What it costs to run a Big Screen TV

After glancing at the chart below, you may figure that your TVs energy consumption isn’t that important. And, depending on the size of your wallet, you may be right. But, if you calculate the annual energy consumption over average lifecycle of a TV – 6 years – the cost becomes more significant. For instance, running a 42 inch LCD will cost you around $300! So, TVs are no slouches when it comes to energy consumption and in some cases consume more energy than your refrigerator.

The figures in the table are based on a TV running for 8 hours a day (yes, a typical U.S. household watches that much TV!), 365 days a year and an average energy price of 11.34 cents per kilowatt hour.

It's not surprising that bigger screens of all types consume more electricity than smaller ones. With LCD TVs, resolution has almost no effect on energy consumption because all pixels in the screen are illuminated by the same backlight. But with plasma sets 1080p models use more energy than 720p models. That’s because 1080p sets have more pixels, each of which is illuminated separately. With LCD sets, the higher the backlight setting, the more electricity used.

Even if the cost differences of a few dollars a month don’t matter much to your budget, keep in mind that the millions of TVs used in American households consume a huge amount of energy. So, there’s obviously an environmental advantage to using a more-efficient TV.

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