Home Broadband Gear Continues to Surpass Energy Efficiency Standards

Residential broadband small-network equipment is inching ever closer to universally meeting energy efficiency standards in the 2015 voluntary agreement set up by NCTA and CTA (see 1506260038). The two pointed Monday to the latest annual report showing 99.6 percent of small network equipment bought or sold by signatories in 2018 met those standards, up from 99.2 percent in 2017. Consumer electronics can pose a thornier problem, environmental interests say.

Signatories agree that at least 90 percent of their small network equipment will meet those standards, and all the signers met that commitment, the report said. Signatories include Comcast, Charter Communications, AT&T, CenturyLink, Verizon, Actiontec, Arris, Netgear and Technicolor.

For cable ISPs, such small network efficiency improvements mean equipment runs cooler and lasts longer, meaning fewer truck rolls for dealing with problems, plus environmental benefits, CableLabs Technology Policy Director Debbie Fitzgerald told us. The industry also sees its voluntary commitments as evidence to show potential regulators, like the California Energy Commission, that it's making progress on its own in energy efficiency, she said.

The new report showed energy use for broadband modems, when weighted by transmission speeds, is down 54 percent between 2015 and 2018, while integrated access device and local network equipment energy use is down 66 percent. That metric is used because network and equipment capabilities have been growing rapidly, Fitzgerald said.

The small-network voluntary agreement is patterned after a similar VA on set-top box energy efficiency (see 1803150057). A set-top energy efficiency status report update should be out Tuesday, Fitzgerald said.

CE accounts for 10 to 15 percent of the typical household's annual energy use, and more gadgets are coming into homes every year, said Noah Horowitz, Natural Resources Defense Council director-Center for Energy Efficiency Standards, Climate & Clean Energy Program. They consume power when on and operating and when in standby mode and seemingly sleeping, he said. He said personals electronics have traditionally been an area where power consumption was particularly high; DVRs as recently as a handful of years ago might have consumed 25 watts of power when in use, 24 watts when the TV was off.

Energy efficiency often isn't a consideration when a CE company is designing a product's first version, Horowitz said. Efficiency can also mean added costs for the manufacturer, though it will save the user more over the lifetime of the device. He said industry interests and energy efficiency align when it comes to portability and the need for devices to sip instead of gulp power.

More networked devices could lead to big unintended consequences of higher energy use, Horowitz said, citing an NRDC report Monday on energy efficiency of smart speakers and video streaming devices. Those devices are energy efficient, but they can cause energy consumption of some TVs to skyrocket by changing what they do in standby mode, NRDC said. IoT "sounds good" but needs to be done in an energy-efficient way, Horowitz said.