California says too big, too expensive

 California’s Energy Commission is proposing new regulations that will stop the sell of televisions if it does not meet new suggested energy standards. This change would not affect older television’s already on the market. 

Most have seen Energy star logos on TV sets, which is an optional program manufactures can abide by. What this does is make regulations very similar to what qualifies a television to be Energy Star compliant 
into law. 

The regulations will come in two parts. The first step is in 2011, followed by the second step that will take effect in 2013.  The first change includes reducing the standby power consumption maximum from its current three watts to one watt.

Nearly all TV’s already use less then one watt in standby and there is little to no argument on this part of the proposal, which has praise from some television companies.  

The second requirement is what will ban many current TV’s on the market and will require manufacturers to upgrade their products. This purposed requirement is a well thought out formula to determine if a TV uses excessive energy or not.

The 2011 standard has multiple proposals under review which use a similar formula with numbers that will allow for more watts than the 2013. 

New models from select manufacturers have LCD TV’s that meet the 2013 standard already available and new technologies such as OLED and laser video displays that have been demoed by nearly all major manufactures exceed the new proposed standards, by a vast margin. 

The new standard proposal is fair and should go in effect after its expected vote in early November. Small Liquid Crystal Display TVs largely are unaffected by this regulation, larger TVs are effected in much higher numbers. Plasma and 
CRT screens are expected to be the largest group of television sets that are affected, as they have always been less energy efficient then newer technologies.

The power saved by these changes is estimated by the CEC to save enough electricity to power the cities 
of Anaheim, Burbank, 
Glendale and Palo Alto for 
a year.

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