Episode 8 :: Home entertainment appliances

We are buying more home entertainment products than ever before, and we use them for longer - so it's worth looking at how much energy they use.

Efficient home entertainment appliances will give you the same great performance using less energy. It's not just what you buy - how you use them also makes a real difference. Wise choices will add up to lower power bills and more energy resources left for the future.

Choose the most efficient option for the job.

Appliance energy use can really differ, even between very similar products.

Here's some tips...

Look for the blue ENERGY STAR® mark. It tells you at a glance which products are the most energy efficient.

Choose low stand-by energy. ENERGY STAR-qualified home entertainment products use up to 90% less electricity in stand-by mode than some non-qualified products.

Learn more about choosing appliances.

Browse to find ENERGY STAR products

If you're not using them, switch them off!

We waste over $100 million a year on household stand-by energy - that's enough to power 55,000 homes - and home entertainment products make up about two-thirds of this.

Here's some tips...

Switch appliances off at the wall when you're not using them.

Learn more about using appliances.

Use power-saver modes

Power options on your computer save electricity when you're not using it.

Here's a tip...

You can set your computer so the power saving modes kick in after a certain period of time and automatically switches things off like your monitor.

Did you know?

• By 2020 our energy use from home electronics could be double^[1] what it is today - so it makes sense to choose efficient products and use them wisely.
• There are over 10 million home electronic products in New Zealand homes.

^{[1] "Gadgets and Gigawatts: Policies for Energy Efficient Appliances", International Energy Agency, 2009.}