California Mulls Crackdown on kW Hogging Flat Panel TVs
Flat screen TVs are all the rage these days as the Super Bowl looms on the horizon, a new season of Lost is coming up, and broadcast TV is going digital in February thanks to an act of congress. The problem: all this TV buying is making watt watchers a little nervous. You see, these futuristic new sets are a huge power drain compared to their cathode ray predecessors. That's why the California Energy Commission is considering a preemptive crackdown on flat screens.
Not to make you feel guilty if you used the digital switchover as an excuse to buy yourself a new flat-screen (like I did), but an LCD uses around 43% more power than a cathode ray, and plasma screens use almost 3 times as much. Yikes. The commission wants to impose a new set of standards that take energy-hogging flat panels, especially DLP and plasma screens, off the shelves to help lighten the load on California's fragile power infrastructure.
If passed, the new regulations would be phased in over two years, the first tier arriving in 2011 and reducing the average California energy bill by $18. 48 a year. Retailers argue that the standards would hurt their businesses, because people would start buying all of their TVs on sites like Amazon -- avoiding the new standards and sales tax.
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