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New Energy Efficiency Rules For TVs Sold In California
petehead writes "The LA Times reports on regulations expected to pass in 2009 that will not allow energy-inefficient TVs to be sold in the state. 'State regulators are getting ready to curb the growing power gluttony of TV sets by drafting the nation's first rules requiring retailers to sell only the most energy-efficient models, starting in 2011... The regulations would be phased in over two years, with a first tier taking effect on Jan. 1, 2011, and a more stringent, second tier on Jan. 1, 2013.'" According to the Energy Commission's estimates, purchasers of Tier 1-compliant TVs would shave an average of $18.48 off their residential electric bill in the first year of ownership.
We're getting to a point where items like TVs and game systems should have power consumption ratings on them in the store, like with many kitchen appliances.
You never expect irony, do you?
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Yep, you can save $18 and year and pay an extra hundred today. Sounds great for something like a TV that is only going to be used for 5 years or so anyway these days. Never mind that time value of money consideration. Thank you Nanny State for saving me from high energy bills, and myself.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Perhaps they should focus their energies (pun not intended) at something that would make a more substantial impact, such as CF or LED lighting...
...and then the utilities raise their prices by 19$ because they "lost" that money. Great...
DRV's that spin down the HD when they are off and have no planed shows coming up.
Your DVR doesn't know if your TV is on. How useful is a DVR which doesn't offer rewind, but only records scheduled programs?
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
$18.48 in just a year? That new LCD HDTV will practically pay for itself!
-Peter
And just when you think you recovered the cost of the TV, its time time to buy a new one! Oh, did I mention there is a special disposal fee for your old one?
Bearded Dragon
You'd think that I was stealing my electricity from the government.
But I'm not. I'm paying for it out of my own pocket, but the government still insists on regulating how much I use of it, and now even what I'm allowed to buy to use it with...
One would think that, since I'm the one PAYING for electricity (not to mention various taxes and sales taxes associated with a TV, if I had a TV), I'd be allowed to pay more and use more? Now THERE is a novel concept - if I have more money, I can use more money to get more things! Wow. And if I'm smart, I can save money by buying a more power-efficient TV! Wouldn't that be a thought...
California, frankly, is wacky :)
I think this is overstepping it a bit.
I'm a big a/v-phile and I dislike LCD and "flat" tv's because they don't have true black points or uniform color.
I want a CRT, and CRTs are power hungry.
This doesn't mean i'm not environmentally conscious.
I use all CFL's and avoid having anything on unless i'm making immediate use.
How about introducing power consumption rules for homes, at least maximum peak power consumption to help lessen the load on the grid by incorporating localized temporary storage?
This would also have a side benefit of helping to prevent the kind of chaos mass blackouts produce by providing a bare minimum power to, say, keep your fridge running for 24-72 hours when the grid goes.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
The article and in particular this "infographic" is completely wrong or at least misleading. LCD TVs do not consume more power than the same sized CRT as claimed. In fact, an LCD set will consume 50% or less power than a comparably-sized CRT. Of course, if you decide to base each type of set's power consumption on "average set size" without fucking bothering to define what that average is or even bothering to keep the same average for each type of TV (!), then you can pretty much "prove" anything you want, can't you?
Hell, my neighborhood newsletter is way more popular* and produces much better advertising results** than the LA Times!
I don't know why the "California Energy Commission" would make such a preposterous claim, unless they're not comparing the same size LCD and CRT, which would be ridiculous of course. I also don't know how the LA Times could be so ignorant as to not notice this obvious error, and how they could be so irresponsible as to report such obvious nonsense without doing any research or checking with other sources, or at least questioning or pointing out the (unfair) comparison of small CRTs to large LCDs.
Educate thyself and read any of the dozens of results that show LCDs use less power than CRTs.
Then wonder why the tax/power requirements isn't based on size/overall power consumption instead of just being arbitrarily assessed on LCDs in general. (Hint: it's another money grab, and what better way than to focus it on the better selling, higher-value product?)
* "popular" is defined as the percentage of my relatives that read it daily.
** "results" is defined as how many free gifts I get from advertisers.
*** Hey! Look at that! I'm full of shit but at least I cite my bullshit definitions, which is more than you can say for the LA Times and the California Energy Commission!
everything in moderation
These new TVs will be identical to other TVs sold elsewhere in the country, except that have a price tag that is 25% higher.
Here fixed that for you.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
...An industry would look a state like CA that wants to foist stupid regulations upon them STRAIGHT in the eye and tell them to "go suck it". Californians just simply would have to go to other states (thus losing the morons in Sacramento some serious tax revenue) to buy these things.
What will happen is that this will make these products more expensive for those of us who live in the sane part of America. It's all about foisting a radical green agenda on the rest of us.
If California wants to be crazy, fine, to each his own. But don't force ME to have to pay for it.
Corporatism != Free Market
California's market is big enough that this will make energy efficiency a more important R&D goal for TV manufacturers, and in a few years the costs will come down to the point where all the new TVs meet the standard. It's just like what happened with refrigerators. Hopefully.
Doesn't California have power problems? If so, then if they can cut the power useage from everyone, even a little bit, then it helps resolve soem of their pwoer problems.
Sometimes things are done for a bigger picture then saving you a little $
Spelling and Grammar errors have been added to this post for your enjoyment
I find it a little saddening that nearly everyone complains about this type of legislation while at the same time demanding that something be done about global warming.
The fundamental problem we have is that we aren't currently being billed the true cost of (most of) the power we are using. The energy companies have been getting away with polluting the environment on a massive scale for at no cost to them.
We can tackle that problem in two ways: 1) force power companies to pay to clean up their pollution. 2) Increases taxes so that Government can clean up the pollution. Either way it means that things are going to get a lot more expensive. Government isn't about to raise taxes to clean up the atmosphere and they certainly aren't going to try to make energy companies fix the problem so the only really option is to bring in strict guidelines on how much power devices can consume and hope the problem goes away.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
No it isn't. Planet Earth is everybody's business.
Step up and be a man, not a spoiled brat.
No sig today...
Nope, that's not right. Since we're talking about a resistive load, I can make the simplification that Power=Volts times Amps (and Power is proportional to Dollars).
We know that V = I*R. Since V is constant (120v RMS), we can only change the current in a circuit.
Undimmed the Light provides a resistance RL on the circuit.
Dimmed the Light plus dimmer (assuming a resistive dimmer, some are choppers, but I'm ignoring that now) provides a resistance RL+RD on the circuit.
So Undimmed the current, IL, is V/RL
Dimmed the current, ID, is V/(RL+RD)
That means that ID is less than IL and if the Power is V*I, then PD=V*ID is less than PL=V*IL. So less power is being consumed.
Except making some people in power the thrill of being 'better' than 'you'. And in this case, 'you' means everybody except them.
Saving the power needed to run 86,400 homes? The Census reported 11,502,870 in 2000. So they want to save about .75% of total power generation? Maybe? Their power consumption numbers are so far off they may end up saving a tenth of THAT...
What an utter waste of time. More impact would be realized if they required datacenters to be located further north, requiring less demanding cooling systems.
Dammit, now I'm giving them more cockamamie ideas. I hate when I do that.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
You won't voluntarily curb your energy use, and damn it it's MY planet you're warming. I'll bet you bitched about taking lead out of gasoline, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act... when your actions impinge my life, government SHOULD get involved.
Not all of us worship money and the free market. Some of us understand what is REALLY important in life. And it ain't a bigger SUV and outspending the neighbors. I have gworn kids, it it's THEIR planet you're fucking up.
Free Martian Whores!
Typically DVRs only disable the display drivers when power is off. Not a lot of power usage there. Going into a true low-power standby state requires a decent amount of work - you want the thing to be awake enough to record your programs, download the latest guide, etc. - and also to turn on fast when you want to watch the tube. Why spend the time doing that design when most consumers have no idea how much power the device uses at any point?
I'm actually coming around to the idea of regulating something regarding power use of always-powered devices. At least (as I posted above) something akin to the yellow tag you get on a dishwasher, boiler or other household device. It shows how much power the device uses in a year of typical use and its annual cost, and compares to "similar" equipment. (I can never find the items on the low end of that scale, though). For most equipment, a scale showing how the device compares to its competitors for power use in operating and standby modes could certainly sway me when buying a new TV or DVR. Assuming all else is equal, that is.
Just my $0.55 (US inflation, 1774-2008, for $0.02)
Listen, we've tried your way. It doesn't work. And constantly reiterating the same tired point about regulation = bad and government = bad is getting silly. The Republican/Libertarian idea of a free-market may be ideal. Ideal for defrauding most efficiently. Ideal for using limited resources the most quickly. Ideal for concentrating wealth into the fewest hands possible. Ideal for using government resources for the needs of a few limited corporations rather than the individual citizen. Ideal for running up debt with nothing to show for it.
Your ideas have failed. Let's talk again about burdensome regulation once we stop having to worry about melamine in our food. We're no where near burdensome regulation. We're in a period of fear brought about by a lack of regulation.
Actually, keep saying that government regulation is bad. You're helping to remind the majority of US citizens what they want the government to focus on.
I think you think I'm more of a troll than I actually am...
I'm not old enough to have bitched about all of those things, and certainly there are both good intentions and good results, as many of those reforms can fall under the common-sense category (especially lead in gasoline...), but for every common-sense reform I can point at three that just resulted in wasted time and tax dollars, or caused severe market repercussions elsewhere.
Usually the problem with those negative examples is that someone freaked out about something (global cooling! global warming! global climate change! financial crisis!) and decided that SOMETHING needed to be done NOW. They then came up with a half-baked short-term solution to that problem and put it into place and continued living their lives. That's exactly what I classify this as: a half-baked short-term solution that won't do anything in the long run.
Take for example a great examples of way that private industry can help the environment: Wal-Mart reducing fuel consumption on their trucks: not only does this save Wal-Mart lots of money in fuel costs, but it drives innovation in truck and vehicle design and helps to greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. If they then sell this technology to other companies similarly interested in both reduced costs and increased fuel economy, the effect will be much more substantial -- and require not a taxpayer penny -- than this silly regulation and the certification process it will surely produce.
because they only care about what the average person buys. It doesn't matter if per inch of viewing area an LCD uses less power than a CRT if the average consumer buys 2 inches of LCD for every inch of CRT.
I'm fine with my 24-27 inch CRT. But I'm not going to buy an LCD that's less than about 34 inches.
So if the government wants to reduce my power consumption they need to make sure that the 34 inch LCD uses less power than the 24 inch CRT I already have. It doesn't matter if the 24 inch LCD uses less power because on average, nobody buys a 24 inch LCD to replace a 24 inch CRT.
Work Safe Porn
You mean like the "California Emissions" regulations that increase the prices of cars and completely prevent the sale of new diesel cars (and some trucks) in the Northeast states that also follow those regulations?
You aren't looking at the whole stack. Walmart having marginally more efficient trucks does nothing for the fact that one of the consequences of Walmart in general is an additional 1,000 (some huge number) of extremely dirty coal plants in China where the regulations aren't near as strict as the US, plus moving all the goods from China to the US on ships, and those ships have hardly any regulations at all while running on bunker fuel, which is downright nasty again.
Any savings in energy or cleaner air here are offset to a tremendous degree just by the business model of offshoring the manufacturing (let alone the hit to the wallets of all the out of work factory workers here and lost tax base). And air knows no boundaries, what was air pollution a week ago in China (remember when they had to almost close China down just to run the olympics so they could have tolerable air for the athletes?) has now traveled the Pacific and is hitting north America.
All you did was move the problem to the other side of an imaginary dotted line, plus cost tens of million of jobs domestically plus exported cash by the boatload and taken it out of the internal economy where it stopped being a force multiplier. That's why China is sitting on huge reserves of cash and is able to go around the planet and buy up the next 20-50 years of critical strategic minerals like they are doing in Africa right now, and the US is sitting in the debtors seat wondering where all the new jobs are going to come from.
So we still got way more air pollution in general, plus a lot of lost jobs that paid better than Walmart "associate" pay. The big trade was one generation of cheaper gadgets, and we got to play "make believe" that we cleaned up the environment when we didn't, we made it worse actually (looking at the planet as a whole), and now the US economy is partly collapsing from it.
Mars Bars are fattening and are prohibited in the People's Republic of California.
I know you were just going for a +5 funny but here in the People's Republic of New York our Governor wants to impose an "obesity tax" on soft drinks. No, I'm not making this up either.
Why just target soft drinks? Orange juice actually has more calories per fl oz than coca-cola does. Should we tax OJ too? Anything consumed without moderation is bad for you. How do you purpose to use tax policy to teach moderation?
Seems to me like it's just another revenue grab under the guise of being for the public benefit.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I mean...Cal, has fucked up cars for us...can't get fun cars with good exhaust systems on them stock (hell, hard to get good 3rd party stuff more and more because they insist on being CARB or whatever it is compliant).
I don't live where they do sniff tests....and I've lived in states with no car inspection at all...but, with the crap that comes out of CA...more and more states follow along..and so do manufacturers...even though other states don't need it all and don't have the same environmental problems...or granola tendencies.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Maybe his parallel resistor is so small that it dims his bulb by reducing the voltage on the whole of the local grid.