Game Consoles Are Multi-Million Dollar Energy Wasters?

GamesIndustry.biz has details from a UK government report on energy wasted by consoles in standby mode. The information comes from a larger study by the government on energy wasted by consumer electronic devices, and confirms statistics gather here in the states. From the article: "Last month, a group of bloggers in the United States reported that while the original PlayStation leaked just 0.2W - accounting for some 1.752kWh wasted each year - the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 2 both leak a massive 2W, or 17.52kWh each year. The energy review proposes a number of measures to minimize energy waste, including working with electronics companies to phase out costly standby routines that drain energy while the device is not in use." The Gamers with Jobs site has some insightful commentary on the issue.

Comments

Hmm

[dolson]

I wonder what this means for the Nintendo Wii, which has that 24-hours always-connected crap that we really don't need. Anyone know what the stats are supposed to be for the Wii's power leakage? If you can call it a leakage.

I vote for "always on"

[rai4shu2]

Maybe all these consoles should be folding@home when not in use.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folding_at_home

Yes...

[The Living Fractal]

I'm all for making the consoles more efficient. Wasting energy is no good.

But as long as we're talking about wasting energy... Let's talk television. I have a hundred channels, and nothing is on worth watching. Unless I have erectile dysfunction, in which case I get tons of relevant programming in the form of commercials.

Seriously, TV, with the exception of RARE broadcasting from Discovery, History, and PBS, is mostly garbage. I'd hope that people would choose to exercise their minds via playing games rather than watch TV any day, even if it means we have to burn a little more midnight oil to get there.

TLF

Re:If by multimillion dollar you mean $2-$3 a year

[maynard]

That's just for a single PS2 / 360. There have been well over 100 million ps2 units shipped since launch. Now you're talking $350 million / yr electric consumption just for unutilized PS2s. Add another $700 million for 200 million PCs when turned off. Add all those VCRs blinking 12:00, DVD players, chargers for cell phones, razors, laptops, etc etc etc.

Let's conservatively guess in the US we're talking $1 Billion (1000 million) / yr. Compare that to a total US GDP of ~ $10 Trillion (ten thousand billion)... you're talking about 1 ten thousandth of US GDP / yr wasted. Actually... pretty significant.

Re:Let's put things into perspective here.

[cliffski]

And while your at it, throw the incandescent bulb in the bin and replace it with a vastly more cost-effective energy efficient lightbulb.

Re:seriously, they're worried about 2 watts?

[Jeff DeMaagd]

That's true. I remember reading an article about legislation that left air conditioner efficiency alone in favor of worrying about the efficiency of ceiling fans, and the some of the fans in question in the article weren't pure fans but fans with light fixtures. If you apply Amdahl's law, you worry about the big components of energy use first, especially in terms of what is the biggest energy gain you can get for the least expense.

That can be a bit misleading

[joemommasfat]

Something that never gets mentioned is that energy doesn't just disappear. All the energy that enters your house is eventually turned into heat. So this is only really "wasted energy" when it's hot outside. People with electric heating could leave all their lights and appliances on all winter (or summer for our friends down under) long and the only effect would be the heater kicking in less often.

Re:Mob Rule

[smooth wombat]

we should all try to be conscious of the power that we use and do what we can to cut that down...

Nice idea but since both electrical and natural gas rates are, for the most part, regulated industries, you can end up with situations where a company wanted to raise rates because people were conserving too much. Don't believe me? Read on.

Re:I gave CF a chance

[jandrese]

Dude, stop buying your replacement Flourescent bulbs from the antique shop. Instant-on has been a standard feature on the good bulbs for years now, and it's not hard to find white balanced bulbs either. Sizewise they are larger, but I havn't run into too many fixtures that are too small for them yet.

I reccomend the Commercial Electric bulbs sold by Home Depot. I've been using them for years and have been quite happy with the results. You can even get candelabra bulbs sometimes, although the failure rate on those bulbs is fairly high. The only incandesant bulbs I have left in my house are the Refrigerator bulb (Flourescents still hate cold temperatures), the one in the trouble light (gets broken a lot, don't want to waste $5 on each bulb), and the one I use for painting.

Don't forget that in the summer you're saving on those energy costs twice with Flourescents, since the A/C has to work to get any heat generated by your bulbs out of the house. It's still a win in the winter too since Central air systems are more efficent than resistive heaters like light bulbs. It is a big investment up front, but those bulbs not only pay for themselves in energy costs, but also in their low maintenenc--if you replace all of your bulbs at once you won't have to touch them again for years, and you can use all of those half dead bulbs in your trouble light.

Meanwhile, you probably use a lot more

[WillAffleckUW]

Just powering the giant non-LCD screens on your old boxen.

Heck, if you want to count watts, just look at your light bulbs - average US household uses more than 2000 watts with standard bulbs - if you swapped those for compact flourescents you'd be using 200-300 watts, saving more than 1700 watts, which is a much higher amount than 2 watts, or even 20 watts.

Let's put things in perspective here, people. Your air conditioning for the current global-warming-induced heat waves uses many times the power consumption of your game consoles.

Now, if we just bough LED lights, we'd use even less power.