Britt McConnel’s post earlier this week on digital billboard electric use was terrific.  Many people have the perception that digital signs are energy hogs.  Insider read this quote yesterday in an anti-billboard editorial in The Daily Gazette:

“Even though digital billboards are made of energy-efficient LED lights, they are so large they consume a huge amount of energy — 30 times the energy the average American home uses, according to a 2010 study by Philadelphia-based architectural designer and urban planner Gregory Young.”

Not sure where the 30 times figure comes from.  Insider took a look at the Gregory Young study, an excerpt of which is still displayed on the Scenic.org website.   Here is a table on digital sign power use from Young’s study:

Young alleges that a 14 by 48 LED digital billboard uses 162,902 kwh annually which if true means that a digital sign would use 15 times the electricity of an average home.   This statement is wildly in error.   Insider points this out because the Gregory Young article is still posted on the scenic.org website so you can expect people to cite it as evidence.

14 by 48 digital signs produced by Daktronics, Formetco or Watchfire use approximately 24,000 kwh of electricity a year or about one-seventh the power use that Young alleges.    So a typical digital sign uses 2 times the power of an average US home and 2 times as much power as a static billboard.  Many cities are requiring that 2-4 static faces must be taken down for every digital face which is built so a digital conversion actually cuts power consumption.