Monitoring a Sample of Main Televisions and Connected Entertainment Systems in Northern Italy

Energy labels are a powerful instrument to influence the electricity consumption of appliances and lighting devices in households. However, the real consumption data depend on a number of different factors, including marketing policies, purchase preferences, technology development, and last but not least behavioural habits. While white appliance consumption trends tend to change over a longer period, the use of entertainment devices changes quickly. A number of different devices (digital versatile disc (DVD) player, decoder, game console, home theater, video recorder) are normally connected to the main television set, and these devices change rapidly, and, at the same time, new behaviors are emerging. There is an increasing gap between, on one hand, the higher consumption of televisions and connected devices and the number of regulations developed for their regulation, and, on the other hand, the lack of knowledge on the real onsite consumption. In order to fill this gap, in 2017, a measurement campaign was promoted and developed in some households in northern Italy. The consumption of 28 main televisions and 14 entertainment systems was measured on a daily basis for at least two weeks. Standby consumptions were measured as well. On the basis of outcomes evaluated, it results that these devices are responsible for 9.3% of total electricity consumption as an average of 5.6% for televisions and 3.7% of the attached devices. Standby consumption is still considerably high (3.6% of the total electricity consumption), especially for satellite decoders. Some interesting correlations were studied highlighting the effect of the introduction of the energy labels or the increasing size of the TV over time. The main results obtained were compared to those of previous monitoring campaigns launched in Italy.