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.

If you're still interested in this topic and would like to participate in some marketing research I'm conducting, please take 5 minutes to fill in my green marketing survey.

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The World's First O-Watt PC

Fujitsu Siemens Computers recently introduced the world’s first 0-Watt PC . The 0-Watt PC does not consume any power in off-mode or hibernating while still remaining administrable and available to receive updates.

This could translate into cost savings for some companies. According to the latest Gartner research, companies with 2,500 PCs can save more than 40,000 dollars a year by using PC Power Management Activation – and another 6,500 Dollars by turning off or unplugging machines while they are not needed.

Many companies don’t shut down machines because they fear they will lose productivity as updates will need to be carried out during working hours. The 0-Watt PC Fujitsu Siemens solves this dilemma, because while its off or hibernating, the PC remains administrable.

Improvements in standby power consumption won’t save the world, but it’s still an interesting breakthrough nonetheless.