17 January 2007

Could Plasma TVs be the new 4x4s of home entertainment?

Purchasing that ‘must have’ plasma HDTV in the January sales may have seemed a great idea, but what’s it going to cost to run in the coming Year? Could consumers be missing out on an opportunity to save money and reduce their CO2 emissions? sust-it thinks so.

sust-it.net is a new website that compares the published running costs of consumer/office electrical and white goods, rather than just their prices and features. It does this by taking the manufactures published energy consumption rates then multiplying this by an average electricity unit tariff. So making it possible to see how much it will cost the buyer to sit in front of that shiny new plasma each day, and an indication of what the New Years electricity bill holds in store. The results can make interesting reading, for example; there are plasma screens available that use nearly 1.5 Kwh (kilowatts of power used per hour) which could cost you £1.18p an evening to watch (5hrs) or £503.04 a year if you watched 6hrs a day. This will generate 1.4 Tonnes of climate changing CO2 a year.