About Us
About the Appliance Efficiency Database
California’s Appliance Energy Efficiency Regulations stretch back to 1976, when the first appliance standards were adopted as regulations. Since then, California’s regulations and standards have grown to encompass more than 50 different types of appliances, which, in turn, has helped keep California’s per-capita electricity consumption flat since the 1970s. Even with the explosion of incredible modern uses of electricity, Californians on average use no more electricity today than they did in 1976.
In the original regulations, the California Energy Commission required that manufacturers certify the energy use and performance of their appliances to demonstrate that they meet California’s standards. All of this data, originally published in annual phonebook-like directories, is now stored electronically in this Appliance Efficiency Database.
The Database now contains more than 230,000 active appliance listings, and this new public interface website allows for powerful, real-time queries of this wealth of data. Consumers can run a Quick Search to compare the performance of several appliance models, manufacturers can do the same to quickly show both compliance and performance to those they work with, and interested research groups can use the Advanced Search features to extract precise cross-sections of the appliance data or even to grab entire data tables at once.
About Us
In the early 1970s, California’s population was doubling every twenty years, but electricity use was doubling every eight or nine years. The California Energy Commission, created in 1974 with the signing of the Warren-Alquist Act, is formally titled “The Energy Resources Conservation and Development Commission” and is California’s principal energy policy and planning organization. Since January 1975, the Energy Commission has been at the forefront of American energy policy, working to protect the stability of California’s energy resources and the security of its energy consumers.
The Appliance Efficiency Program is specifically tasked with overseeing the most common and numerous end-use points of California’s electricity, water, propane, and natural gas. We strive to promote new, more efficient appliance technologies and to keep the worst performers from entering the marketplace. For more about the Energy Commission, please visit the main website at:
www.energy.ca.gov.