Final Energy Star TV Draft Deals Blow to CEA on Ultra HD Power Allowance

The finding deals somewhat of a blow to CEA and some of its member companies, which had pushed the EPA to grant a 75 percent incremental power allowance on Ultra HD sets. There was no comment on the document Thursday from CEA, where spokesman Tyler Suiters said by email that "our team is still closely reviewing the content" of the final draft. Some CE makers in calling for the 75 percent allowance had expressed concern in their Energy Star comments that the industry technologically is today hard-pressed to emulate past successes in boosting the energy efficiency of LCD TVs (see 1411240034). For example, Sharp Labs recently told the Energy Star team that "though it is likely that Ultra HD TVs will see some efficiency improvements," Sharp doubts they'll ever be "as low" as 55 percent incremental power use when compared with 1080p sets.

The EPA itself had proposed a 55 percent allowance in its previous draft, but lowered that by five percentage points in the final document. Several commenters had complained that the agency's on-mode power requirements were too stringent for larger-screen sets to land Energy Star certification, so EPA eased those power requirements slightly "to allow for a small set of additional larger products to qualify," the agency said. "The new proposal captures the top 16 percent of the TV market. Based on how rapidly the television market evolves, EPA continues to anticipate a more than adequate selection of ENERGY STAR-certified models by the time the specification takes effect."

With the more lenient on-mode power requirements, EPA also "adjusted" the Ultra HD allowance from 55 percent in the previous draft to 50 percent in the final draft "to maintain the same stringency that was proposed" in the previous draft, the agency said. "EPA made this adjustment in recognition of the fact that most TVs with resolution greater than or equal to 2160 lines are above 60 inches in size and, therefore, benefit from the slight easing of the criteria for larger screen sizes discussed above." The "pass rate" for TVs with Ultra HD resolution with the 50 percent power "adder" factored in already exceeds 13 percent, the agency said. That’s comparable with the 16 percent pass rate for 1080p TVs, it said.

The EPA did heed CEA’s call to do away with its proposed May 2017 expiration date, after which Ultra HD sets would have had to qualify for Energy Star on their own merits and without the 50 percent power allowance. Doing away with the deadline gives the "greater flexibility in assessing when to revise the specification and determine the extent to which an adder is necessary to reflect the top performing products with ultra high resolution," the agency said. "EPA will reassess the allowance under the Version 8.0 specification development process as needed."

Other Ultra HD findings in the final draft: (1) Several companies had asked EPA to set the same Ultra HD adder for 8K TVs it was setting for 4K TVs. But EPA declined, "given the limited amount of available data and limited number of products that are currently 8K," the agency said. "EPA will continue to monitor the market going forward to determine the appropriateness of such an adder." (2) Ultra HD TVs qualifying for the 50 percent adder must display 2160 lines of "native vertical resolution," the agency said. Critics had complained that differentiator was too imprecise, and suggested using the CEA's definitions on Ultra HD. But the agency disagreed, saying the metric "provides a clear differentiator" between Ultra HD and HDTV sets. "Once the CEA's definition of UHD TVs is finalized," EPA will consider including it "in a future specification to harmonize with a widely used, accepted definition," as several commenters had urged the EPA to do. "At this time, EPA will retain the allowance requirement based only on Native Vertical Resolution instead of total native resolution for simplicity and to remain harmonized with previous specifications." Though one of EPA's stated reasons for not using the CEA definition was that CEA hadn't finalized that definition, CEA spokesman Jeff Joseph told us Thursday that the definitions -- which CEA calls "guidelines" -- actually were finalized when they were announced late June at the CE Week conference in New York (see 1406250029). Energy Star representatives couldn't be reached for comment by our Thursday deadline.

That the EPA declined to impose an expiration date on the Ultra HD power allowance is "our only major disappointment" with the Version 7.0 spec, Noah Horowitz, senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told us in an emailed statement. NRDC had urged EPA to move its May 2017 deadline up by a year, and then to re-assess how far CE makers had come in bringing their Ultra HD sets into Energy Star compliance. "If history repeats itself, we can expect the new UHD models in 2015 to use a lot less energy and for the qualification rate for ENERGY STAR qualified models to skyrocket," Horowitz said. "As such," he said, NRDC wanted EPA to explictly state its "intent to revisit this part of the spec within a defined time frame."

That said, NRDC hails Energy Star and the results it historically has achieved, Horowitz told us. "The ENERGY STAR program has played a major role in driving down the energy consumed by new TVs," he said. "For example, approximately 10 years ago a 42 inch LCD TV used more than 150 Watts and today only uses around 40 Watts of power while delivering an even better picture. In this case, the new more efficient TV will save the consumer almost $250 in lower electric bills over the TV's estimated 10 year lifetime."

Overall, NRDC also is pleased with the final Version 7.0 draft, Horowitz said. "Despite intense industry pressure to weaken the specification for the increasingly popular SUV sized TVs" whose screen sizes exceed 60 inches or more, EPA "held firm and did the right thing," Horowitz said. "The vast majority of the first ultra high definition or 4K TVs appear to have been rushed to the market without sufficient attention paid to their energy use, which is typical for new product launches. As such some of the UHD televisions use 2 to 3 plus times more energy than equivalent sized high definition televisions. We are hopeful that ENERGY STAR's additional power allowance for UHD will help further motivate television manufacturers to dramatically improve the efficiency of their next generation products."