Playstation 3, Xbox 360: energy hogs
p2pnet news view | Games:- You know when you leave your Playstation 3 or Xbox 360 powered up after you’ve finished with them?
They can each suck up more than 1,000 kilowatt-hours per year if they’re on all the time, the same as the annual energy use of two new refrigerators, says the US Natural Resources Defense Council.
“Video game consoles nationwide use about as much electricity in a year as every home in San Diego combined, and can significantly add to consumers’ electric bills,” it says in a report.
Looking at Sony Playstation 3, Microsoft XBox360 and Nintendo’s Wii, researchers measured the amount of power the gaming systems use when they’re active, idle and turned off and surprisingly, they use nearly the same amount of power when you’re playing them as when you leave them on and walk away, says the NRDC.
More than 40 percent of all homes in the US have at least one video game console and, “Through the incorporation of more user-friendly power management features, we could save approximately 11 billion kWh of electricity per year, cut our nation’s electricity bill by more than $1 billion per year, and avoid emissions of more than 7 million tons of CO2 each year,” it states, adding:
“The rapid implementation of improved power management settings for gaming consoles in homes and on the shelves would not be difficult for manufacturers and would bring the most savings potential. We recommend that these settings be enabled by default when new devices are shipped, and that power down occur after one to three hours instead of the current six-hour option on the Xbox 360. In other words, users should not have to ‘opt in’ in order to improve the energy efficiency of their consoles. The Folding@home program demonstrates how a mandatory software patch could be issued to all existing Xbox 360 and PS3 owners with an Internet connection, enabling power management across millions of existing machines without the need for user interaction or the purchase of new hardware.
“In addition, console manufacturers, game designers, retailers, gaming websites, and efficiency advocates should work together to develop and roll out a campaign to encourage users to turn off their video game consoles after use and to take advantage of the auto power-down feature on their console when available.”
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News 1130 – , November , 2008
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November 27th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
Folding@home is the default screen-saver for PS3 so energy is technically not wasted but converted to medical research.
On the other hand here in the EU the same console has a switch on the back so it uses no electricity at all which i prefer to the suggested mandatory power-saving DRM.
November 28th, 2008 at 1:11 am
In a recent PS3 firmware update, Sony added the ability to have the PS3 automatically turn off after a given amount of idle time. While this setting is off by default, it will help to reduce the energy usage.
January 4th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
I’m not having any problems with my ps3
April 6th, 2009 at 10:42 am
My ps3 has been fine. My Xbox has been a big ass though..
http://www.squidoo.com/xbox360fault