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Putting a plug on the drain gang: The electricity slurpers in your techno home

They're the mightiest of the energy slurpers in your techno home. But you can control their consumption.

By Karen Klages | Special to the Tribune

March 1, 2009

The Obama administration has put a greener, more energy-conscious America on its priority list and spelled out a game plan rampant with technology-as-savior.

Clean-coal technology. Alternative energy sources. Plug-in hybrid cars that get up to 150 miles a gallon.

But what about the ugly little technology secrets Americans like to keep under the rug? The fact that the American home is teched-up like never before, with shiny tech toys that suck electricity in huge amounts, when one considers the impact in aggregate, as a nation.

Today's average American home now has three televisions, two DVD players or recorders, 1.16 digital cameras, one desktop computer and two cell phones, among other consumer electronics products (the average American household has 24 of such things), according to the Consumer Electronics Association.

The fallout: Consumer electronics is one of the fastest-growing categories of electricity use in the home—up from 5 percent in 1980 to nearly 15 percent of a home's total electricity consumption today. By 2015, it's estimated to be closer to 20 percent for many homes.

All by itself, the TV (swollen to a size of 40 inches or larger for the "main" TV in the house) represented a stunning 8 percent of residential electricity consumption in the U.S. in 2007, nearly doubling in just three years.

And: America's video game console habit consumes as much electricity on an annual basis as the entire city of San Diego.

"I think for a long time most of us thought about the major energy consumers in our home as being our appliances and our heating and cooling and hot water heating. And we never thought a lot about our tech products," says Katharine Kaplan, EPA team lead, Energy Star product development.

But Americans didn't have three TVs per household. "We didn't watch them as many hours, didn't use them for gaming, didn't use them to show our photographs, didn't have TiVo, didn't have sophisticated content options that make watching so desirable," Kaplan goes on. "And we certainly didn't have all these miscellaneous products that we plug in."

The good news: A little awareness goes a long way.

There are simple adjustments that consumers can make in the use of their technology equipment and toys to make them notably more efficient.

Consider: Reducing the brightness of a TV set can cut its energy use by as much as 25 percent. Getting rid of the screen saver on a computer can save $50 to $100 in electricity costs over a year.

And when it comes to new tech purchases, it's good to be aware that there are now greener options. Programs and organizations such as Energy Star and the Natural Resources Defense Council have done considerable work to encourage manufacturers to deliver more energy-conscious products.

Some highlights from the International Consumer Electronics Show held in January in Las Vegas include:

•LG Electronics showed a line of HDTVs that use light-emitting diodes (less power-hungry than fluorescent tubes) to light the TV screen from behind. Other companies announced they are exploring "LED backlighting" as well.

• Sony announced that in addition to its line of Bravia LCD HDTVs that will be in stores this spring and meet the new, more stringent specifications from Energy Star, it's coming out with lighting technology that reduces energy use by almost 40 percent, compared with other Sony LCD HDTVs. Sony says these new TVs also use 0 watts in standby mode, after being left unattended for a while, and have a motion sensor that turns off the TV when users forget.And then there were a slew of relatively inexpensive smart power strips or related devices that address vampire power. That's the term for electricity consumed when electronics are turned off and are, for all intents and purposes, off. But if they're plugged in, they're still consuming some electricity. The Belkin Conserve Power Strip ($49.99, belkin.com/conserve) is an eight-plug power strip/surge protector that accommodates all kinds of equipment with varying needs of staying connected. Six of those eight outlets can be powered off completely. The remaining two are always on (and are meant for electronics that need to stay "on" 24/7 such as DVR boxes and networking equipment). The Conserve comes with a wireless remote that quickly turns "on" or "off" the six configurable plugs.

Now, have a look and read at the usual techno suspects around the house and what owners can do to be smarter users.

Eric Gwinn contributed to this story.

TelevisionsIn general, the amount of power a TV uses increases with screen size. A 52-inch, high-definition TV can use as much energy annually as a new refrigerator. And that's likely to be two times more energy than a consumer's old, smaller TV.

LCD or plasma? "The typical 42-inch plasma TV uses approximately 100 more watts than a similar sized LCD," according to Noah Horowitz, senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council. That amounts to at least $200 more in electricity, over the life of the product.