high definition energy guzzling

Several important news stories appeared in the last few days. Yesterday I saw a news report on California's new emission rules where many people voiced support for tougher legislation while standing in front of big SUV's and pickup trucks. I kept thinking the reporter should say, look around buddy. If you drove a smaller, more sensible and more practical vehicle, we wouldn't be having this conversation. But at least the consumer wanted to do something. The big car makers and their unions do not.

And then the Wall Street Journal, in an article about Saudi oil use, confirmed what we all know. Higher prices mean less consumption. Our Saudi friends, having the cheapest energy on the planet, are wasting it like there is no tomorrow. The saudis consume more than 32 barrels of oil per person per year. 60% of it goes to always-on air conditioning.

We "only" consume 25 per person per year. But there are 300 million of us versus only 24 of them. Yet they have grown from under 8 million to 24 in 30 years. And apparently there is no end in sight. Scary stuff!

But let's forget the Saudi's for a while and focus on the holiday spirit. That spirit is bringing another energy hog into our lives this Christmas. The monster HDTV. And how did we get there? Once again a familiar scenario played out. First people moved to replace old energy inefficient CRT's with newer LCD monitors. That was the good move. We went from 100W down to about 25W. It did not last long.

The move to LCD was not really fueled by energy efficiency, but more by bulk, heat, noise, etc. The energy savings were a bonus. Until someone started thinking, why not make the screens bigger and bring a movie theater into our house? We have this oversized house in any case, and all these rooms we hardly use, let's get a viewing room. And there you go. We replaced or are about to replace an item that consumed about 100W of energy with an item that uses in excess of 500W. That is what a large plasma screen uses. LCD's are a bit better and projection TV's better still, but even those exceed 100W rather handily. But HD doesn't stop there.

To view HD programs we need a box. Be it a cable box or a satellite box, take a look at the back. Chances are it too uses more than 100W up from 25W for earlier versions. Especially if it includes at DVR or TiVo. And that box stays on all day and all night. You can hear the disk spinning when it is off. So, whether on or "off" it consumes about the same amount of power. You may have noticed that off is acquiring a whole new meaning. It does not mean off like it used to. It means "ready to pounce the instant you need me." 100W around the clock is 2.4kW per day, versus 25W at 5 hours, or 125Wh. A 19-fold jump.

And what would an HDTV be without some form of audio amplification and surround sound? And there goes another 500W easily. And these devices too prefer to be on the ready. Ever touch one of these amps when they are off? Like radioactive materials, they are hot at all times of the day or night. Their consumption may drop a bit, but once again you are adding 19 extra hours of burn.

All this excess costs money of course. Every round the clock 100W you add costs you roughly $100 per year. And it adds on average about 1,100 pounds of CO2 to the atmosphere.

Let's do a little back of the envelope calculation here. Say you replace your old 28 inch box with cable with a new 60 inch plasma with HD receiver and surround sound with subwoofer. Here are some rough numbers, assuming your TV stays on for 5 hours a day as is apparently the average use.

Your old set and box used about 625 Wh per day or about 228 kWh per year. At 12c per kWh that is $27 per year. And at 1.34 lbs of CO2 per kWh that is 305 pounds of CO2.

Your new setup probably uses as much as 1,250W for the big screen, HD box, amplifier and subwoofer. That is 6.25kWh per day or ten times as much. The yearly cost is now $270 per year and you are emitting 3,050 lbs of CO2 to "enjoy" it.

But in reality the costs are MUCH higher. If your setup is in sleep mode or standby mode, the costs could be hundreds of dollars more. The cable box alone could cost you $120 per year, because DVR boxes use almost as much energy when they are off as they do when they are on. Instrument companies could save money by removing the switches because these really do not matter.

The real costs are more like $350 or about $1 a day. And that probably makes you laugh. What is $1 a day after all? Surely you deserve this much entertainment? Unfortunately it all adds up. To say nothing of pollution. Your home theater is now producing almost half as much CO2 as an average passenger car. Or a third as much as a light pickup truck.