News Archive Article

Power bills soaring? Turn off the Playstation

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA - Don't blame the fridge for your steep power bills - an Australian consumer agency study has found that videogame consoles and plasma flat-screen TVs are major electricity guzzlers, even when left on stand-by.

The recent study by Choice said Sony Corp's Playstation 3, closely followed by Microsoft's Xbox 360 and plasma television sets, consumed the most power out of a list of 16 electronic devices tested, including laptops, stereo systems and DVD players.

"Our tests found that leaving a Playstation 3 on while not in use would cost almost... five times more than it would take to run a refrigerator for the same yearly period," said the study which was published on Choice's website.

"The plasma TV set was also a power hungry device, consuming over four times more power than a traditional analogue set. The average desktop computer was third on the list."

The report advised consumers to switch off their electronic devices at the source, rather than just from the remote control, which puts them on power-consuming stand-by mode. "This saves on money, not to mention carbon emissions," it added.

Related News

bitcoin energy use

How Bitcoin's vast energy use could burst its bubble

LONDON - The University of Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) studies the burgeoning business of cryptocurrencies.

It calculates that Bitcoin's total energy consumption is somewhere between 40 and 445 annualised terawatt hours (TWh), with a central estimate of about 130 terawatt hours.

The UK's electricity consumption is a little over 300 TWh a year, while Argentina uses around the same amount of power as the CCAF's best guess for Bitcoin.

And the electricity the Bitcoin miners use overwhelmingly comes from polluting sources.

The CCAF team surveys the people who manage the Bitcoin network around the world on their energy use and found that…

READ MORE
spain wind power

Spain's power demand in April plummets under COVID-19 lockdown

READ MORE

nuclear power

IEA: Asia set to use half of world's electricity by 2025

READ MORE

$300 billion plan to dump Russian energy

EU outlines $300 billion plan to dump Russian energy

READ MORE

jordan electricity

Jordan approves MOU to implement Jordan-Saudi Arabia electricity linkage

READ MORE