After the flurry of articles the other day about the NRDC’s study on set-top boxes (cable boxes and DVRs), I decided to dust off my trusty Kill A Watt and take some measurements.

The headline from the NRDC report that got the most play was the fact that a typical set-top box setup consumes 446 kWh/year, slightly more than an Energy Star rated 21-cubic foot refrigerator. That’s a bunch of Watts, to be sure. Looking at the report, I think it’s of value to keep a few things in mind:

  • The standard configuration they used was not at all extravagant. It’s one HD-DVR and one HD Set-top box. Given all the ads I see for things like Time Warner’s uber configuration that puts set-top hardware in up to four rooms, I think this is probably a conservative (which is to say low) estimate of actual usage.
  • They didn’t cook the numbers by assuming the hardware was operating 24/7, for example.
  • I wish they had extended the study a bit to include everything that goes into powering a home entertainment system in both standby mode as well as in active use. They didn’t account for the TV or separate audio hardware, for example. While the goal of the study was to determine the energy footprint of set-top boxes, that’s only part of the whole picture.
  • Some of their findings are a bit surprising. The bar graph on page 3 shows the standby and in-use power consumption for numerous set-top boxes, and they found that many of them consume essentially the same power in both states. I would have found this astonishing if I had read the report before I did my own measurements.
  • Another surprise was the level of power consumption for some of these boxes. Several sucked over 40 Watts even in sleep mode(!).
  • This situation is a perfect example of how mindless consumption across a very large number of people can sum to non-trivial additional resource consumption and pollution release. They found that in the US alone set-top boxes consume power equivalent to the output of 6 power plants at 500MW each and release 11 million metric tons of CO2 per year. Yet for each individual or household, the cost is just under $1/week at national US electricity rates. Clearly there’s not enough incentive there to make consumers force manufacturers to design and build more power efficient boxes, which means it will only happen if government regulation forces the issue or the companies that make the boxes suddenly find themselves struck by enlightenment. Even in the current psychotic political environment in the US I would bet on regulation happening before corporate enlightenment.

As for what I found with my handy dandy Kill A Watt, there were only a few minor surprises. My HD cable box consumes 19 Watts in standby and 20 Watts in use, which puts it right in the middle of the pack with NRDC’s measurements for that type of hardware. I don’t have a DVR, but I do have an audio receiver, and that component in standby consumes under 1 Watt — the Kill A Watt displayed “0″, but since you can power the unit on with a remote there has to be at least a trickle of electrons passing through the box. I also have a DVD player and a BluRay player (separate units), and each of those also shows a “0″ reading in standby.

Of course, overnight and during the work day this stuff consumes 0 Watts; I have it plugged into a switched outlet[1] which I turn off at night and then turn on just before firing up the TV the next day. Yes, it’s a pain when I want to turn on the TV and quickly check on some breaking news, as the cable box boots slower than Windows on a 286. (I haven’t timed it, but it’s easily several minutes. I realize the box is running Java, likely on top of a custom Linux kernel, but there is no excuse for it taking that long. I sometimes think I can write code faster than this (relatively new) box runs it.) But I do it anyway, just on principle, and tell myself that the wackaloons who send me hate mail would grind their teeth over the thought of someone voluntarily taking such steps to reduce their consumption. The savings, by the way, run to about 131 kWh/year, which is about $15/year, even with the tiny premium I pay for “100% green” electricity. Again, when we’re lacking an economic incentive (and $15/year isn’t enough to motivate even someone as cheap as I am), it’s the role of government to do those things that no one else will do but still serve the common interest.

[1] By “switched outlet” I mean a wall outlet that’s controlled by a normal light switch on the wall. Most newer homes have at least one of these in every room, and they’re a great way to reduce your vampire electricity losses without having to buy so much as a cheap switched power strip.