A post by Maynard
I read this Drudge-linked article from the Los Angeles Times about California’s plans to mandate “green” TVs.
Setting aside the big issue of the nanny state and ever-growing bureaucratic incursions into the lives of a once-free people (all for our own good, of course), I’m genuinely interested in using energy-efficient appliances. I want to save money and feel smug, so I bought one of these Kill A Watt Electricity Monitors. It displays power usage for any plug-in appliance, both in terms of immediate draw (watts) and cumulative consumption (kilowatt hours).
A quick lesson: The key questions are, 1) How many watts, and 2) For how long? You are billed by the “kilowatt hour” (which is a thousand watts for one hour, or a hundred watts for ten hours, or 1 watt for a thousand hours, or any combination thereof). A kilowatt hour may cost you from 7 cents to 40 cents, depending upon local (mostly political) factors.
The Times article is misleading and stupid in that it proclaims the usual platitudes without conveying any understanding of what is good or bad about the various display technologies. In fact most of the newer TVs are much more efficient than the old tube TVs; however they still use more power because they’re grown so much bigger. When you replaced your old computer CRT monitor with an LCD of the same size, you cut the power consumption in half.
This article includes a chart of power requirements of a variety of TVs. The averages in terms of watts per square inch for projector versus LCD versus plasma are about .13, .28, and .34, although the individual brands and models vary. This shows the projector TVs are more than twice as efficient as LCD or plasma, which are only about 20% different from each other. But projector TVs are dying out.
If you care about these numbers, then buy a smaller screen or look for a projector. But none of this really matters if you don’t run your TV very much. It’s only significant for machines that are on most of the time.
Also, it’s worth remembering that the greenest thing you can do is use your existing equipment as long as it works, even if a replacement would be more efficient. You’re saving money and resources by not buying new stuff.
Don’t put too much weight on the data provided by the Kill-A-Watt devices. They are highly inaccurate with anything other than a simple incandescent lightbulb. Because of the nonlinearity of the devices you can’t even use them to compare one appliance to the other although that’s how they are marketed. Quite often the device will show one appliance to have higher energy consumption than another when the opposite is the case if measured with an appropriate meter.
Unfortunately, other than the watt hour meter outside your house there isn’t an affordable power meter available to the consumer.
Several manufacturers do make appropriate meters. One of the cheapest is the Voltech PM100…but it’s around $2k.
I don’t have stake in Voltech. I’m an EE who designs power electronics for a large telecom equipment manufacturer.
Voltech PM100
http://tinyurl.com/26pds8
I guess this means I can’t buy the super duper large LCD screen the Chinese used in the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympics. This now explains why my lights were flickering during the show.
oh i thought this was a differant story. i thought this was about this new Greenchannel that has recently poped up on my tv channels. I watched it for half hour, its truly a mindnumbing channel.
In my industry association, the most common topic is how to make the most cost-effective move out of California, and what are the most business friendly states with the best educated labor forces. This is the kind of crap, along with all the taxes, fees, licences and penalties that drives businesses out. The CA legislature believes that the state can have an economy based on everybody entertaining each other and selling each other insurance. California became an economic powerhouse on industrial manufacturing and agriculture. One party rule is gutting this great state.
I live in northern Alabama.
My next door neighbor moved his company and 22 employees (4 didn’t want to move) to this area due to the unfriendly business climate in CA. He paid transportation costs for every employee and even helped offset selling homes at a loss. Now they have larger and nicer homes, higher salaries, and a higher standard of and lower cost of living. His business recouped all the relocation cost in under a year.
One of my technicians is in his 60’s and relocated from CA about 5 years ago. He didn’t want to face retirement living in a hovel of a house and eating dog food. He researched several locations where to move, flipped a coin, and relocated site unseen and resume in hand.
They all miss the ocean and snow topped mountains but made the choice of what they say is a better daily life.
Here’s just a little rah-rah to validate my choice of residence 🙂 🙂
Forbes: Huntsville, AL #1 Place to Live in a Recession
http://tinyurl.com/6t6ono
They show a nice picture of one of the city parks 😉
Forbes: Huntsville, AL #6 in Best Places For Business And Careers
http://tinyurl.com/6vbsoc