The LCD technology is everywhere now, in our offices, homes etc. At the beginning they replaced our computer screens but they are now replacing our old television sets. We will see today if it is good news for the electricity consumption.
Les Numériques, a French website tackling everything from cameras to computers published an article on the electricity consumption of LCD screens with sizes ranging from 17″ to 42″ (respectively 43 cm to 105 cm of diagonal).
Here are some of their main conclusions :
The bigger the size, the greater the consumption. This indeed seems obvious, but the tests provide interesting results. A 26″ screen can consume nearly as much as a 32″ one. Or two 19″ screens can see their respective consumptions vary by a half.
Flat panels screens are consuming half of old CRT screens of the same size. So replacing your ageing TV by a LCD one might be a good idea in terms of electricity consumption.
The measures done by the makers are higher than the ones measured by Les Numériques. The webzine hence found that their measures were generally lower that the ones given by the TV / screens makers.
As an example, my Samsung SyncMaster 931 BW is consuming 27 Watts per hour when Samsung announced 42 Watts per hour.
I am delighted to note that this screen is one of the least consuming screens among the 19″ LCD. So on top of a great design and an excellent screen quality, it also has a low electricity consumption, which is quite important for the reasonable ecologist I am.
The article also gives estimates of how much it would cost to have a screen on five hours per day for five years with the current prices of electricity in France. As an example, with my computer screen it would cost 32 €.
In order to compensate the increased consumption of a brand 32″ new flat panel TV (126 watts per hour), one needs to replace two 100 W incandescent light bulbs by two 20 W fluorescent light bulbs. As a matter of facts, this would represent a decrease in the overall consumption. (160 watts per hour saved against 126)
I am quite amazed of how low this kind of screen consumes. If I had been asked how much electricity this kind of appliance consume I would have said twice as much.
So to infer this article, we can say that flat panels screens are good to decrease the electricity consumption vis à vis CRT screens of the same size.