Cable Boxes and DVD Players Burning Energy

[Dennis Alwon]

I came across this article today about the energy consumption of these cable boxes etc. Is it really possible that they draw this much energy? Below is the first paragraph. Here is the article

Those little boxes that usher cable signals and digital recording capacity into televisions have become the single largest electricity drain in many American homes, with some typical home entertainment configurations eating more power than a new refrigerator and even some central air-conditioning systems.

 

[kwired]

I came across this article today about the energy consumption of these cable boxes etc. Is it really possible that they draw this much energy? Below is the first paragraph. Here is the article

Unplug all your devices you have that are supposed to be energy hogs for one month and tell us if your electric bill was impacted very much.

I did not read the article in the link but have read many articles with this as the topic. I can agree that with the millions of devices that are out there there is probably significant load on the power generation plants because of this but I disagree with it being a significant portion of most individual dwelling services.

 

[George Stolz]

My Apple TV draws 48W. (source)

I'd love to have the matching 45W A/C and refrigerator. :happyno:

 

[__dan]

It looks like a pretty good article, specifically targeting cable DVR's and settop boxes that leave the disk drives and cpu / com chips at full power 7/24. Always on for instant response when the user wants tv. Better than previous articles targeting phantom power draw from blinking leds on appliances in sleep state. They're saying the current generation cable boxes don't go into sleep state.

The numbers they extrapolated look a little high, claiming 160 million in use cable boxes when the Census claims 130 million housing units and the 446 kWh claimed annual consumption for a DVR + cable box, the number backs out to 51 watts 7/24/365. Could be a little high but not by a lot. That's the combination of the hard drive spinning, the cpu and tuner always on, and a probably cheesy power supply / voltage regulator chip. The boxes must run warm.

51 watts 7/24 at .12$ / kwh = $4.40 monthly. If the device went into sleep, the total of every device, digital clock, microwave lcd display, in the house in sleep might be $4 annually.

They're right on about the fridge. I had a 20+ year old unit that I knew was hosing me on the electric bill. I hit a slickdeal for a new fridge, gorgeous unit, and my electric bill dropped a solid 25$ / month. Basically a free fridge after the savings. Don't have the paperwork but the yellow energy star label on the fridge claimed some ridiculously low number like 86$ annually for electricity consumption.

 

[gar]

110627-1459 EDT

Dennis:

Yes, entertainment centers are a substantial load when on continuously.

The article is in the ballpark on values.

Technically there is no problem with designing units that can be instant on when turned on. It is not a terribly high cost to do so. It would actually cost nowhere near $300, and a good part of 300 could be saved in a year.

Fundamentally the components that would allow instant on have existed for better than 30 years. Not as relatively inexpensive then as today. Dallas Semi made very efficient real time clocks as far back as about 1980. In 1975 I started using CMOS memory battery backed up memory chips, expensive but allowed retention of data parameters when power was shut off.

One does not need to watch the KWH meter to determine the energy consumption, just get a Kill-A-Watt Ez for about $30 at Home Depot and check the power consumption. Multiply the power by 8.76 to get an estimate of the KWH/year.

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