Plasma TVs, gaming consoles guzzle electricity: study

Don't blame the fridge for your steep power bills - an Australian consumer agency study has found that videogame consoles and plasma flat-screen TVs are major electricity guzzlers, even when left on stand-by. The recent study by Choice said Sony's Playstation 3, closely followed by Microsoft's Xbox 360 and plasma television sets, consumed the most power out of a list of 16 electronic devices tested, including laptops, stereo systems and DVD players. The report advised consumers to switch off their electronic devices at the source, rather than just from the remote control, which puts them on power-consuming stand-by mode. "This saves on money, not to mention carbon emissions," it added.

- The report is over at choice.com.au and the detailed table is over here.

The device that consumed the most power in our test when in use was the PlayStation 3, closely followed by the Xbox360 and Plasma TV. Even when idle (on, but not in use), these systems consumed the most power of the devices tested. Incredibly, the Playstation 3 consumed over 10 times as much power as the Nintendo Wii. Our tests also found that leaving a PlayStation 3 on while not in use would cost almost $250 a year in electricity bills (charged at 15c per kWh). This alone is around five times more than it would take to run a refrigerator for the same yearly period. The Xbox 360 was not far behind the PlayStation 3 in energy usage costs per year, serving as an important reminder to turn off videogame systems after use. The Plasma TV set was also a power hungry device, consuming over four times more power than a traditional CRT analogue TV set.

Quite the energy guzzlers aren't they, all these gadgets. Those folks playing with PS3's on plasma TV's have got to be incurring quite a cost. In part 4 of my inflation-beating guide, I recommended a switch to LCD TV's - as opposed to plasma TV's which don't actually save energy at all and in fact consume even more energy than CRT's. And whatever appliances you have, it's always a good idea to switch them off at the wall socket instead of leaving them in standby mode - read more about that here.

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