With lighting on the right track, what other household devices could benefit from improved efficiency?
Just about anything that connects to your TV could be vastly improved. Most cable and set-top boxes are left on day and night, regardless of use. They consume lots of power and have very little intelligence to power down. Consider a digital video recorder such as TiVO, a common feature in many cable boxes. They typically draw 30 watts when turned on, and 29 watts when turned off, just one watt less. Video games are similar. They’re left on all the time, too. Gamers leave them on because they worry they’ll lose their place in the game. And 40 percent of homes have them. On average, it can cost about $100 per year to leave them on. That means that in just a few years, the cost of energy they use is more than the price of the game system itself. We need those things to sleep when we’re sleeping. If you have a DVR and a couple of other boxes in your home, all together they can use as much energy as your fridge. We’re working with the industry to get better standards in place. If these devi
