Low Impact

A hallmark of modern life is the TV screen as the centre of the living room, and the primary evening activity. Even the “Friends” sitcom pointed out this fact with Joey once commenting: “No TV?! Then what is all your furniture pointed at?”

But as TV’s have taken on a bigger role in our lives, they’ve also started to consume more power. There’s a few reasons for this. One is simply a matter of size. The undeniable trend in televisions has been for them to get bigger. As people chase the cinematic experience in their own living room, people have moved from 50cm screens to 100cm as a minimum. All that extra screen real-estate needs more electricity to power it.

New technologies also play a role. Plasma and LCD systems now enable us to have televisions that are only a few inches deep, with great clarity. But the flip-side is that they require more power. Plasma televisions in particular, despite recent improvements, require a great deal more power to excite the gas used to produce the picture.

There’s also other, smaller factors. For instance, modern TVs are designed to be perpetually in “standby” mode, waiting to be activated by remote control. So at 3am in the morning, when everyone is asleep, the trusty television set is using a certain amount of power just waiting for someone to come along and turn it on at the remote.

So how much power are we talking here? Well, lets take some modest assumptions. Assume that our imaginary family has only one TV that they watch 340 days a year (25 days a year are spent on holiday!). Each evening, the family switch on the television at 6:30pm, and turn it off after the movie at 10:30. So that’s 4 hours a night.

Electricity consumption varies by model, but as an example a 40″ (100cm) LCD TV will use around 200 watts. Over a year, with the assumptions above, that will work out to be 272 kwH. Depending on how your power is obtained, that’s a quarter of a tonne of carbon dioxide emissions, contributing to climate change.

These are pretty modest assumptions, and the numbers can get worse, quickly. If our hypothetical family have the TV on for an extra 2 hours a day (the kids turn it on after school!), and Mum and Dad have lashed out on a 50″ plasma model, that electricity consumption can jump to 650 kwH per year - over half a tonne of CO2 being emitted into the atmosphere. I could do the sums for families where there’s a separate TV in the kitchen, living room and kid’s bedroom, but I’m sure you get the point!

So what can you do to reduce the power you spend watching TV? One small step is to turn the TV off at the wall when you’re not using it. This will stop “phantom power consumption” where your TV uses power just waiting for the remote control to turn it on again. Its a little thing, but can make a surprising difference. My TV uses 7 watts in standby mode, which works out to be 60 KwH a year.

You can make a far bigger difference by taking power consumption into account when purchasing a new TV. LCD screens typically use less power than Plasma. Importantly, smaller screens use less power than big ones. You might want to ask whether you need that extra few inches of screen size, just to beat the next-door neighbours. (Personally, if I want a big screen experience, the local cinema can’t be beat: none of my friends have a 25 metre screen yet!). Ask to see the instruction manual of the TV when you’re looking to make a purchase - typically they list the power consumption in a table at the back.

But if you really want to be radical, you could try…..watching less TV! It might sound shocking, but it could be worth a shot. An evening with a book and a CD playing can be a nice, unwinding night in. You could have some friends around for dinner. Or dig out that old Monopoly or Scrabble board game and challenge the family. You never know - you might actually enjoy it!

Categories: efficiency, energy, environment, green, reduce

Tags: power consumption, reduce, television