California to set TV energy efficiency standards

When it comes to energy efficiency, will TVs go the way of refrigerators?

The California Energy Commission on Friday published a proposal to set efficiency standards for televisions, which are fast becoming one of the biggest energy consumers in homes.

The regulations mandate that retailers carry TVs with 33 percent lower energy consumption ratings starting in 2011, followed by more stringent levels in 2013. The policy, which is expected to be approved by the Energy Commission in November, will save households about $30 a year and the state $8.1 billion.

The move is significant because California's efficiency policies have been able to ratchet down household energy consumption without sacrificing product features in the past. An often-cited example is that tough energy efficiency codes on refrigerators in the state have helped keep per capita electricity consumption steady since the 1970s, even though electricity use from other appliances keeps rising.

With so many consumers buying new flat-screen TVs, households are taking on a significant new energy "load" which can be as much as a refrigerator. The growing use of consumer electronics overall--game consoles, cell phones, set-top boxes, and the like--means that these devices already represent 15 percent of people's electricity bills, according to the International Energy Agency.

The Consumer Electronics Association is opposed to the California Energy Commission's TV standards, the industry group said in a statement on Friday. The CEA said that it is better to rely on consumer demand to drive innovation in energy efficiency rather than regulations.

An article in The New York Times on Sunday pointed out that there are efficiency standards in home appliances such as refrigerators, but manufacturers have derailed previous efforts to set efficiency standards in consumer electronics.

See CNET's energy-efficient guide for TVs here.

[rmasu]

I'm never a big fan of government regulation but when the set-top box from your cable company draws 46 Watts when turned on and 45 Watts turned off you know it's time for regulation. This is for a Motorola 6416 HD DVR box provided by Comcast. There no technical reasons why it can't be 25 Watts while active and less than 1 Watt when it's turned "off". Motorola executives went before a House committee a few years back and argued it's technologically impossible. BS.

[Joe Real]

Take your pick:

a) They actually are required by the Government to have those set top boxes eavesdrop on each household. It is tuned to listen to possible terrorist conversations, and so they needed the power. When "turned off", it is only the LED indicator that is turned off, so you save only one watt. But it is actually operation Big Brother....

b) They actually use these boxes to manipulate TV show ratings, so they can have better negotiating power. By keeping it active behind a turned-off LED, they are actually "playing" whatever channel they want to boost the ratings.

c) The executives want to save a couple of Starbucks coffee. They haven't found anybody in China to redesign the set-top boxes for the price of Starbucks coffee. Why fix when it ain't broke and spend more money when we are already raking the profits?

[Joe Real]

While I applaud the efforts of California, I find it illogical to spend $3,000 every two years to buy a more energy efficient TV in order to save $30/year in terms of energy. So perhaps if I replace my TV every 100 years, the energy savings would start to make sense. In reality it only make sense to replace when they're broken, and the savings of $30/year doesn't justify the premium unless the newer more energy efficient TV's are priced nearly the same (comparable features and the difference in energy). With many people abandoning California and moving elsewhere, I am not sure if there will be a great market for the more energy efficient TV's, and thus we have wasted legislative resources by adding another complexity to the existing laws, and whose benefits are not worth it.

[Joe Real]

While this regulation is not worth to ordinary household, think about the sales tax revenue if you were to replace your TV as often as the regulation changes. Aside from this added sales tax revenue stream by replacing the lower energy efficient TV's, I am at a loss as to why it would really save the state $8.1 Billion. There are about 35 million people in California and perhaps living in about 20 million households, as far as simple arithmetic goes, $30/household/year times 20 million households equals $600 million savings/year.

So where did the $8.1 Billion savings came from? The savings of not building nuclear plants needed to support the current number of lower efficient TV's?

[rmasu]

You're right that it's not logical to spend $3,000.00 to save $30/year and no one is asking you to do this. What they are saying is when your TV does die your new one will be more efficient.

There?s nothing exotic here. Once LCD TV?s with LED backlights take off the only way to improve efficiency is to reduce screen brightness. All that takes is for the energy efficiency modes that many LCD?s already have is to be turned on by default. Hopefully you can turn them off and enjoy a bright picture if that's what you want. If they force you to live with a dark picture I?ll be really ticked. People just need to be reminded of the low flow toilet mess and what a stink that created (no pun intended!). The better place for energy savings is reducing the standby power consumption to under 1 Watt which is very achievable. The designed engineers want to do this they just need a reason to force management to let them.

[dowell100]

No one is going to be required to spend money on a new TV with greater energy efficiency. If you happen to buy a new TV in 2015 it will have the greater efficiency, but you can use the old one as long as you want, energy efficient or not.

I don't know that the buying cycle for TVs is, but probably 10-15 years. People may buy sooner because of flat screens, but they may delay longer due to the economy. But if they pass this law tomorrow, there will be little energy saving in the first 5-7 years. Another farce from California government.

[Joe Real]

We have some problems with the scale of savings and the prices. If this were CFL and incandescent bulbs, both of which are priced under $2, the $ amount of energy savings is tremendous compared to the purchase price. Now throw-in the very expensive LED into the mix, it is not easily justifiable.

Typically these TV's are between $1,000-$5,000. The amount of yearly savings would be negligible to the purchase price, and are harder to justify by the savings they bring.

And as some of you pointed out, it is better to tackle to improve the efficiencies when the devices are in standby modes. These are the vampires of electricity. Yes, in our today's technological advancements, there is no technological reason why our engineers can't design them to be more efficient when in standby mode. There are far better energy savings here than the big screen TV's. The only problem is that most of these devices are provided for free by the cable companies, or part of their lucrative monthly rentals, and it is going to cost them to change or redesign these vampires. While it would benefit the whole society at large, the cable companies are resisting any changes and so the wasted energy drained by the vampire machines will continue, because the cost of these wasted energy are shouldered by the households and not by the cable companies.

[mlamonica]

Just to be clear, this regulation does NOT cover existing TVs, only TVs sold after 2011. From the first paragraph of regulation proposal:

The proposed energy efficiency standards would cover new televisions offered for sale in California beginning in 2011 and 2013.

[biffhenerson]

Leave it to big government to force us into crappy small death trap cars and dim 19" televisions. Reminds me of Russia in the 70's. Go California!!! They can't even pay their bills and they are worried about me wasting energy. What a joke.

[ledhead1962]

One of the biggest problems with corporations is there is no goal that garners attention/action beyond increased profits. There are very few instances where products could be made more efficient/environmentally sound that was adopted by the corporation without either increasing profit or mandated by government intervention. I can already hear the the "well that's the definition of capitalism" sector piping up. Yes, I know this, but my point is that unless they are made to they won't take the measures that should/need to be taken. So lets stop being surprised and just hit them with the regulations already. Look at the uproar from the auto industry when Calif. adopted emission standards, did they stop selling cars in Calif.? This example extrapolates exactly when discussing any market being exploited. They really, really want your money and will figure out how to get it, no matter the regulations. They are greedy, selfish entities and need to be treated as such, expecting them to act otherwise is just dumb!

[Joe Real]

As I have implied, the regulation is worthwhile if the premium added to more energy efficient appliances is far less than the total savings for the average life (including fashion trend life) of the appliance. This is especially true for new buyers, or for replacing broken appliances. As always, if both features are comparable, the newer more energy efficient models would be more expensive. And you have to justify that premium in terms of savings.

What I can't reconcile up to this point stated in this article is the $8.1 Billion savings when it only saves $30/household in California. In 2008 census, there were 36,756,666 Californians. Even if each one were to switch to a more energy efficient TV, that would only be a savings of $1.1 Billion.

The fact is not every one will buy new TV's only very few of the total current households, perhaps for replacement or fashion updates. The current trend with the new generation is more time away from the energy guzzling TV unto iPhones, Netbooks and other internet devices that have a lot lower energy consumption. So we don't need new power plants just because we have more energy guzzling TV's, they wouldn't be used as much as the previous generations did.

[carlhage]

The root of the problem is that people don't know how much they would spend for electricity. Refrigerators have a label, and you can compare the efficiency. After energy labeling was mandated, the average consumption for refrigerators dropped by a factor of 4. The new TVs use more than refrigerators, and still escape labeling. The shocker is that some TVs will use $10,000 in electricity over a 20 year life for people in CA over the baseline rate! Also, the difference in efficient and inefficient TVs is a factor of 10 in power for the same size.

Sure we can regulate, but these standards are just a minimum, set easy to implement (230 TVs already meet it), and aren't set to optimally balance increase in purchase price. With energy labeling (like refrigerators and cars EPA mileage) people can decide. Lowering TV power by 30W is equivalent to spending $100-200 in new power plant construction, and might cost $10 in increased purchase price. With no incentive to conserve, manufactures just waste power like crazy.

rmasu's DVR shouldn't be 45W or even 25W-- a laptop is way less than that already. It probably could be done for 10W on and .01W off with no increase in cost, and could probably be as little as 5W with a modest increase in cost.

[SactoGuy018]

I do think most TVs will get the Energy Star Version 5.0 certification by 2012, which should meet the California standard fairly easily given the pretty restrictive power consumption requirements of this standard. This will finally spur the likes of LG, Samsung and Sony to finally get large-screen OLED displays to the market.

[21st Hermit]

Totally agree!!! My Dish DVR consumes 26W just plugged into the wall, playing a show or recording.

The consumer electronics industry has had plenty of time to get ahead of the curve on energy wasting eToys. My belief is that the refrigerator model is slightly better than direct regulation. Simply require that ALL electrical devices carry a energy sticker. That sticker would have to show the ghost loads when "off" as well as typical on power use. Then consumers could make intelligent choices.

[MagiMamoru]

What happen to private industry taking care of things?

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/03/walmart_announc.php

[llungster]

The response from industry on this regulatory proposal is on par with just about any regulatory action that is good for society. The complaint is always about the cost of meeting the requirements and yet each and every time such requirements are made, industry manages to meet and often exceed these goals. Company worry about regulations that hurt innovation but often what they need is a swift kick in the rear to get their attention.

That said, consumers need a kick in the butt too. I'm all for EnergyStar (or similar) stickers on TVs and video game consoles that tell consumers how much power is consumed. Computers are another power hog. We wouldn't need to keep them in sleep mode if they'd simply boot faster (or if we'd just be more patient and give it time to boot). But any sticker needs to make sense - a rating that says "6.5" has little meaning. People need to see it in dollars and cents because let's face it, both industry and consumers are money-centric.

Lastly, manufacturers need some common sense. I have a toaster that has a blue light on it even when it's not in use. Why ? It's not useful as a night light, there's no remote control for it so why is it drawing power all the time when all it does is make toast for a few minutes a day? So I only plug it in when I need to use it.

[USDecliningDollar]

In another thread about super sized TVs several weeks ago I posted the following:

"Interesting that people say "what business does the government have in telling me how big of a TV I can buy?" Just wait till the smart grid rolls out - maybe you can buy a 60" TV, but you will possibly have to decide between running the TV or the fridge."

We are headed down a slippery slope ...