Comcast said its broadband network is 36% more energy efficient than it was just four years ago. 

The top U.S. wireline broadband provider said it consumed 21.2 kilowatt hours of electrical power to deliver a terabyte of data in 2019, but reduced that to just 13.6 KWh per TB in 2022. 

“Ongoing investments in innovation, software, AI, and other virtual and physical critical infrastructure require less hardware, less space and less energy per byte than previous technologies,” Comcast said.

Last year, Comcast announced plans to double network energy efficiency by 2030, cutting the electricity per consumed byte of data in half. Comcast estimates this will avoid the equivalent amount of electricity needed to power half a million homes for a year. 

Comcast has set a goal to be carbon-neutral by 2035 for Scope 1 and 2 emissions, or the direct and indirect emissions it owns and controls, across its global operations.

Charlie Herrin, president the Technology, Product and Experience organization within Comcast Cable, said his group is “energized by the progress we’ve made on the path to a greener, cleaner internet.” He that the efficiency gains are a big part of Comcast's ongoing 10G network technology upgrade, much of which involves virtualizing legacy energy-hungry legacy appliances into software functions. ■

The cable and telco broadband and technology industries, working together, have cut set-top box energy use by 57% since a voluntary energy-efficiency effort was launched almost a decade ago. In 2021 alone, that saved consumers $2.5 billion on their energy bills.

Those findings come from an annual report from independent auditor D+R International, a report was required as part of the voluntary agreement. 

It hasn't hurt that the number of deployed set-top boxes has decreased significantly, down nearly one-third since 2012. The overall decrease in boxes is combined with more energy-efficient set-tops and an increase in purchases of non-DVR internet protocol (IP) boxes that consume far less energy, the report pointed out.

Then there is the cord-cutting that has reduced the number of U.S. TV homes with a set-top from 58% of those homes as recently as 2016 to only 37% in 2021.

In 2012, NCTA–The Internet & Television Association, the Consumer Technology Association and CableLabs signed the Agreement for Ongoing Improvement to the Energy Efficiency of Set-Top Boxes, with other signatories that accounted for 95% of the traditional pay TV market in 2021, according to NCTA.

Among the companies that struck voluntary agreements are Comcast, Charter Communications, Cox Communications and DirecTV and Dish Network.

There will be more reports to come.

Last year, the signatories extended the agreement through 2025, with more rigorous energy-savings targets and the goal of cutting set-top energy use by two-thirds, with 86% of that reduction goal already reached by the end of 2021, the report concluded. ▪️

NCTA-The Internet & Television Association and the Consumer Technology Association have extended their voluntary agreement on set-top box energy efficiency for a third time, through the end of 2025.

The Voluntary Agreement for Ongoing Improvement to the Energy Efficiency of Set-Top Boxes was struck in 2012 between the Consumer Technology Association, whose members make the boxes, and NCTA-The Internet & Television Association, whose members deploy them.

Also Read: Audit Shows MVPDs Meeting Energy Efficiency Goals

The associations said that since the agreement was struck, it has saved consumers $7 billion in energy costs and 39 million metric tons of carbon dioxide.

The renewed agreement boosts energy efficiency commitments starting in 2023, translating, by the end of 2025, to set tops that use only one third of the energy they used in 2012.

Among the signatories to the agreement are AT&T/DirecTV, Comcast, Charter, Dish, Verizon, Cox, Altice, and Frontier.

Also Read: Energy Gold Star: CTA, NCTA Renew Set-Top Efficiency Pact

Dr. Kathleen Hogan, acting under secretary for science and energy at the Department of Energy, said DOE welcomed the extension and industry's "continued efforts of our industry partners to improve the energy efficiency of these products and save consumers money on their energy bills."

One energy-reducing factor has been the increasing use of laptops, tablets and smart phones to access video as an alternative to powering up a set-top.

Following a similar initiative that’s underway in the U.S., a group of Canadian  MVPDs and some of their key suppliers have inked a voluntary agreement that aims to improve the energy efficiency of set-top boxes.

The Canadian Energy Efficiency Voluntary Agreement (CEEVA) aims to reduce total annual energy consumption and avoid more than 100,000 tonnes of CO2 annually, equivalent to more than 44,000 sub-compact new vehicles driving 15,000 kilometers per year.

On board with the voluntary program as signatories are Bell, Cogeco Communications, Rogers Communications, Shaw Communications, and Vidéotron, MVPDs that serve more than 88% of Canada’s pay TV market, along with two set-top makers – Arris and EchoStar Technologies.

Under the program, at least 90% of all new set-tops purchased starting this year are expected to meet the agreement’s energy efficiency standards, while also factoring in complementary measures such as the Energy Star program. That, they estimate, will reduce the total annual energy output of Canadian STBs from 3.4 terawatt hours in 2016 to 2.7 TWh in 2021.

They’ll keep track of the results via annual reporting and audit mechanisms.

Several other organizations and companies are also extending their support, including Natural Resources Canada, the Ontario Ministry of Energy, the BC Ministry of Energy and Mines, Quebec’s Ministère de l'Énergie et des Ressources naturelles, Manitoba’s Department of Growth, Enterprise and Trade, BC Hydro, Independent Electricity System Operator, Manitoba Hydro, SaskPower, and Hydro Québec, the Consumer Technology Association, CableLabs and CSA Group.

Several U.S. MVPDs forged a similar voluntary energy-saving agreement for set-tops in late 2012 and a cross-industry group announced the standards to be applied the following year. That was later followed by an agreement focused on routers, modems and other broadband equipment.

It wasn’t that long ago that people mainly used antennas to get TV signals over the air. They used phone lines to connect to the Internet, mainly through one desktop computer. They made calls over those same phone lines. A lot has changed since that time, and continues to change. 

Now every household and office has multiple devices online at any given time. These devices are used for more data-intensive tasks: streaming video, voice-over-IP, video conferencing, watching TV.

A large amount of this traffic travels over broadband -- almost 800 million people worldwide use broadband to access the Internet, according to the Society for Broadband Professionals. And in North America, broadband use is expected to quadruple by 2020 based on research from the same organization. Since broadband uses electricity to transmit data, you won't be too surprised to learn that $1 billion in electricity is used for broadband access today in North America alone. Quadruple that and it’s a whopping $4 billion in 2020.

This growth is simply unsustainable. Currently, the world’s broadband power supplies can be divided into three generations. Generation No. 1, which were deployed between 1984 and 1997 and have line efficiencies of about 86%; Generation No. 2 (1999-2011) features line-interactive ferro technology for uninterruptable power – this technology holds energy long enough to cover the time between switching from line power to battery power, nearly eliminating transfer time and bumping line efficiency up to 89%.  Generation No. 1 and No. 2 make up a vast majority of the power supplies used by broadband providers (up to 84% in North America, according to an Alpha case study). If this continues, subscribers will start to feel the squeeze, through higher prices and unreliable service.

Generation No. 3 power supplies have been around since 2012, and feature some very real upgrades that can help cut broadband power usage extensively. Cable operators have begun to deploy Gen. 3 power supplies, but the legacy technology in place provides plenty of room for improvement. The new power supplies decrease power by maximizing network efficiencies in three specific areas:

1. Line Efficiency (percentage of source power converted to available load power)

Improving line efficiency directly reduces energy consumption. Generation 3 transformers utilize intelligent tap switching right at the input. This optimizes performance and minimizes secondary saturation energy loss.

2. Inverter Efficiency (percentage of battery power converted to available load power)

Improvements in inverter efficiency increase battery run-time and reduce battery string count. By moving the inverter winding to the output side of the ferroresonant transformer, it can be isolated from the input winding, which gives the inverter power electronics protection from utility spikes and surges. This minimizes conversion losses in the transformer and improves inverter efficiency. Additionally, this improved efficiency decreases overall operating temperature of the power supply, eliminating the need for an internal fan to help maintain a safe operating temperature, which decreases points of possible wear and tear for longer life.

3. Output Voltage and Regulation

Output voltage and regulation gives each power supply greater reach, reducing network cable loss.

Through these efficiencies, generation No. 3 power supplies can up line efficiency to 94%, and inverter efficiency to 91%. Now, on a single power supply this may not seem like much – after all, each power supply doesn’t use that much energy. But, over a network of power supplies? Then the savings are very real, and something that can help the bottom line of any broadband supplier.

Broadband continues to make the world feel smaller, allowing people everywhere to communicate. However, the power needed to accommodate the large number of people using broadband is great. By upgrading to Generation 3 technology, broadband suppliers can decrease energy use.

Dean Tryon is the product manager at Alpha Technologies, a designer and manufacturer of power technology products. With more than 23 years in the power and electronics industry, Tryon has held previous engineering roles in manufacturing, sustaining, testing, and finally as an application engineer. He is a member of the SCTE, and part of the 2020 Energy Metrics, Data Collection & Reporting committee, responsible for defining energy metrics for facilities, outside plant, fleet, non-grid, financial and an overall company metric.