to be emptied manually, or pumped away to a drain. The dry air is then reused in the dryer. In Australia vented type dryers make up the vast majority of models.
Timer or Auto Sensing dryer - A timer dryer allows the consumer to set the length of time the dryer will operate for, whereas an auto sensing dryer has moisture sensors that determine when clothes are dry, automatically switching off the machine and preventing excessive drying. Most of these units estimate dryness by sensing the temperature of the exhaust air. This feature can save up to 15% of running costs. The popularity of auto sensing dryers is increasing in the Australian market however timer models still dominate with approximately 72% of sales.

This standby product profile for Clothes Dryers covers the following broad topics:

product description
current ownership and trends
relevant modes for the "1 Watt" standby power plan
known standby data for the product
greenhouse emissions
current overseas policies and trends for the product
proposed government target to meet the "1 Watt" standby power plan.

To support the preparation of this and other profiles, NAEEEC commissioned store surveys of products in major retail stores during 2001, 2002 and 2003 to collect standby measurements from a wide range of appliances and equipment. The results of these measurements are available in NAEEEC Report 2003/04.

Government Target

In accordance with the National Standby Strategy, NAEEEC intends to recommend to the Ministerial Council on Energy an 'interim' target. The purpose of which is to provide governments with confidence that Australian products will meet the ultimate target, of one watt in 2012. If the 'interim' target is not met in the specified year, government will commence dialogue with industry to explore other options, including the possibility of moving to Stage 2 mandatory measures.

The interim target for 2007 is:

an off mode power of less than 1 Watt
a passive standby power consumption of less than 4 Watts

The ultimate target for 2012 is:

an off mode power of less than 0.3 Watt
a passive standby power consumption of less than 1 Watt

Government will announce whether this product should be targeted for stage two intervention under the National Standby Power Strategy (involving possible regulatory intervention) or whether the abovementioned actions together with industry intervention have been successful in meeting the target at the NAEEEC Forum in the year: 2008.

This page last modified 02 February 2009