How Much Energy Are YOU Wasting?
Recently, the NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council), released an interesting study... on the energy use of video game consoles.
Today, more than 40 percent of all homes in the United States contain at least one video game console. Recognizing that all that gaming could add up to serious demand for electricity, NRDC and Ecos Consulting performed the first ever comprehensive study on the energy use of video game consoles and found that they consumed an estimated 16 billion kilowatt-hours per year -- roughly equal to the annual electricity use of the city of San Diego.
They then go on to list features that manufacturers can include in future designs to save energy, such as auto-powerdown (as opposed to idle mode), autosaves for when systems are turned off, and 'sleep' buttons on consoles or controllers. Not to mention just defaulting power-save features to on.
Of the three consoles, PS3 uses the most energy, followed almost immediately by the 360. The Wii apparently uses almost a tenth of either of them.
You can see the full report here.
Sgt. Sausagepants
Posted to Hot Stuff, Video Games on 19 November 2008
· Comments (3)
Other stuff like this: consoles, power usage
Whenever I'm not playing a agme, I turn off the actual power strip that the systems and my TV are hooked up to in order to make sure they're not leeching power while they're supposed to be off. It helps a bit on my electric bill, to be sure.
Super happy with the accompanying photo for this one.
This is very interesting to me. I've always found it really hard to balance my love for video games with my concern about the environment.
You know, if we finally ditched coal energy (it's really more destructive than positive, trust me) and switched to wind and solar, we wouldn't have to worry as much about our energy consuming hobby.
It's actually totally possible to have 40% of our country's energy come from pollution-free wind energy by 2020, if the nation could just break free from the fossil fuel lobbyists.
Anyway, thanks for posting this :D