The Importance of Upgrading Your TV to a More Efficient One

Old televisions have a number of series problems with them, of course, but chief among these is often the fact that they suck energy like nobody’s business. This is bad both for you and the environment. Here’s some information on why this is the case as well as how you can correct the problem with a newer television.

Old Tube TVs
If you have one of those big and blocky TVs that ways a million pounds, it’s probably a tube TV or a type called a “CRT.” It’s called this because it's short for “Cathode-ray television.” This technology uses huge tubes in order to perform. It also happens to be tremendously inefficient. Many televisions of all types use energy even when they’re off, and CRTs are no exception.

In fact, they use as much as 30 watts per hour even while they’re off. When they’re on, the consumption can be as much as 150 watts per hour for a large enough TV.

Flat Screen LCD and LED Screens
These screens use a thin transistor liquid crystal display tech in order to put images on-screen instead of the old way of doing it through tubes.  One of the reasons why these are more energy efficient Is because they use backlighting instead of trying to do as much as CRT devices do. Many of these screens can use just a few watts while off and as few as 30 or 40 watts while on. At the very least, the entire technology tends to be 20 or 30% more efficient because of how it operates.

LCD TVs That Are Older
Even if you don’t have a CRT and have an LCD flat screen instead, the efficiency of these televisions goes way down over time. This is going to cost you over a long enough time period and with enough devices. This is because a lot of the shortcuts that lead to more energy efficiency tend to degrade over time.
Sometimes, they can be refurbished and this ability can be restored, but if you have a TV that’s been around long enough, you should at least bring it in to see what kind of efficiency it has left if you want to maximize this phenomenon, if not think about replacing it altogether with a different one.

The Importance of Base Efficiency
Most televisions that were made anytime within the last decade or so will have a yellow tag somewhere on the back or the bottom which tells you exactly how much money it’s likely to cost you within a specific time frame such as a year. It will also have kilowatt-hours on it and other information.
It’s important to point out that this isn’t the end all and be all of what the TVs current rate is, however. The age of even modern televisions is going to matter too. Just as the picture quality can degrade over time, so can the efficiency. These two things may even go hand and hand.

Why Efficiency Matters
Well, the most obvious reason why this all matters is because electricity costs money and you’re going to be the one paying for it. Over a great enough time period, you could be paying quite a lot for it, especially if it’s an older TV or if it’s a kind that’s particular inefficient, such as a CRT or an older model LCD or another type. Plasma screen televisions can also be highly inefficient when it comes to energy, for example, especially if they aren’t the kind that has efficiency built into it.

But even beyond that, this is important for the environment. Sustainability is essential to the world. It’s a simple zero sum game. If we continually use more energy than we can produce over the long run, then eventually the system will collapse. The way this has been compensated for this far is by burning fossil fuels, coal, and other problematic energy sources. At some point, it’s true that we’re going to be switching over to more sustainable energy sources, but until technologies like wind, solar, thermal, hydro and others take off and become themselves both efficient and popular, it’s important for everyone to do their part to make for a greener planet.

This might not seem much on an individual basis when you go from a TV that’s older and so average to poor in efficiency to a newer one that uses all the latest technologies at the highest level, and maybe it isn’t.

But, the point is that it matters collectively. If everyone focused their efforts on one TV, one gadget, one solar panel at a time, and slowly added sustainability than it would have a colossal effect on the whole planet. It would be easier to wean off of fossil fuels that cause environmental damage globally, for example. It would also ensure that we can keep using energy the way we want to even when fossil fuels run out entirely.

What You Can Do About It
If you want to get a new television that will start to pay for itself right away with energy savings, please contact us as soon as possible Refurbished televisions of the newer variety can still have this effect on your energy bill, while at the same time not breaking the bank.

​The key, after all, is to go with a company that knows what they’re doing in terms of facilitating efficiency. This is how you really maximize sustainability.

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