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Comments: 339 +- Hardware: California Moving Forward With Big-Screen TV Power Restrictions on Saturday October 17, @07:16AM
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by
Soulskill
on Saturday October 17, @07:16AM
from the from-my-cold-high-definition-hands dept.
from the from-my-cold-high-definition-hands dept.
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Hugh Pickens writes "The Los Angeles Times reports that California regulators are poised to pass the nation's first ban on energy-hungry big-screen televisions just as they did with refrigerators, air conditioners and dozens of other products since the 1970s. 'We would not propose TV efficiency standards if we thought there was any evidence in the record that they will hurt the economy,' said Commissioner Julia Levin, who has been in charge of the two-year rule-making procedure. 'This will actually save consumers money and help the California economy grow and create new clean, sustainable jobs.' California's estimated 35 million TVs and related electronic devices account for about 10% of all household electricity consumption, but manufacturers quickly are coming up with new technologies that are making even 50-inch-screen models much more economical to operate. Sets with screens of up to 58 inches would have until the start of 2011 to comply with a minimum efficiency standard, with more stringent rules being introduced two years later. If all TVs met state standards, California could avoid the $600-million cost of building a natural-gas-fired power plant, says Ken Rider, a commission staff engineer. Switching to more-efficient TVs could have an estimated net benefit to the state of $8.1 billion, the commission staff reported."
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I Did Not! (Score:4, Funny)
Hugh Pickens writes
I most certainly did not!
Did Too! (Score:2)
Hugh Pickens writes
I most certainly did not!
Oh, yes you did!
...get that ID today.
Create More Hobs ??? (Score:2)
Re:Create More Hobs ??? (Score:5, Funny)
Where are the jobs going to be created? Best Buy and Walmart. Considering all TVs are now designed and produced overseas I can't see were any jobs would be created?
TV efficiency testers?
Parent
Re:Create More Hobs ??? (Score:5, Informative)
1. Energy efficiency regulations.
2. ????
3. Profit!
Please don't move to California and screw it up.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The main reason that CA lawmakers have trouble "cleaning house" is because of that "lefty" proposition 13 that allows 1/3 of the lawmakers to block any bill that raises taxes. A return to majority rule would get CA moving again.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
People can come up some pretty outrageous ideas and will often release them to the press just for the publicity even when they know they don't have the slightest chance of succeeding. As wacky as California politics can be (and despite it's reputation, this state doesn't exactly have a lock on legislative craziness), the ban on black cars has never been taken seriously as far as I can tell.
Re:Create More Hobs ??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Where are the jobs going to be created? Best Buy and Walmart. Considering all TVs are now designed and produced overseas I can't see were any jobs would be created?
Writing regulations, testing for compliance with regulations, putting amusing stickers on compliant units, smuggling noncompliant units into the country, putting forged stickers on noncompliant units, legal actions for flouting regulations, building bigger prisons for incarcerating those who flout the laws, lots of prison guards, parole officers, etc.
All the things the US excels in!
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Thinking outside the box. That's what makes America great!
Hats off to California, folks.
Err, no don't do that actually. Taking your hat off can lead
Misses The Point (Score:5, Insightful)
We do need to think about our future energy needs both with respect to the environment and energy security. What we don't need is silly government micro management of our lives. So yes that means we need to subsidize nuclear, wind and solar power. The problem is that the greenies block everything. They block nuclear energy and they even block solar energy. Diane Feinstein plans on banning solar panels in the Mojave Desert even though that is one of the best places for them. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/20/MN4T19OTBJ.DTL [sfgate.com] And then the greenies don't want to allow wind power on mountains in Vermont and New Hampshire even though no-one lives on the top of a mountain. They dig their heads on the sand and pretend that with a growing population we can just conserve our way out of this crisis - which is of course way out of reality. Then they try to impose draconian restrictions on the rest of us. I can just imagine the next step - banning video games because of energy use.
Re:Misses The Point (Score:4, Insightful)
They dig their heads on the sand and pretend that with a growing population we can just conserve our way out of this crisis
And to dig your head in the sand and pretend that with a growing population we can just consume our way out of this crisis is any better?
Then they try to impose draconian restrictions on the rest of us.
"Oh no! They're going to outlaw low efficiency TVs when higher efficiency TVs exist!"
The hyperbolic stance of you and your ilk is just as much a problem, perhaps even more so, as the people who oppose any sort of new energy plant. We will need to increase energy production, there's no doubt about that, but we also need to make better use of the energy we already have, there's no doubt about that, either.
So quit being part of the problem. Just because you call out the foolishness from the other side of the debate doesn't excuse *your* foolishness.
Parent
Re:Misses The Point (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
The only thing we need is fewer narrow-nosed, moralizing ideologues who can think of no other explanations for a diversity of opinion then stupidity or insanity and no other solution to the problem of a diversity of opinion but authoritarianism.
Oh, and since you seem to be a bit upset with hyperbole perhaps you could direct your ire at this:
If all TVs met state standards, California could avoid the $600-million cost of building a natural-gas-fired power plant, says Ken Rider, a commission staff engineer.
Ooops. That's not just hyperbolic it's hyperbolic and monumentally arrogant. I gues
Re:Misses The Point (Score:5, Insightful)
"Oh no! They're going to outlaw low efficiency TVs when higher efficiency TVs exist!"
I don't really give a damn about TV because I rarely watch it. What does bother me is the fact that the Government is going to mandate that I switch to crappy ass light bulbs that take half a minute to come up to full brightness and will contaminate my house with mercury if dropped.
The CFL mandate is one of the stupidest fucking things ever to come out of Washington. I'm already using them at every location in my house where it makes sense to use them -- i.e: lights that get turned on left on for hours on end. Now they are going to force me to use them in closets (where I need full brightness at once and rarely leave the light on for more than a minute or two) and all other locations? WTF?
As an added bonus, there isn't a single CFL made in the United States. There are still incandescent bulbs produced here. Thank you Uncle Sam, for removing my choice to support American jobs and ensuring that even more of our money leaves the country and goes to China.
Parent
Re:Misses The Point (Score:4, Informative)
I don't know where you get your compact fluorescents, but mine come on immediately, and I don't notice any delay before they're at full brigtness. Maybe you just need to buy newer ones that have the latest high-tech solid-state ballasts.
(a) Liquid mercury is harmless unless ingested. (b) If you drop one, sweep it up. (c) The amount of mercury in one bulb is a few milligrams. That's small compared to a mercury thermometer, but I don't hear you complaining about mercury thermometers. (d) The wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] shows that the environmental aspect of this is FUD: "In areas with coal-fired power stations, the use of CFLs saves on mercury emissions when compared to the use of incandescent bulbs. This is due to the reduced electrical power demand, reducing in turn the amount of mercury released by coal as it is burned.[43][44]. In the United States, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimated that if all 270 million compact fluorescent lamps sold in 2007 were sent to landfill sites, that this would represent around 0.13 tons, or 0.1% of all U.S. emissions of mercury (around 104 tons) that year.[45]"
If you want to oppose government regulation on general political principles, that's one thing, but please don't oppose it based on FUD.
How about being a little more consistent here? If you use energy-inefficient technologies, it affects my life with pollution and global warming. If you think you have a god-given right to do that, then essentially you're saying you think you have a god-given right to have me subsidize the hidden costs of your lifestyle. In other words, you want a government subsidy. So on the one hand, you seem to be all fired up about how evil government regulation is, but then you turn around and say that you want government subsidies for your polluting lifestyle, and government subsidies for obsolete US industries that can't adapt to new technologies.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Agreed, to a large extent; what surprises me is this:
California could avoid the $600-million cost of building a natural-gas-fired power plant, says Ken Rider, a commission staff engineer.
With all of California's power problems, it's incredibly short sighted. Is the population not increasing? Are they not building new homes?
Re: (Score:2)
With all of California's power problems, it's incredibly short sighted. Is the population not increasing? Are they not building new homes?
Actually, it looks like California's population decreased last year. We'll see how long it keeps up. Part of the reason stems from the state continually increasing taxes on the well off. Another reason is the increasing difficulty in getting a job in California and running a business in the state (again, taxes). So, while as other posters have said, they can not consume or produce their way out of this mess, they just might be able to tax their way out of it.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
I totally agree. Well said.
Green is the new Red. (hammer and sickle)
Re:Misses The Point (Score:4, Interesting)
You're part correct, but part grossly wrong.
I grew up in the mountains of Vermont and NH, and it's NOT the greens who are against putting turbines in the hills. It's the average joe who lives in a town around where they want to put them that's firmly against them. The reasons:
a) That's traditional stomping grounds for many. Hunting, hiking, etc.
b) We like our pristine, forest covered hills. We hate the power-line cuts which mar lots of the hills already, and we hate the ski areas which do as well. This would be another "slash a road up the side of a mountain, then clearcut chunks of it.
c) It might cost us jobs. VT and NH make tons of money off tourism. People come to see the unspoiled (after we spent 150 years growing it back from the clearcutting) forests and beautiful, trackless hills. If our local hills get a wind farm on them, that tourism money goes to some other town.
d) The corporations planning on wind farms are doing it behind the backs of the people that live there. Not asking them, not telling them anything. The first they know about it is that there are some folks from NYC or Boston surveying a mountain in their backyard. After the appropriate amount of outrage, the corporation holds a town-hall meeting where they lay out their plan to hack up the woods and stick towers up and fence parts of it off, and then act surprised when most of the people who live there don't support them.
Yes, the ultra-green group is irritating, and stops all sort of progress. But in the NE, it's generally not the greens who are the problem. It's the average citizen who's getting shafted by some corporation that forms the bulk of the opposition to new power generation plants.
Nobody likes it when some corporation from out of state comes in, whacks a bunch of trees down, and slaps a structure in. The corporations don't bother pitching it to the locals, they just assume that they can do whatever the fuck they want, wherever they want to do it. I watched this happen in the town next to where I grew up, where I used to go hunting. The plan was to close off the mountain, hack a road up it, and clearcut for a windfarm. The first the locals heard about it was when someone stumbled across the environmental impact statement buried on the state website. The people who surveyed the mountain came in from the back side, and never set foot in the town.
Yes, green power might be good, but when the corporation who does it is just another sneaky, fuck the consumers and citizens corporation, it doesn't matter. For a lot of the people in the NE, a power corporation is a power corporation, no matter if it's oil, nuclear, or wind. They're all just a bunch of lying, money grubbing, citizen-screwing, faceless corporations.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
In the vein of discourse without reference I will claim that nuclear has the lowest life cycle cost for a continuous power generation technology.
Wind and solar have to be backed up by this type of facility because they are intermittent.
This life cycle cost is calculated on a total emissions basis - all emitted carbon must be sequestered permanently, and all radioactive isotopes must be held until gamma emissions are below background.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Waste discharges are an economic externality, and many libertarian-minded people would argue that it should be regulated (preferably in a market-based manner).
Financial regulations is a pretty big category - most libertarian-minded people would be in favor of regulation that maximizes transparency and openness, and which prevents the creation of monopolies. So, CEOs misstating profits would be fair game - that is fraud.
Seat belts are a different matter. People should be perfectly free to drive without wea
Or we can allow capitalism. (Score:2)
lets see, if the California government gets out of both the energy and consumer appliance size regulation game then capitalism could take over they could possibly build, I don't know, a clean solar power plant out in the Mojave? Maybe even put some wind power in away from the hippies? Then the downward trend of TV power consumption could continue on its current path and there wouldn't be a lot to worry about.
Re: (Score:2)
Windows Mojave isn't ready for the solar power-plant control servers.
Re: (Score:3)
The blinders you socialist wear. The free market wants to do it [msn.com] but hippies are stopping it. Sure, there's plenty, but there could be so much more.
I don't care what it is, the Left Wingers who lip service to clean power are also the same ones who block it. Now that Ted Kennedy is dead hopefully that huge windfarm can be built.
A Government that can... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
..tell you how much electricity your TV set can use or how much water your toilet can use per flush, has the power to do anything.
The government - meaning you - can go on denying the fact that L.A. is a desert and simply continue to outgun and outspend outland farms and wilderness areas trying to protect their water rights.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Except of course you can get a private insurance plan as a supplement, like approximately 7 million Brits do - mostly through their employers.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
No, we are not a democracy. We are a republic. The government cannot simply round up minorities if it wanted to. I agree that the limits of government is what we are willing to put up with, but that is not a democracy, that is the rule of law as enforced by the people.
A democracy can only devolve into oligarchy. The minorities will be silenced one by one until a ruling class develops. We don't want a democracy. The government needs to stay out of our homes and dictate such minute details of our lives.
how about doing something about cable / sat boxes (Score:4, Insightful)
how about doing something about cable / sat boxes as well? Why can't they go into a lower power mode / HD spin down when off / not recording something?
Re:how about doing something about cable / sat box (Score:2)
It may depend on the box and the provider but a number of cable/sat boxes that I have seen need to be "always on" (i.e. they need to be powered up and receiving signal) so that they can pick up new software updates and possibly also new encryption keys.
Seems like the wrong approach. (Score:5, Insightful)
Mandating low consumption TV sets, or low consumption lightbulbs (here in Finland it's now forbidden to produce incandescent bulbs) is as dumb as mandating low consumption cars. It makes the whole process of enforcement and monitoring more complicated, more expensive and prone to corruption.
The logical and simpler solution is to increase the price of electricity and/or gasoline, to reflect the real cost of the commodity, through taxes. That way, there is a natural economic pressure to decrease the consumption of EVERY appliance. And if someone has the money to pay for the electricity consumed by his/her CRT TV, then let them. Their money can be used to find better sources of abovementioned commodities. I.E. invest in research of algae-produced combustibles.
Re:Seems like the wrong approach. (Score:5, Insightful)
The logical and simpler solution is to increase the price of electricity and/or gasoline, to reflect the real cost of the commodity, through taxes
hey Einstein, how is the consumer going to know how much that shiny new fridge is going to consume ? Without government intervention, he won't be able to tell the difference between a high and a low efficient device ...
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
He reads the manual.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And if someone has the money to pay for the electricity consumed by his/her CRT TV, then let them.
I have a 28" Philips CRT TV. I can't find its papers and I cannot be bothered to look on its back for possible power consumption, but according to this page [sust-it.net], it shouldn't be using more than 110-120W. There weren't many larger CRTs made due to their sheer weight.
Now play around on that site and check out the power consumption of a 37" LCD [sust-it.net], which has roughly the same height as my CRT, but is wide-screen. Whoops, the most efficient one is 123W.
The numbers they have on that site probably aren't completely accur
Re: (Score:2)
If the consumer can't make informed choices, then the market fails
It's worse than that: The corp is a lot more powerful than the consumer, so you need to restrict the corp to let the market work.
Accelerated OLED panel development? (Score:4, Interesting)
I think this new law could fast-track the development of larger OLED flat panel TV's.
Since OLED's don't need backlighting, by definition it means very efficient power usage even on flat panel TV's over 50" in size. Don't be surprised that LG, Samsung, Panasonic and Sony start pouring in billions of dollars in R&D to overcome the current technical issues and get these larger OLED flat panel TV's into production by 2012 at latest. And unlike LCD TVs, OLED TVs will have extremely fast response times, which means no motion blurring issues even with fast action scenes.
Re: (Score:2)
My 30-second google research also says that the contrast will be better
The Governator... (Score:4, Funny)
...is BACK,
and he saw himself on a 50 inch TV and thought - "too much detail", ban all 50" inch TV's, I got to look good on TV. ;)
(Spoken with Arnoldish accent of course)
Ban tumble dryers instead? (Score:3, Insightful)
Is it true that in some parts of California it's illegal to dry your laundry outside? That in parts of a state that is predominantly hot and dry the only legal way of getting your clothes dry is to heat them and rotate them in a sealed metal drum?
Compare with TV usage here:
http://www.carbonfootprint.com/energyconsumption.html [carbonfootprint.com]
It's a bit less than a big TV, but if you've got free air drying outside your door, you can use it for zero-carbon, zero-cost drying. Except of course all that laundry flapping around is going to bring down the price of houses in the neighborhood, because prospective buyers will think you're all too poor to afford dryers. Conspicuous consumption at its most brillant.
[Or at least that's the reason I understand for outside laundry lines]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
In Sydney, Australia it is illegal in most apartment blocks also because of the danger of something falling
What do you make your clothes from? I would expect the risk of injury due to falling clothes-pegs to be only very slightly greater than that due to falling dropbears. (I regularly have clothes-pegs from the five floors above me land in my verandah, but I'm not concerned about my safety. And since no-one ever comes to claim them I never need to buy clothes-pegs.)
An alternative but just _crazy_ idea. (Score:4, Insightful)
I've been kicking around this theory. I think I'll unveil it on SlashDot first, then maybe go for wider publication and peer validation. It could revolutionize _everything_.
OK, stick with me. What if... man I'm sweating about this, it's so monumental. OK, hold it together RightSaidFred99, hold it together.
Ready. OK. What if we charge more for goods and services, including power delivery, when we have an interest in seeing those goods and services used less. I think this came to me in a fevered peyote dream or something, but I am willing to bet (just a small amount of money - it's only a theory) that if California raised the price of power just a little bit that usage would go down. They could find the "sweet spot" (new term I coined) between price and availability of the resource and find some sort of balance.
Now the really crazy thing about this radical, revolutionary, mind-blowing idea of raising the price to quell demand is that it affects not only large TVs but _everything_! It might make people turn off their lights and lower their utilization of other power-using appliances!
Re:Idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that California is so large, manufacturers are not going to make a CA TV and a rest-of-the-world TV; neither will they stop selling there.
So, the problem is that even if the TV ends up costing only a few dollars more, it costs a few dollars more for EVERYONE.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Since both permitted and forbidden versions appear to already available, it seems to me that they would keep selling the versions which are forbidden in CA elsewhere, and only sell the more efficient (and more expensive) models in CA.
It all depends on the market size.
Re:Idiots (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Idiots (Score:4, Informative)
They do that already for the USA - they make NTSC only 110volt only televisions with crappy connectors for sale in the USA, and NTSC/PAL/PAL60 televisions 100-250volt power with RGB SCART connectors for countries that like colours to be the same from time to time.
(We have to specially import US specification televisions to check how it murders our games' artwork when played over there, and adjust the source artwork to avoid red and yellow).
Perhaps with HDTV they will standardise the models a little more, but it may not be as widespread as you think.
Parent
Re:If it's only a few bucks more, we win! (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem is why this needs to be legislated. If buying the more efficient TV will save you money, then what's the problem? Instead of this kind of micromanaging, why not enact something like the law we have on this side of the pond which requires electrical goods to be sold with a sticker indicating their energy efficiency rating, which can be used to calculate the total cost of ownership quite easily. You could take this a step further and require each item to be labeled with the cost (at the current electricity cost) of operating it for an hour and for the number of hours it is typically operated in one year.
Parent
TV electricity police (Score:3, Insightful)
You want to create TV electricity police for a near zero potential long-term benefit?
Some might suggest that you just like policing every aspect on everyone's life in the tiniest detail. Or maybe you just want votes from the TV police union. Either of those are problems. The small acts of oppression pile up into a big totalitarian heap.
And that assumes your ultra-rosy scenario is true. What's the track record for government involvement actually lowering the cost of things?
Re:Idiots (Score:4, Insightful)
The economics of this situation is more complicated than "costs more money = bad." People don't take energy efficiency into account when they make a big purchase like this. That means it's in the best interest of the manufacturer to save 5 bucks on manufacturing costs, even it means an extra $100 in electricity bills for the consumer. Legislation is the only really effective way to balance out the costs in a case like this, unless you can figure out how to make people pay for the electricity up front.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)