Approximately 10 percent of all power used in an average home goes to TVs and black boxes. It was with this number in mind that the California Energy Commission decided that something must be done and proposed a new set of standards for TV power consumption. The new standards would insist that by 2011 TV sets use 33 percent less power than they do now and by 2013 would use 49 percent less.

This doesn’t seem to be drastically different from the direction of the electronics industry anyways, so it shouldn’t rock any large corporate boats. These kinds of regulations have been anticipated for a while now.

California has imposed some of the strictest energy efficiency standards in the U.S. on household appliances since Art Rosenfeld championed the regulations in the 70s. Thanks to the Rosenfeld Effect, Californian energy consumption has failed to rise while the rest of American states have seen it go up by an average of 40 percent.

Californians’ power bills will go down by about $18 to $30 per year thanks to the new regulations.

While the new regulations sound quite harsh there are already TVs which would fit into the restrictions. Also, the Energy Commission has stated publicly that the rumors that they would ban plasma TVs is false. Good news for companies like Panasonic who have said that it wants to reduce the power consumption of its plasma TVs by two-thirds by 2010 or 2011.

California is trying to tackle the energy problems created by ever-increasing sizes of energy sucking plasma TV’s at the source. By 2011, legislators are hoping that all but the most efficient televisions will be unavailable in California. A plasma screen TV uses 300 times the energy of a tube TV.

If it passes, the first round of regulations would go into effect in 2011, decreasing user’s electricity bills by about 20 dollars a year. The second tier would come into effect in 2013, lowering bills further by another $10 a year.

This could effectively eliminate plasma TVs from the market, since LCD televisions have made more progress in efficiency than plasma TV’s. The legislation could also have the opposite effect, forcing manufacturers to make more efficient sets for the California market, but also selling those sets everywhere. Less efficient sets would have a smaller market, and so would be more rapidly phased out.