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March 2008
Power play
What it costs to run a big-screen TV
Illustration by Jing and Mike Co.
Energy usage probably isn’t the top priority when you’re buying a new TV, but it will affect your electric bills for years
to come. Home heating and cooling, lighting, and large appliances account for much of your energy consumption, but big-screen
TVs are no slouches at sucking up the juice. Some sizes and types use more electricity than an energy-efficient refrigerator.
Our engineers determined the energy used by typical LCD, plasma, and rear-projection TVs turned on for 8 hours a day (yes, a typical U.S. household watches that much TV), 365 days a year. Most sets didn’t use significantly more energy than a 32- to 36-inch picture-tube TV. But 50-inch plasmas with 1080p resolution used twice as much energy as the biggest picture-tube set and more than a comparable LCD TV.
Not surprisingly, bigger screens of all types consume more electricity than smaller ones. With LCD and rear-projection TVs, resolution has almost no effect on energy consumption because all pixels in the screen are illuminated by the same backlight. With plasma sets, however, 1080p models use more energy than 720p models. That’s because 1080p sets have more pixels, each of which is illuminated separately. With LCD sets, the higher the backlight setting, the more electricity used. We set the backlight at the midpoint for our calculations.
Even if the cost differences of a few dollars a month don’t matter much to your budget, keep in mind that the millions of TVs used in American households consume a huge amount of energy. There’s obviously an environmental advantage to using a more-efficient TV.
Our engineers determined the energy used by typical LCD, plasma, and rear-projection TVs turned on for 8 hours a day (yes, a typical U.S. household watches that much TV), 365 days a year. Most sets didn’t use significantly more energy than a 32- to 36-inch picture-tube TV. But 50-inch plasmas with 1080p resolution used twice as much energy as the biggest picture-tube set and more than a comparable LCD TV.
Not surprisingly, bigger screens of all types consume more electricity than smaller ones. With LCD and rear-projection TVs, resolution has almost no effect on energy consumption because all pixels in the screen are illuminated by the same backlight. With plasma sets, however, 1080p models use more energy than 720p models. That’s because 1080p sets have more pixels, each of which is illuminated separately. With LCD sets, the higher the backlight setting, the more electricity used. We set the backlight at the midpoint for our calculations.
Even if the cost differences of a few dollars a month don’t matter much to your budget, keep in mind that the millions of TVs used in American households consume a huge amount of energy. There’s obviously an environmental advantage to using a more-efficient TV.
| PRODUCT | ANNUAL COST |
|---|---|
| 20-cu.-ft. refrigerator (a newer top-freezer) | $50 |
| 25-cu.-ft. refrigerator (a newer side-by-side) | 65 |
| 32-inch picture-tube | 40 |
| 36-inch picture-tube | 50 |
| 37-inch LCD | 50 |
| 40-inch LCD | 55 |
| 56-inch rear-projection | 65 |
| 42-inch plasma, 720p | 70 |
| 52-inch LCD | 80 |
| 50-inch plasma, 720p | 80 |
| 50-inch plasma, 1080p | 110 |
