Still the majority of cultural services are used digitally at home. Movies and TV series are watched via streaming, and most of the music listened to comes via the same route.

Due to the drastic fluctuations in the price of electricity, households are increasingly interested in the electricity consumption of home information technology and entertainment electronics.

Entertainment devices consume more electricity than many people even realize. The consumption of an individual new device is small, but the State Sustainable Development Corporation Motivate estimates that all home entertainment devices consume a total of seven percent of all household electricity. It is more than the consumption of food cold storage.

Electric companies have diligently communicated about saving tips and reminded that computers, televisions and terminal devices should be turned off completely when they are not in use, because the devices also consume power in sleep mode.

The size of the screens also matters. The average 55-inch television, which has become the most popular size in recent years, consumes about 0.1 kilowatt hours per hour.

A desktop computer consumes approximately the same amount of electricity. A laptop can get by with considerably less power consumption, and the smallest viewing devices are tablets and smartphones, the power consumption of which can be only one percent of the power consumption of a laptop.

For comparison, a vacuum cleaner consumes 1–1.25 kilowatt hours, which means that watching a two-hour movie on a big TV takes roughly the same amount of electricity as vacuuming for a good ten minutes.

The consumption readings mean the electricity consumption in kilowatt-hours during the hour.

Brightness affects the power consumption of displays. The World of Technology made a measurement in October, according to which by dimming the brightness of the television, the electricity consumption could be reduced by more than 20 percent, and in a dark room by up to 50 percent.

A powerful gaming computer with large screens and powerful graphics cards increases the household’s electricity bill more than the television. The central unit alone can consume the same amount of electricity as five large flat-screen TVs. The power consumption of the entire equipment can rise close to one kilowatt hour.

Aalto University professor of computer network technology Jukka Manner says that simply moving data has little effect on the home’s electricity bill.

“In home communication devices, the highest power consumption occurs when the device is turned on,” he says.

“On the mobile network side, traffic increases consumption again. The biggest thing here is the infrastructure.”

Manner reminds that 80 percent of the data moving online is video. Almost half of the data moves through mobile subscriptions. When the mobile network becomes overloaded and blocked, the network capacity must be increased, i.e. investments are needed. Using the mobile network also consumes much more electricity than using fiber connections.

“Every bit in the mobile network increases power consumption.”

Of the continent according to the electricity consumption and the costs caused by it are related to the use of information networks on a large scale.

“This could be compared to the heating of an electric sauna. If a sauna is heated in one home, it is not felt anywhere, but when a million homes are heated at the same time, it starts to be felt in Fingrid [Suomen sähkönjakelun kantaverkkoa ylläpitävä yhtiö].”

Watching a two-hour movie with a 4K quality image via a mobile connection increases the electricity consumption of the mobile network the same as heating a sauna.

Read more: Could this be a new way to save electricity? Porn accounts for up to a fifth of the internet’s electricity consumption

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Story edited on 28.12. at 17:05: Added clarification that the average television consumes about 0.1 kilowatt hours per hour.