Hairdryers spark household energy revolution
Key topics:
Hairdryers trigger sudden, massive household energy demands.
Household energy resilience drives innovation and planning.
Hairdryers symbolise challenges in the renewable energy transition.
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By Jon Stillwell
Hair is an important and emotive topic in our society, and it has been for centuries. In the story of Samson and Delilah, Samson was rendered powerless when Delilah shaved his head in the dead of night (he had made the mistake of mentioning to her that his strength would be lost if his hair were ever cut). When Rapunzel was trapped in a tower without doors, she escaped by lowering her hair to a prince below who climbed up it and through the tower window to rescue her. Even Charles Baudelaire, who has been described in The Atlantic magazine as ‘the French poet of the malign’, was sufficiently moved by the topic to write a beautiful poem about it in un Hémisphère Dans une Chevelure, (directly translated as ‘a Hemisphere in Hair’) the meanings of which remain an open debate among pseudo intellectuals and aspirant nihilists the world over.
Today in some cultures certain people do not reveal their hair outside of very private situations, and so emotive is the topic that some can be incited to anger over public discourse about different types and styles of hair. In this crazy world these arguments have even become sites of political opportunism and contest.
Whatever the causes may be for our collective consternation about it, one thing is for sure, hair has important powers in our society and our lives. And one of the more subtle, yet no less powerful, is the role it’s playing in our energy revolution.
About once or twice a year I feel this special relevance directly in my own household. The scenario is usually a dark and cold weekday morning somewhere around the winter solstice. An electric heater and a few lights are on, the kettle may be on, and the geyser may be warming up after an early shower while the household is quietly piecing together the first parts of the day. Then, at some point in the process, things get suddenly and dramatically very serious… somebody turns on a hairdryer. The electricity demand of our household at least doubles in an instant, and the main circuit breaker trips, or worse, is fried causing the household energy supply to collapse. On severe occasions a small puff of grey smoke sinks slowly from the electricity box in the kitchen and the house is gradually infused with the unnerving smell of electrical fire. What follows is crucial. Everything else has to stop and all hands and household resources are instantaneously and urgently directed toward addressing the immediate emergency: what to do with, and how to sort out, the only partially dried hair.
As distant second and third order priorities, and only once a plan has been made for the first, does attention shift to restoring the general household to a state of energy and emotional equilibrium. This may take anything from a few moments to the better part of the day depending on the strength of the electrical fire smell.
If measured over its entire lifespan a hairdryer on average uses very little power, probably no more than a small lightbulb. But they are not used on average, they are used in bursts and in one of those bursts may demand more than 30 times the energy needed to run a TV or 250 times the needs of a lightbulb. The chart below puts this in context.
However, what is really interesting and important about the energy needs of the hairdryer is that these days they are set against the backdrop of global society deciding after roughly 1 million years to switch from burning things for energy to other more innovative and sustainable energy sources.
This introduces the real technological significance of the hairdryer.
When bridges are built, they are not built to withstand average traffic. They are built to withstand multiplies of their average traffic, during a small earthquake and/or a hurricane. The same applies to skyscrapers, aircraft, spaceships, motor cars, hiking boots, elevator cables, bungee jump cords and most deep-sea submarines. The effort that goes into giving materials the ability to withstand these extraordinary forces is immense and has driven material technological advances for centuries. This process has also yielded many wonderful adjacent discoveries that you probably use every day.
A modern middle-class household in a reasonably sunny country could easily meet its energy needs for lighting, heating water, running Wi-Fi, etc. with the available solar power technology, and at fairly manageable cost. Cooking and heating may require the use of a small amount of gas, but this seems to be an inexpensive and reasonably unproblematic solution. For the household’s basic needs the new energy solutions are then quite simple. However, none of these can easily cater for the hairdryer. The hairdryer is the household energy supply’s version of a small earthquake in a hurricane. And its importance is driving men, women and other people to push the frontiers of science and household energy resilience so that they can easily and urgently meet their average energy needs, including the occasional use of hairdryers.
One of the most endearing examples of this that I have encountered is ‘keeping up with the Jones’s’ type conversations between men about their energy solutions. The discussion normally starts with a few general comments and questions about respective plans and approaches to energy independence and reducing one’s carbon footprint. This carries on for a few minutes then the tone gets more serious and a more intense discussion about the technical specifications starts in which people size up one another’s technical knowledge and the market value of their energy solutions. This is the first stage of sorting the pros from the amateurs. After a few minutes of this, silences drag on a bit longer and the conversation starts slowing down, a nervous feeling of anticipation descends and eventually someone asks the all-important and inevitable question: “can yours run the hairdryer?”
A silence lingers once more like the smell of electrical fire in the morning until someone’s jaw tightens, they stand up straight and staring vaguely into the distance as if out to sea, they answer proudly “yes…, well it depends, sometimes, but soon I’m going to..”
There can only be good things that come from this, the future is bright.