Evaluating games console electricity use : technologies and policy options to improve energy efficiency

• Main Author: Webb, Amanda E.
• Other Authors: France, C. ; Mayers, K.
• Published: University of Surrey 2016
• Subjects: 333.791
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.683861

Energy efficiency regulations and standards are increasingly being used as an approach to reduce the impact of appliances on climate change. Each new generation of games consoles is significantly different to the last and their cumulative electricity use has risen due to improved performance and functionality and increasing sales. As a result, consoles have been identified in the EU, US and Australia as a product group with the potential for significant electricity savings. However, there is a good deal of uncertainty regarding cumulative electricity use of consoles as measurements of power consumption are crude and user behaviour poorly understood. In particular, due to the highly competitive nature of the games console market there is a lack of information available regarding product specifications and power consumption prior to launch. This has made it difficult for policy makers and other stakeholders to determine what is technically achievable in terms of potential electricity saving, and the role that energy efficiency regulations and standards can play, until a product launches. This research establishes robust estimates of console usage and measures the power consumption of each model of PlayStation® platform sold in Europe since 1995. These data are used to calculate both the electricity use per unit and the cumulative electricity use of each platform. Furthermore, a study of PlayStation®4 estimates the potential electricity saving that could be achieved using various efficiency improvements. The study shows that PlayStation®4 is likely to mitigate, and may even reverse, the trend of increasing electricity use between product generations due to the integration of energy efficient technologies from the initial stages of product design. The results of this research have been key to the European Commission establishing that the voluntary approach to reducing console electricity use proposed by console manufacturers is sufficiently robust and ambitious.