Over the past few years, ENERGY STAR has focused its efforts on the more obvious electronic energy hogs in our homes and businesses, taking aim at standby and on-mode power consumption of flat screen TVs, computers, displays, printers, and their external power supplies. Recently, however, they’ve started moving on to the next tier of energy using products. I’ll be covering a few of them in upcoming blogs, beginning today with the “just published” Audio Video efficiency specification, version 2.
Technically speaking, this isn’t a brand new product category specification – ENERGY STAR issued a “Consumer Audio/DVD Product” spec back in 2002. But that spec simply required meeting a standby mode maximum power consumption only. The development of Version 2 was a major undertaking, with multiple stakeholder meetings and drafts, offering a significant upgrade covering maximum power consumption requirements in Sleep (aka Standby), On-mode and Idle (aka Ready) modes, plus mandating an auto-power down (APD) default mode for both consumer and commercial A/V products. Minimum efficiency levels have also been included for the first time for products that include audio amplifiers.
The new spec becomes effective in three tiers:
- Tier 1 became effective on November 16, 2009, and introduced qualification criteria for commercial AV products. Consumer AV products remain under the previous standby power requirements in the version 1.0 ENERGY STAR Audio/DVD specification.
- Tier 2 becomes effective on July 30, 2010 and requires all AV products (consumer and commercial) to meet identical Sleep-mode, On-mode, and Auto Power Down, and Amplifier efficiency requirements, as applicable.
- Tier 3 will become effective on March 30, 2012, requiring all AV products to meet yet to be determined, but significantly more stringent On-mode requirements.
The following tables summarize the first ever ENERGY STAR On-mode and efficiency requirements for AV products:
In part 2 of this blog, I’ll cover Sleep mode requirements and the interesting APD option that ENERGY STAR offers AV product manufacturers.
For a copy of the new specification, go to: http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=revisions.audio_video_spec
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