California enforcing TV-set efficiency laws
 

story here http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8367545.stm

I've heard those plasmas can be quite wasteful.

I wonder how a 60's color set woudl be treated, I don't know what a modern big TV pulls wattage but a mid 60's color has to be in the 350-450 watt range.

I know it only on new tv's but sooner or later...

I can hear the govenator now "No plasma tv's in the 300 watt range" as he walks into a TV store and is talking to the guy behnd the counter (in my best terminator voice).

This is more pointless legislation. Around by me you hardly see any tv that is a plasma for sale. they are all lcd. As soon as prices come down everyone is going to go with LED anyways.

FYI: I see CT-100 caretaler Dave Arnold is quoted in the article:

"It could drive up costs," said Dave Arland, who represents the plasma television industry.

"The ones that are super energy efficient are the ones that are more pricey."

Dave attended the 2008 ETF convention.

Pete

I hear about that and that's why I'm glad I don't live in California (no offence to anyone).. But it makes you think tho, first "the man" tells you what kind of lightbulbs you can get and now there telling you what TVs you can buy; WHAT THE HELL IS NEXT!!! Wait.. I know the answer to that... :worried:

Just a friendly reminder to keep Politics out of this or it will get locked.

As Eric says..... I'll keep this factual and leave my opinion out of it.

I sure hope that if they pass a buyback, or something to take high-wattage TVs out of homes, that they will put a year model limit on it, or specify plasma only. As far as I know, it's aimed at plasma sets which act as electric furnaces in cold weather. In the cash for clunkers, they put a limit of 15 or 20 years, so thank Goodness, no rare collector cars, and no Diesel cars got crushed. I'd cry if they put out a $500 bounty to smash CTC-5s, or 350-watt RCA B&W projection sets from the 40s. Right now, I'm told it's only a ban on new sales. Nothing said about a buyback or any laws about possession or usage of currently in-service sets.

Charles

I'm sure it only applies to new sales. It probably won't be much of an issue since efficient sets are becoming the norm.
With Laser and OLED just around the corner Plasma will probably be obsolete soon anyway.

Glad I got mine when I did though, even if it uses 600 watts (at most) it's only on a few hours in the evening anyway, a drop in the bucket compared to using the A/C when it's 105 outside.

Some of the larger plasmas do use 600-700 watts. Quite wasteful.

And this is over what a standard 23" tube tv uses..

Some interesting reading on the subject.

http://reviews.cnet.com/green-tech/tv-power-efficiency/

http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10...in;contentBody

http://reviews.cnet.com/green-tech/t...?tag=mncol;txt

http://reviews.cnet.com/green-tech/t...tBody;nextPage

One other thing, maybe I'm the exception but when I have the TV on every light in the house is off, the A/C is off when possible and the house fan is on for cooling, offsetting at least some of the energy use.

I almost never go the the Movie Theater anymore so I'm also saving Gas. :)

Well, it can indeed be scary when the man steps in but this could be a good thing. I never cared for plasmas anyways, and others have noted, LED will likely be the next wave once the prices come down. As far as new tv's around here, well yeah they've mostly all been LCD sets.

My main set is over 25 years old and uses roughly 150w for a 19inch color crt screen. Compare that to my hifi which uses almost 900w as a whole at maximum output.

Think of it this way -- the larger sets are an inadvertant fire hazard. If the TV alone pulls 600 watts, the home theater receiver as much as 200, plus the other assorted components (DVD player, satellite/cable box) for another 200. You're looking at 10 amps or more.

How are they plugged in? 9 times out of 10, the "average" consumer uses a well-populated power strip which could easily overload if it's one of those Chinese Walmart specials that sell for less that $5. In my experience, the usage of circuit breakers on power strips appears to be waning significantly, and all but absent on the lower end of the price scale. Thus the safety issue.

California is burdoned with the gargantuan regulatory environment regarding the building of new power plants. That and the NIMBY's who won't let one be build lest it offend them as they drive down the freeway in a traffic jam and see it. The easiest thing for them to do as a state is to encourage conservation, aiming at the biggest power hogs in the house one at a time. They've already got efficiency requirements for ACs and furnaces. What's left?

HOLY GUACAMOLE! A 1960s roundie is about 1/3 of that! There are heaters and swimming pool motors that use less. I just looked at the 27" Toshiba flat CRT set which is in our breakfast room, and it's 72 watts. WITH vcr & dvd built in.

Electricity in our area, if in tier 2, is 41c/KwH. So to run your set for 10 hours costs $2.46 (10 hours @ 600w @ .41c/KwH x 6). So if it were a typical family, and the set is on 10 hours/day all month: $76.26 per month (30-day month). Now figuring in Tier 3 penalties, if you run into them, double or triple that! (nobody uses tier 1, since that's only about enough power to run a desk lamp and a dorm-size fridge). We're always a few KwH into tier 3, no matter how careful.

Charles

While I am not a fan of any entity dictating to anyone what kind of tv you may purchase....I am not that upset about kicking the industry in gear to tone down the power consumption of these new tvs...including LCD's.

Yes, the legislation includes LCD sets. According to what I read, it is mainly going after LCD and Plasma sets as crt sets are pretty much dead to the world...popularly.

I purchased two Sharp LCD sets, one a 32" and one a 46" and I was absolutely amazed to find out they draw 280 and 350 watts respectively. HOLY COW!!!!!

My 42 year old RCA Combo with the CTC-21 chassie only uses 325 watts (350 w/remote). I felt "Are you kidding me!" It is ridiculous in this day and age that a tv should pull so much. My 36" JVC CRT set only pulls 180 watts by comparison. And for Plasma sets to pull 600 + watts....there is really no excuse for that.....I mean really...6 amps? Most washing machines and vacuum cleaners don't pull more than that. sheesh :no:

LCD sets can run off of AA batteries, why should the tv's be so power hungry? IMHO Just laziness in the design department. There is really no reason for that kind of power consumption....and no wonder the caps crap out....that is a lot of juice for those little, cheap caps to deal with.

Tone down power consumption and reliability will probably be boosted.

Roy

And while they are at it they should cut down on RF noise emissions as well.

One thing that I haven't seen mentioned in the discussion of flat panel TV and electrical consumption: The huge number of flat TVs that are on 24/7, with nobody watching them, in stores, offices, restaurants, etc, even when they are closed, and some of these are locked in rooms which may have people in them maybe five times a year!

There is one at my work that is on all night like that locked in a display case. It displays children's artwork, how exciting and worth the waste of electricity.

AFAIK 600 watts for a Plasma is the worst case scenario, i.e. bright white screen, average is probably considerably less.

LCDs use the same amount no matter what, unless it's a dimming type set.

Mitsubishi has come out with a DLP set using Lasers for the light source, it's super efficient using 135 watts for a 58" screen!

Reports are it has an outstanding picture but the drawback is it's $7000 price tag, this will probably come down of course as electronics tend to do.

Cool Eric. Haven't heard about that Mitsubishi yet. I like the look of Samsung's new LED models but they too are pricey at ~3999 for a 55incher IIRC.

About the RF noise, it certainly would be nice to see that issue worked on. The powerlines are getting very noisy due to all of the computers and related equipment and now all the tv's and other entertainment electronics utilizing a switchmode supply....

Well, they better not even think about public information displays, then. Lets see, for a while I had 240 29" color CRT sets, 40 15" color CRT sets, and at least 60 23" B&W sets, all on 24 hours per day, 365 days per year, and that was just ONE airport terminal! :)

Some of the 29" and 15" sets have been retired since the peak, though.

Where do you see the majority of CRT use now? I think most of the major airports are starting to use flat panels.

Have you tried turning down the backlight? (Assuming the Sharps have that - a Viewsonic I bought had no backlight control so I got rid of it.) My 40" Sony LCD will draw a maximum of 225 Watts up at "5" which is way too bright anyway, down at 2 or 3 where I watch it, it only draws 90-100 Watts, produces a bright enough picture with excellent black levels, and runs a heck of a lot cooler.

...which is why I'm stocking up on incandescents. Seriously.

Tom

I'm sure y'all know this but the CFL bulbs can be a hazmat-grade mess when they break since they release mercury everywhere. Progress? hmm...I like the warmth of incandescents too

If that's true, there's a lot of mercury in the ground here. Each time one of those bulbs melts down, the tube falls out and smashes on the ground below the fixture. I quit using them inside the house after our barn almost burned down from a CFL bulb bursing into flames. Scary!

Charles

i have a few of those lcd pocket sets.
lucky to get an hour of play on 4 aa alks.
still energy hogs.

Another issue.....
 

...is standby power. I have a Mitsubishi DLP from 2004. The silly thing uses about 60 watts when it is off. There is a fan on the chassis that runs 24/7 to keep it from overheating. I'm pretty sure that they cut that back a lot in their second generation DLPs. In the summer that's wasted power, but in the winter it contributes to keeping the house warm, so I don't worry too much about it.

:yes::D

Things have improved since 2004. I can't even measure the standby power of my 2008 model year Sony LCD set, as it is so low it does not register on my Kill-A-Watt meter. Speaking of Mitsubishi DLP, I still remember a friend calling me on New Years Eve a couple of years ago in a panic trying to find a replacement lamp for their 2004-05 model Mitsu DLP set as the lamp had just died and I was working for a Mitsu-authorized service center at the time (like I can go up there at 9PM open the shop and grab a lamp from stock :no: sorry.. ). He seems to get 3000-4000 hrs out of each one. Pretty expensive to run one of older Mitsu DLP sets.

Two friends at work have 2005 57" Mitsu DLP sets and both have had serious problems with bulb life, like 6 months to a year at best.

One of them developed a PS problem and he replaced it with a Samsung LED Set.

The 50" Sony LCD projector I bought in 2004 is still running on it's original lamp with close to 10,000 hours on it, it's a 100W bulb compared to the Mitsu's 150W so that might be why it's lasts longer.

My new LG 50" plasma set is Energy Star rated, but the owners manual says the rating is for the economy settings only, and that deviating from them could cause consumption to run above the Energy Star compliant levels, without saying what they are. I've already lost the owner's manual, but it seems the rating was about 275 watts.

It's the tyranny of mathematics - the brightness of the screen is proportional to lumens per square inch - power-draw goes up as the square of the linear size. Designers are reducing the number of watts per square inch required year by year, but the old battery powered small screen handheld mentioned above is the technology that requires a whole lotta watts when you go to large screen.

I used to work at a company that made LCD cockpit displays and we used to have to fight for every bit of luminance in the backlight that we could get. The LCD uses a polarizer which is usually only 43% efficient and the colour filters at each pixel can bring the luminance down to a third of that. The obstruction from the gate and source lines and the polysilicon trnsistors themselves means the transmission is about 8%. In addition, there are retardation layers to permit the viewing angle to be as wide as other technologies. You need a minor thermonuclear event behind the screen to get sunlight readability (which is what we were interested in for aircraft use).

The power consumption is something many people would think of as a few more bucks off their budget, but the utilities no longer have the capacity to grow and Californians are going to have to learn to live with power allocations. Some people believe the correct answer is to raise the price of electricity or add a tax to the more wasteful TV's, but as with the gasoline crises, price did not really affect public behaviour, only rationing did.