Study Estimates US Games Consoles Consume 68% of Electricity Usage While Idle

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Study Estimates US Games Consoles Consume 68% of Electricity Usage While Idle

Post by Dan @ 11:02am 19/04/12 | 8 Comments

A report out of US University Carnegie Mellon (Via: Verge), based on a study conducted throughout 2010, estimates that idling video game consoles were responsible for somewhere in the vicinity of 10.8 Terawatt hours of wasted energy consumption, with a rough cost of around US$1.24 billion over the course of the year.

The wastage is largely attributed to the average user's bad habits of leaving game consoles running while not in use and their device auto-off features not being enabled, as well as the high wattage that modern consoles consume compared to their predecessors.

Verge notes that an Xbox 360 firmware update last year has since enabled that console's auto-off functionality by default, but the PlayStation 3, which reportedly sucks the most idling juice of the current consoles (around 177 Watts), still requires users to manually enable its auto-off feature.

Turn your consoles off when not using them people!

playstation 3 xbox 360

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Outlaw
Posted 12:18pm 19/4/12

ha, I often wondered about this.My ps3 is on now waiting at the bf3 browser screen all ready to go.

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Romper
Posted 02:08pm 19/4/12

I bet there are quite a few of you that do the same with your PC/Console.

Money down the drain if you ask me

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Nerfy
Posted 02:15pm 19/4/12

I actually do leave my PC on a fair bit (often a dozen work things open that just shouldn't be closed, although I'm starting to not know where one day ends and another begins so maybe should start again each day..) and have wondered whether or not that's a huge power drain. I've never had high electricity bills, and windows 7 does shut down harddrives and whatnot after a bit.

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Sc00bs
Posted 08:50pm 19/4/12

computer is always on as is atleast 1 laptop, normaly a few lights and fans during the day when no1's home lol.

guess thats why we just got a 600$ elec bill

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FaceMan
Posted 08:57pm 19/4/12

Simple to test, anyone got a power meter measure thing from the government handouts ?
test it.

post results.

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glynd
Posted 09:03pm 19/4/12

not all of us blindly take government handouts

:P

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Superform
Posted 09:04pm 19/4/12

maybe add folding@home to each console

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BassMan
Posted 09:35pm 19/4/12

Ars Technica have since asked some hard questions of the report's author - turns out that he estimated 30% of people just leave their PS3/Xbox on all day everyday...

How he got this figure? By asking friends.

He's since noted he's looking to somehow get better data on this point, since the rest of the report hinges off this "assumption".

Linky:
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2012/04/study-author-defends-findings-on-console-energy-savings-through-auto-power-down.ars

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