Cable, satellite TV boxes become 2nd biggest energy users in many homes
“In the middle of the night, when most Americans are sound asleep, their lights and appliances off, a power hog is wide awake and running at nearly full throttle: the boxes that operate their cable or satellite television service,” Ralph Vartabedian reports for The Los Angeles Times. “The seemingly innocuous appliances — all 224 million of them across the nation — together consume as much electricity as produced by four giant nuclear reactors, running around the clock. They have become the biggest single energy user in many homes, apart from air conditioning.”
“A set-top cable box with a digital recorder can consume as much as 35 watts of power, costing about $8 a month for a typical Southern California consumer,” Vartabedian reports. “The devices use nearly as much power turned off as they do when they are turned on.”
“‘It is a classic case of market failure,’ said Andrew McAllister, a member of the California Energy Commission. ‘The consumers have zero information and zero control over the devices they get,'” Vartabedian reports. “The industry agreed recently to voluntarily reduce the power consumption of new devices, which it said would save consumers $1 billion annually. But experts say the deal will provide only a fraction of the potential gains and take years to realize.”
“The set-top box issue is part of a much larger group of personal electronic devices in homes that represent one of the fastest-growing parts of residential electricity use,” Vartabedian reports. “Americans are spending more than $12 billion a year on electricity to run computers, smartphones, game consoles, modems and other devices in their homes — one price of the nation’s connected culture, according to estimates by the Consumer Federation of America.”
“The set-top boxes consume power when turned off because of spinning hard drives, program guide updates and software downloads, leaving consumers with one choice to reduce that load: Unplug the device. The downside is that turning the system back on requires a convoluted reboot,” Vartabedian reports. “Energy experts say the boxes could be just as efficient as smartphones, laptop computers or other electronic devices that use a fraction of the power thanks to microprocessors and other technology that conserves electricity. Ideally, they say, these boxes could be put into a deep sleep mode when turned off, cutting consumption to a few watts. At that rate, a box could cost less than $1 a month for power, depending on how much it is used.”
Apple TV outperforms the stringent requirements of the ENERGY STAR Program Requirements for Set-top Boxes Version 3.0. A set-top cable box with a digital recorder can consume as much as 35 watts of power. The following table details power consumption in different use modes:
Source: Apple Inc.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “David G.” for the heads up.]
