Cable TV boxes become 2nd biggest energy users in many homes | Hacker News Reader

Cable TV boxes become 2nd biggest energy users in many homes

latimes.com

29 pointsswift44 comments

In the last couple of years, I've turned into a complete energy fascist, especially after getting my own home and being eaten alive by my first few PGE bills.

Ever since then, I converted to LED lights for everything, and bought a Kill-A-Watt meter to figure out where the biggest hogs were. I even selected components for my desktop based on energy efficiency (90+% efficient power supply, low wattage CPU, graphics card, etc). I also had a dual CPU Xeon processor VMWare server that was using 200W idle, so I shut that down and replaced it with a couple of Intel NUCs. I figure that the Xeon server was costing me about $50/month in electricity alone, and could have easily been replaced by a couple of cloud VMs had I realized sooner.

Also, it turned out that my 2005 LCD tv and my PS3 together drew something like 400W when on. Needless to say I haven't turned on my PS3 in a while, and I've been eyeing a Roku for whenever I do want to watch Amazon Video.

I've cut my energy usage from 700 kWh per month to just over 300 kWh, and I haven't noticed any difference whatsoever in my lifestyle. I just cut out the wasteful electricity usage, and I now have my LED lights programmed to be on almost all night long around the house, turning off late a night automatically. I'm seriously toying with the idea of getting an electric car, since I don't think it would push me into Tier 3 even if I was recharging every night.

Notice that 300kWh/month still comes out to roughly 400 watts used at any given moment. Can you account for them?

The fridge would be my guess

Heating or AC (or both) are more likely.

With modern refrigerators, hot water could also be a bigger fraction.

My heating is natural gas, and I have no AC (SF Bay Area). My electricity bill has decreased, but I'm still trying to figure out how to decrease my natural gas bill, especially during the winter months. My theory is that my furnace and hot water heater are very inefficient, so I'm going to look into replacing those next year.

0/3 isn't that bad. Err, yes it is.

If the house is older than the furnace, the problem could also be lack of insulation.

Yes, lack of insulation is definitely a problem for me. I currently have no insulation (including the attic because of a rat problem that was there before I moved in). I do have wireless temperature sensors in various rooms to try to figure out how my house reacts to various weather, and I'm not sure how much adding insulation will actually help me, vs the cost of injecting insulation into the walls, etc. I'm probably going to get attic insulation before summer next year though, but to be honest, the temperature didn't get too crazy this year, despite several days of 90-100 degree weather, so I'm a bit skeptical.

My overnight usage is around 300W, so if I remember correctly, it were things like fridge, computers/NAS, wifi router + cable modem, a few clocks, and small hot water heater for tea (I would have gotten rid of this one, but my wife insisted on it, it burns about 40W when it's not boiling water actively).

vacuum cleaner, washer, dryer and dish washer must be big consumers too.

What are you using to control all the LED lights?

Sorry, I didn't mean to suggest that all my LED lights were controlled. I have a Hue setup, so I have 3 lights that I have controlled rather crudely with their software. I have a light switch that will turn on the front light from dusk till dawn, I just need time to install it.

Sounds cool! I had a feeling it was Hue. I really wish it was economical to make every switch controllable with something like zigbee but it doesn't seem to make sense even for new construction. Maybe someday...most applications don't need control of every light.

IFTTT can do Hue control, it could help you do control how you'd like https://ifttt.com/hue

I went through a phase like that. I measured everything I could and found I could only improve things by about 10%, with light bulb changes, computer hardware changes, etc. The bulk of my usage was still HVAC, water heater, fridge, washer & dryer, and the rest of the appliances.

Home LED lights and better electronics efficiency might make a dent on total grid usage eventually, but it really feels like it's only scratching at the surface.

Noticed the same thing. I had a media PC that though it was very convenient to have on all the time, I figured I'd save enough to turn it off and on that it'd be worth it. I measured that it ran idle (which it often is) at @ 60W, so even leaving it on 24/7 365 will only cost me @$40 a year. The only light bulbs I swapped out for LEDs are ones that are on a lot where it might make more sense.

As I mentioned, the things that made a huge dent were things like the PS3 that I had on all the time and my Xeon server. Those were just burning a ridiculous amount of electricity and I had no idea until I measured it. I basically stopped using those and that accounted for a large amount of my electricity reduction, since those were specifically pushing me into the higher tiers of rates. I also had the advantage of choosing new appliances for my house, so I went with things that were as energy efficient as I could muster, and my dryer, water heater, furnace, oven are all natural gas.

With regards to your media server, it depends on where you live and if you have a tiered system like I do in CA. 60W = 525 kWh per year. In CA, Tier 4 rates are 0.32/kWh, so it would cost about $170/year to run that server, if you hit that tier. So depending on your overall usage, it could make a decent impact on your electricity bill, especially if it was that specific appliance that was pushing you into a new tier.

Could you describe you LED bulb setup? How many bulbs and rooms, why keep them on late into the night, etc.?

I have LEDs everywhere where I used to have incandescent. I put in recessed LED lights in the kitchen and a couple of other rooms where there were no lights previously. My Hue lights are only in a couple of rooms and the front door.

The reason why I keep them on late into the night is for security purposes. The timing of my lights stay the same, whether I'm at home or not at home, so there is no definable lighting signature to use to figure out if I'm not at home or not.

Thanks for the response. I've been working on a project to manage Internet connected lights automatically. It sounds like you've got the lights doing exactly what you want, but are there things you'd like to do that you can't presently?

"Cheryl Williamsen, a Los Alamitos architect, has three of the boxes leased from her cable provider in her home, but she had no idea how much power they consumed until recently, when she saw a rating on the back for as much as 500 watts — about the same as a washing machine."

It just makes no sense for cable box electronics to draw 500 watts. I wonder if the LA Times fact-checked this claim. Maybe the box had a switched outlet into which a TV could be plugged?

And it's contradicted by this quote in the very next sentence:

"A set-top cable box with a digital recorder can consume as much as 35 watts of power."

I could see a clunky old Tivo style DVR consuming that much.

500W is in the range of a mid-to-high-end PC with an overclocked CPU and GPU running at full load; I doubt a DVR would ever need that much processing power.

A power supply rated for 500 watts doesn't mean the device draws 500 watts all the time. Most electronics don't draw anywhere near their rated input during normal use.

A power supply rated for 500 watts needs active cooling. I don't think set-top boxes come with fans yet.

(Not to mention that components consuming 500 watts need cooling..)

I have seen (and thus heard!) set top boxes with fans. They are usually pretty quiet, but they're there.

My ATT Uverse uses about 30 watts.

I personally don't believe that a set top box could use 500 watts (thats more than 4A draw - probably more than most 2U rack servers loaded with CPU's and Hard Drives).

There are no stats in this article to justify the claim that it's the 2nd largest consumer in your home. The architect seeing the 500 watt rating on the back of one is immediately followed by "A set-top cable box with a digital recorder can consume as much as 35 watts of power".

In fact, at 35 watts, according to this chart[1] it wouldn't even come close to being the second largest consumer.

[1]: https://www.efficiencyvermont.com/For-My-Home/ways-to-save-a...

> The devices use nearly as much power turned off as they do when they are turned on.

Well, the whole point of a DVR is that it does things when you're not there. If you want it to record shows after you've turned it "off", then it can't really be "off" can it?

It can, just program a RTC to raise an interrupt on a specified wake time and the OS shuts down the CPU once recording is done.

well, don't forget to send the cpu to sleep before waiting for the interrupt as well

No, it can't be off, but good design would have it drawing a tiny fraction of the "on" current while on standby. Evidently power consumption wasn't one of the important design requirements.

EPG (electronic program guide) aquisition can work using low-bandwidth methods if the box can stay on all the time. This low-bandwidth method could be a broadcast to all boxes constantly. So if your goal is a two-week EPG the box has to stay on for quite a while until it has seen all two weeks' data, and to process that you need to store it on the HDD. Such a box is going to be running close to its normal power requirement while doing these things.

We're about ready to cut the cord, and I've been suspecting our two Dish boxes are huge hogs anyway. We recently got the first results of an audit we signed up for through our provider (Pepco), and we were shocked to see that our usage is well beyond the average. We were pretty shocked considering we have 100% Compact fluorescent bulbs, very new appliances, and we're generally very conscious of our usage. Our dryer is natural gas, as is our furnace and oven. Our central AC unit is ancient, but it was a mild summer and we set it to not be as cool during the day. The only computer on during the day is a Mac mini.

We're convinced something isn't right. I think a kill-a-watt will be a near-future purchase.

This is why I'm happy for living in the EU.

While developing a smart-TV-controller appliance, I ended up researching CE and other requirements which have to be met... and some of these actually set maximum allowed standby power consumption!

I bet that the US market doesn't have anything remotely similar (and that TTIP and friends will allow US companies to sell their shit in EU without adhering to our rules!)

actually we have the EPA's Energy Star certification system, which a lot of products do try for.

Yeah but iirc this is not mandatory, so if you're a cable provider you don't need Energy* as a marketing plus

It doesn't apply to STBs, but there are mandatory standards for many appliance categories:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Appliance_Energy_Conse...

http://energy.gov/node/773531/index.html

That is going to meet some definitions of "remotely similar" (and fail others).

Energy Star usually benchmarks off of those standards. There are also adjustments, so Energy Star products from some time ago might not meet current mandatory standards (but I haven't looked to find an actual case of this, just pointing out that it could be).

Looks like there's a voluntary standard in the US: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/24/business/media/agreement-r...

How bad is Roku?

Roku's power input is rated 12V and 1A [https://www.roku.com/products/roku-3]. This is maximum draw of 12W at any given time.

Makes sense. Thanks for letting me know!

Keep in mind that that's the maximum input while it's in use... I don't think there's any way to figure out how much it would use when off without plugging it into a kill-a-watt.

I know my WDTV was 5W when I measured it with the KaW and the interesting thing was it didn't really change much when I was watching something with it.

I've got a Roku HD (model 2500X) and just did some measurements:

Starting up: 3.5W

Sitting idly on menu screen: 3.15W

Sitting idly on screen saver: 3.3W

Streaming Arrested Development: 3.45W

Also worth noting that when not in use, it goes to screen saver mode. It never actually powers down at all.

So basically, it uses the same amount no matter what you're doing with it. And really ironic that the screen saver uses more power than the menu screen. I guess the appearance of saving power is more important?

One more reason for the local community to own the last mile: more control over such devices.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com