<div>With guns, grenades and other weapons, US Special Forces will slug it out against the Federation in ever more households on Christmas, as new video game consoles fire up Call of Duty: Ghosts, a recent version of the popular game.<br /><br />The mayhem will be fictional but the electricity needed to run the consoles, engineers point out, will be real and greater than ever, according to the engineers at the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit utility consortium based in Palo Alto, California.<br /><br />After the consortium’s engineers in Knoxville, Tennessee, conducted product testing, they found that unlike other new electricity-using products, like light bulbs and air-conditioners, which become more energy-frugal every year, game consoles take more and more.<br /><br />The reason is that they do more, according to the institute, with bigger hard drives, better graphics and more memory.<br /><br />But they still differ substantially among themselves. Running for an hour, the Nintendo Wii U used 30 watt-hours of electricity, the Microsoft Xbox One took 105, and the Sony PlayStation 4 took 124. So consumption ranged from about what a large compact fluorescent bulb uses to more than what the old-fashioned 100-watt bulb takes.<br /><br />In 2010, Epri said that in an hour, the Xbox 360 used 87.9 watt-hours, the PlayStation 3 used 84.8 watt-hours, and the Nintendo Wii used 13.7 watt-hours.<br /><br />Still, even the PlayStation represents only a little more than a penny’s worth of electricity for the hour, at average prices, but the average game console runs for a lot more than an hour. Assuming 6.4 hours a week, the PS4 costs about $5 (Rs 316) a year to run, and perhaps double that in high-cost areas like New York.<br /><br />The consumption is still modest compared to other smart devices in the typical house. As the price of electronic devices falls, televisions are getting larger, so they consume more power, and plasma screens take roughly twice as much as LEDs.<br /><br /> A large plasma screen can consume 250 kilowatt-hours a year, which is about half as much as a new 18-cubic-foot refrigerator/freezer. That’s notable, since a game console is usually hooked up to a TV.<br /><br />In terms of cost, running a desktop computer or a TV runs over $20 (Rs 1,265) a year, according to EPRI and just operating the set-top cable box costs nearly $14 (Rs 885).<br /><br />Jeffrey Dols, the engineer who led the measurement team, said that “while five bucks a year is a great value for entertainment, consumers still have an opportunity to save money and conserve energy by turning off or unplugging these household devices while not in use.”<br /><br /><br /></div>
<div>With guns, grenades and other weapons, US Special Forces will slug it out against the Federation in ever more households on Christmas, as new video game consoles fire up Call of Duty: Ghosts, a recent version of the popular game.<br /><br />The mayhem will be fictional but the electricity needed to run the consoles, engineers point out, will be real and greater than ever, according to the engineers at the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit utility consortium based in Palo Alto, California.<br /><br />After the consortium’s engineers in Knoxville, Tennessee, conducted product testing, they found that unlike other new electricity-using products, like light bulbs and air-conditioners, which become more energy-frugal every year, game consoles take more and more.<br /><br />The reason is that they do more, according to the institute, with bigger hard drives, better graphics and more memory.<br /><br />But they still differ substantially among themselves. Running for an hour, the Nintendo Wii U used 30 watt-hours of electricity, the Microsoft Xbox One took 105, and the Sony PlayStation 4 took 124. So consumption ranged from about what a large compact fluorescent bulb uses to more than what the old-fashioned 100-watt bulb takes.<br /><br />In 2010, Epri said that in an hour, the Xbox 360 used 87.9 watt-hours, the PlayStation 3 used 84.8 watt-hours, and the Nintendo Wii used 13.7 watt-hours.<br /><br />Still, even the PlayStation represents only a little more than a penny’s worth of electricity for the hour, at average prices, but the average game console runs for a lot more than an hour. Assuming 6.4 hours a week, the PS4 costs about $5 (Rs 316) a year to run, and perhaps double that in high-cost areas like New York.<br /><br />The consumption is still modest compared to other smart devices in the typical house. As the price of electronic devices falls, televisions are getting larger, so they consume more power, and plasma screens take roughly twice as much as LEDs.<br /><br /> A large plasma screen can consume 250 kilowatt-hours a year, which is about half as much as a new 18-cubic-foot refrigerator/freezer. That’s notable, since a game console is usually hooked up to a TV.<br /><br />In terms of cost, running a desktop computer or a TV runs over $20 (Rs 1,265) a year, according to EPRI and just operating the set-top cable box costs nearly $14 (Rs 885).<br /><br />Jeffrey Dols, the engineer who led the measurement team, said that “while five bucks a year is a great value for entertainment, consumers still have an opportunity to save money and conserve energy by turning off or unplugging these household devices while not in use.”<br /><br /><br /></div>