As TVs Grow, So Do Electric Bills

[Chauga]

Not long ago, Andrew Fanara was shopping with his wife for a new big-screen television. Everything was going fine, until the sales clerk discovered Fanara was an energy watchdog for the federal government. Pulling Fanara aside, the clerk confessed: His own new 61-inch TV gulped electricity the way a big SUV guzzles gasoline.

"The month after he got it, he got a call from his landlord, who noticed a big jump in the utility bill," recalls Fanara, team leader of the Energy Star program at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). "It was the kid's big-screen television."

Revelations about energy-munching appliances aren't uncommon in Fanara's job. But lately, he's hearing more about big-screen TVs — and that's worrisome. With sales expected to skyrocket — and with only outmoded testing and efficiency standards available to alert people about energy consumption — digital big-screen TVs are poised to generate big hikes in home energy use and pollution, unless manufacturers act swiftly to adopt more efficient technologies.

That's one reason EPA officials are scheduled later this month to meet with officials of the California Energy Commission, utility company Pacific Gas & Electric, and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), an environmental group. Their goal is to discuss best ways to measure TV energy use — and ways to get manufacturers to adopt energy-saving technologies faster.


http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/CSM/story?id=852829&page=1

[Canadian Socialist]

1. Take the "One Tonne Challenge"!

http://www.climatechange.gc.ca/onetonne/english/index.asp

It's fun! All the cool kids are doing it!:toast:

[Deja Q]

2. How about one tv per family and share the time?!

It's not family friendly to give every member their own honkin' huge 61" set.

Energy conservation is one issue, but for some reason the "family values" aspect came to my eyes first.

[LeftyMom]

4. With TiVo i't pretty easy to save one show and watch another

which reduces most of the squabbles over the tv for us. We have a big-enough-for-us (small by current standards) tv, and then LeftyDad's computer monitor has a TV tuner and it's own satellite box, and that works great for the rare occasion when we both want to watch something w/o waiting (usually this is when the Kings are on one channel and a new episode of CSI is on another.)

We didn't really think about the conservation end of it, we just didn't want to be one of those families with as many tvs as people. I never had my own tv in my room and I survived to adulthood somehow.

[supernova]

8. Love my Tivo!

I love saving shows to watch later. And I don't have to sacrifice a show to watch another. As often happens, two shows I like air at the same time.

And it's kinda fun to run through 3-4 episodes of Buffy at a time.

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

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[Radical Activist]

5. I think Fanara makes too much money

if the kid has their own big screen TV.

[supernova]

6. I hear ya

I didn't have a TV in my room growing up. And I lived just fine. I have one in the bedroom now, and one in the living room. But they are never both on at the same time.

I keep my Tivo hooked up to the one in the bedroom. And that's the "main" tv. The one one in the living room serves mostly as background noise when I'm working around the house.

[LSdemocrat]

7. I think it was the sales clerk's kid's TV not Fanara's