I hear Plasma TVs are power hogs

I don't know if they're "hogs", but they do pull quite a bit of power. I believe it's in the 400W range, rather more than an LCD.

A LCD tv will draw a constant 250W of power A plasma tv will draw a variable amount of power up to 300W depending on scene brightness So a Plasma tv will average out very close to the power consumption of an LCD tv

A couple of years ago I was getting annoyed by others saying how great these new geewizz TVs were. I put a wattmeter on my old 27 inch CRT one and below normal brightness was

75W and above normal brightness , 85W

-- Diverse Devices, Southampton, England electronic hints and repair briefs , schematics/manuals list on

About two something months ago, I read somewhere that UK is thinking about outlawing ''power hogs'' tv sets.I bought a new ''power hog'' RCA CRT 27 inch screen tv set on October 15,1999, the same day I bought my Philips Magnavox WebTV set top box to hook up to that RCA tv set.Last February, I bought a new Sony Trinitron Wega CRT 27 inch flat screen ''power hog'' tv set for watching old, old movies.(DirecTV) Less than five years ago, I bought a new Velocity Micro ProMagix desk top computer and a Multisynch ''power hog'' CRT 22 inch screen computer monitor from Tiger Direct.This State of confusion I live in is working on getting a new Nuclear Reactor built for Grand Gulf.There are no worries about electricity around here, except when storms and tornados and hurricanes knock out the electric power.I love Power Hogs. cuhulin

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I wonder how accurate the wattmeter was, since the power factor of tv's tends to be rather poor due to the switching power supply. Here in the USA there are no requirements on the power supply power factors like there are in the EU. Was the wattmeter a true meter like the power company puts on the side of your house?

H. R.(Bob) Hofmann

I wonder how much a 27" plasma set would draw, if they made such a thing?

My 56" projection set is rated 300W, seems like I measured it and it was closer to 200W in actual use. My refrigerator draws around 140W, small air conditioners are closer to 1KW. If curious, spend 20 bucks on a Kill A Watt and measure the stuff yourself. It's quite a sophisticated instrument for the price, I was impressed.

Based on?

The size of the set, the brightness settings, and in the case of LCD, the backlight technology all have an effect on power. I read recently of a large LCD set with LED backlighting that draws an average of 88W.

A low power factor will cause the reading to be high anyway. 78W is not unreasonable for a 27" set. I measured a 22" CRT computer monitor with a real wattmeter and found it to draw around 100W, and it's substantially more complex than a TV.

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I wonder how accurate the wattmeter was, since the power factor of tv's tends to be rather poor due to the switching power supply. Here in the USA there are no requirements on the power supply power factors like there are in the EU. Was the wattmeter a true meter like the power company puts on the side of your house?

H. R.(Bob) Hofmann

My wattmeter is a coin slot meter with the coin mechanism bypassed, no fancy LCD displays and LSI. ie mesures whatever I am charged for, cross calibrated by agreeing with my normal utility co meter for the same load down to the disc rotating very slowly and up to 1Kw.

-- Diverse Devices, Southampton, England electronic hints and repair briefs , schematics/manuals list on

Coin slot wattmeter? What's the intended purpose? I've never heard of such a thing.

A useful tidbit I learned relatively recently, UK electric meters record apparent power, or so I'm told, while US meters record true power. The effect is that power factor correction saves the UK consumer money, while in the US there's no direct incentive for the consumer.

I'm surprised to learn that a LCD tv draws that much, considering how many LCD devices operate on batteries. Even if the battery ones are much smaller (cellphones, calculators, portable dvd players, etc) I still would have expected a LCD tv to draw less than a CRT tv. It does than appear that a plasma is not all that much more, although still the highest.

It than looks like for energy savings the CRT is still the best deal. This is surprising, at a time when energy saving is a top priotity, and there is even some govt. plans to eliminate incandescent light bulbs in the US in the future and make everyone use the compact florescents (which would really suck, because CF bulbs do not work well in cold weather an other situations).

LCD sets do typically use less power for a given size than CRT. The other poster is simply not correct.

CFLs work fine in cold weather, I have some outdoors that I've used down to

20F and while they took a bit longer to warm up, they did reach full output. There are applications where incandescent is still better, but the cold weather doesn't really matter. Metal halide is another viable alternative for cold weather use.

Some halogen lamps meet the energy requirements, the law doesn't say the source has to be fluorescent, only that it has to meet certain efficiency requirements.

For comparisons, my Polaroid LCD-2000 20 inch TV draws 62W max. at 12VDC; I think that this is better than most 20 inch CRT TVs.

Michael

42" Plasma TV (Sony FWD-42PX2S): rated at 350w 46" LCD TV (Sony KDL-46S3000): rated at 215w 34" CRT TV (Sony WEGA KD-34XBR970): rated at 240w

So, Plasma is a tad bit more than tube. LCD is much less than either.

If you have two or three 100w light bulbs left on in unused rooms, it's about the same thing. "Power hogs" ?? I don't think so.

--
Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens.

Try using 'em in No. MN at -25F; you will gladly return to incandescents.

Michael

You were misinformed: UK domestic meters record true energy! Martin(Stockport)

Many years ago in America, people had to put some coins in a coin slot box if they wanted to keep their electric power turned on.When electric power was first being supplied to many towns and homes in America, the electric power companies only supplied electric power to homes for a few hours each evening. cuhulin

I've got no expirence from MN, but someone put a CFL in our walk in freezer at work. You could leave it on for hours and it wouldn't get up to full brightness. The frezer was kept at -40F.

Mike

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That's obviously much colder than it ever gets here. Was it an enclosed CFL or one with exposed tube? That makes a big difference.

Metal halide is a better choice for very cold temps. Halogen is also an option, not a lot more efficient than standard incandescent, but enough to meet requirements.