EPA to Monitor Deployment of ‘Deep Sleep'-Featured Set-tops to Determine Impact
The EPA will monitor service provider deployments of set-top boxes with the “deep sleep” advanced energy savings feature to gauge its impact, the agency said in written responses to stakeholder comments on drafts of revised box specifications. The agency has proposed incentives to box makers who include the capacity for deep sleep in their products and for service providers who deploy boxes with the feature. The advanced energy saving feature is not a requirement in the draft revised specifications, but the agency has indicated it’s open to including it as one in future specification updates.
The Consortium for Energy Efficiency, which represents U.S. and Canadian utilities, wanted to know the consequences for a service provider who gets an incentive for a box with deep sleep capability but disables the feature at the consumer end. The Energy Star rules for service provider qualification stipulate that providers must “ensure that qualified set-top boxes continue to meet the requirements in the Energy Star product specification for the duration of their deployment,” the agency said. That includes “deploying and configuring hardware such that power management features and notifications” by the device makers function as intended, the EPA said.
The agency is proposing that box makers who include the deep sleep feature “enabled by default” will be subject to a different typical energy use requirement to qualify products. Service providers who deploy such boxes will be rewarded with a 1.5 multiplier to count toward their annual Energy Star box purchase requirement, the agency said. The incentives are expected to “expedite greater availability” of boxes with the advanced energy saving features, the EPA said.
The EPA said it’s “impossible to know with any level of certainty” consumer tolerance for the length of time a box takes to wake up from deep sleep because the boxes with those features haven’t yet been installed in the U.S. “EPA’s approach is to let the manufacturers work out the best solutions for their customers, while also watching the reaction to early deployments” and incentives, it said.
Service provider partners bought 15 million Energy Star set-top boxes in 2009, the agency said. The boxes are typically 30 percent more efficient than standard boxes, it said. Another eight million Energy Star boxes were sold last year to service providers who hadn’t signed up for the program. Service providers who have signed up so far are AT&T, DirecTV, Suddenlink Communications, Ecocyn Energy and EPB.
The agency turned down a request for putting off the effective date of version 3.0 of the specification to June 2012 from 2011. The EPA already has delayed the effective date by six months and has “proposed additional provisions to make it easier for service providers to begin participating in the program in a manner that makes sense for their company and their suppliers,” it said. The agency is obliged to revise Energy Star specifications for CE, IT and other “short-lived” products every two years, it said.