UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY

**FRAMEWORK PUBLIC MEETING**  **ON SET**  **- TOP BOXES AND NETWORK EQUIPMENT** 

U.S. Department of Energy 1000 Independence Ave., SW Washington, D.C. 20585 Room SE

- 089 Review Center

Thursday January 26, 2012

**Facilitator:**

Doug Brookman Public Solutions Baltimore, MDExecutive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 2 **Participants Identified:**

Doug Johnson Vice

- President of Technology Policy Consumer Electronics Association

Kuriacose Joseph Director of Engineering DIRECT V

Noah Horowitz NRDC, the Natural Resources Defense Council

Tom Eckman Northwest Power and Conservation Council

Andrew DeLaski Appliance Standards Awareness Project

Mark Sharp Corporate Environmentals Department Panasonic

Adam Goldberg Consultant, Representing TiVo

Neal Goldberg General Counsel National Cable and Telecommunications Association

Paul Glist Davis Wright Representing NCTA

Charlie Stephens Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance

Gary Langille EchoStar Technologies Representing Dis h Network

John Herrick Brownstein, Hyatt, Faber, Schreck Denver, Colorado Representing Dish NetworkExecutive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 3

Ren Anderson National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Jessica Greffenius Wilkie, Farr and Gallagher

Chuck Samuels CEA

Meg Waltner National Resources Def ense Council

Holly Evans Strategic Council

Jennifer Sanford Cisco Systems

Alan Christensen Appliance Standards Awareness Project

Joseph Anderson Telecommunications Industries Association

Tami Graves Verizon

Tim Ballo Earth Justice

Derek Giacomo So ciety of Cable and Telecommunication ...

Bill Bell Consumer Electronics Association

Katharine Kaplan U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

Jennifer Amann American Council for an Energy

- Efficient Economy

Adam Christensen, PhD Appliance Standards Awarene ss ProjectExecutive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 4 Paul Hudson Davis Wright Tremaine LLP

Ken Kurani, PhD University of California Davis

Matt Malinowski ICF International

Jeffrey Dygert AT&T

**Participants from DOE:**

Cynthia Angelini

Anita Capateri

John Cymbalsky

Jeremy Dommu Project Mana ger for Rulemaking

Celia Sher General Counsel’s Office

**Participants from Consultants:**

Ben Barrington Navigant Consulting

Mike Rivest Navigant Consulting

Greg Rosenquist Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Louis Desroches Lawrence Berkeley National Lab oratory

Allen Tsao Navigant ConsultingExecutive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 5

Debra Brunk Navigant Consulting

Chris Skahan Navigant Consulting

Anthony Rotolo Navigant Consulting

Peter Protopappas Navigant Consulting

**Presenter s**  **:**

Jeremy Dommu

Allen Tsao

Louis Benoit

- DesrochesExecutive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 6

**AGENDA**

**ITEM PAGE** 

Welcome, Doug Brookman 6

Welcome for DOE, John Cymbalsky 6

Introductions 7
Agenda Review , Doug Brookman 11

Purpose, Mr. Dommu 13

Opening Remarks 14

Rulemaking Overview, Mr. Dommu 2 8

Regulatory History , Mr. Dommu 31

Test Procedure Overview, Mr. Tsao 47

Standard Rulemaking Analysis, Mr. Tsao 95

Market & Technological Analysis 95

Product Classes 96

Screening Analysis 124

Downstream Analysis, Mr . Desroches

Energy Use Characterization 187

Markups for Price Determination 190

Life Cycle Cost Analysis 196

Shipments Analysis 208

National Impact Analysis 212

Downstream Analyses 220Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 7

MR. BROOKM AN: Let’s start. Good morning 2

every one and w elcome . This is the U.S. Department 3

of Energy’s framework public meeting on Set

- Top 4

Boxes and Network Equipment. Today is Thursday, 5
January 26, 2012 here at the Forestall Building in 6

Washington, D.C. Apologi es for starting a little 7
bit late this morning. The red line was stacked up. 8

We also had normal delays getting through security. 9

But glad you’re here. Welcome. 10 P R O C E E D I N G S

1

We’re going to start off this morning 11

with welcoming remarks from John Cymbalsky

. 12

**Welcomi ng Remarks**  13

MR. CYMBALSKY: Thank you , Doug. My 14

name’s John Cymbalsky. I manage the Appliance 15

Standards Program for DOE. Let me be the f irst to 16

welcome you to this public meeting for Set

- Top 17

Boxes. I see a lot of familiar faces, but also 18

pretty refres hing to see a lot of new faces here in 19

a public meeting. We know this is a new product 20

that we’re embarking on here, so we expected some 21

new faces and I just want to convey to you that the 22Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 8 Department, Secretary Chu, in particular, wanted to 1

be here this m orning, but he had to travel to 2

welcome this group because he actually feels that 3

this product is very important for the Department to 4

look into to some energy savings in the future and 5

he express es his thanks for every one really coming 6

here and engaging in our process. 7

So with that I’ll turn it back to Doug, 8

and we’ll have hopefully, a very productive meeting 9

to day. T hank you

. 10

MR. BROOKMAN: Thank you. It’s our 11

tradition, for those of you who are new to these 12

kinds of proceedings, we have developed kind of 13

traditions over time, and we typically start off 14

with introductions . I’m going to go around the 15

room. If you’d s ay your name, and organizational 16

affiliation. For those of you seated at table, you 17

can get used to turning the mic on and off. We’l l 18

start over here with Doug. Name and organizational 19

affiliation. 20

**Introductions** 21

MR. JOHNSON: Good morning. My name is 22

Doug Johnson. I’m with the Consumer Electronics 23

Association, I’m Vice

- President of Technology 24

Policy. Good morning. 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 9 MR. JOSEPH: Good morning. My name is 1

Kur i acose Joseph. I’m the Director of Engineering 2

in the Standards and Regulations Program. 3

MR. HOROWITZ: Good morning. I’m Noah 4

Horowitz with NRDC, the Natural Resources Defense 5

Council. 6

MR. ECKMAN: I’m Tom Eckman with Northwest 7

Power and Conservation Council. 8

MR. DeLASKI: I’m Andrew DeLaski with the 9

Appliance Standards Awareness Project. 10

MR. SHARP: I’m Mark Sharp with Panasonic, 11

with the Corporate Environmentals Department and I 12

handle energy efficiency issues for the company. 13

MR. A. GOLDBERG: Adam Goldberg, I’m a 14

consultant representing TiV o in energy

- related 15

matters. 16

MR. N. GOLDBERG: I’m Neal Goldberg. I’m 17

General Coun sel, the National Cable and 18

Telecommunications Association. 19

MR. GLIST: I’m Paul Glist with Davis 20

Wright. I work for NCTA. 21

MR. STEPHENS: I’m Charlie Stephens. 22

Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance. 23

MR. LANGILLE: I’m Gary Langille. I’m 24

with EchoStar Technologies, and I’m also here 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 10 representing Dish Network. 1

MR. HERRICK: I’m John He rrick, 2

Brownstein, Hyatt, Faber, Schreck from Denver. I 3

representing Dish Network. 4

MS. SHER: I’m Celia Sher. I’m with DOE 5

General Counsel’s Office. 6

MR. DOMMU: I’m Jeremy Dommu. I’m the 7

Project Manager at the Department of Energy 8

overseeing the rul emaking. Welcome, everyone. Of 9

course, familiar with many of you via email, and on 10

the phone, and it’s a pleasure to meet many of you 11

in person. 12

MR. CYMBALSKY: John Cymbalsky, DOE. 13

MR. BROOKMAN: Start right over here, 14

please. Stand up. 15

MR. BENOI T

- DESROCHES: Louis D esroches, 16

Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. 17

MR. TSAO: Allen Tsao, Navigant 18

Consulting. 19

MR. ANDERSON: Ren Anderson with the 20

National Renewable Energy Laboratory. 21

MS. GREFFENIUS: Jessica Greffenius, 22

Wilkie, Farr and Gallagher. 23

MR. SAMUELS: Hi. I’m Chuck Samuels. I 24

represent CEA. 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 11 MS. WALTNER: Meg Waltner with the 1

National Resources Defense Council. 2

MS. EVANS: Holly Evans, with Strategic 3

Council. 4

MS. SANFORD: Jennifer Sanford with Cisco 5

Systems. 6

MR. CHRISTENSEN: Al an Christensen, 7

Appliance Standards Awareness Project. 8

MR. ANDERSON: Joseph Anderson, the 9

Telecommunications Industries Association. 10

MR. BARRINGTON: Ben Barrington with 11

Navigant Consulting. 12

(Some introductions were not caught on 13

mic) 14

MS. ANGE LINI: Cynthia Angelini, 15

Department of Energy. 16

MS. CAPATERI: Anita Capateri, Department 17

of Energy. 18

MS. GRAVES: Tami Graves from Verizon. 19

MR. RIVEST: Mike Rivest, Navigant 20

Consulting. 21

MR. ROSENQUIST: Greg Rosenquist, Lawrence 22

Berkeley National L aboratory. 23

MR. BALLO: Tim Ballo, Earth Justice. 24

MR. GIACOMO: Derek Giacomo, with the 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 12 Society of Cable and Telecommunication ... 1

MR. BROOKMAN: Jennifer, I think I missed 2

you. 3

MS. AMANN: I’m Jennifer Amann, ACEEE

. 4

MR. BROOKMAN: Okay. Welcome. Glad 5

you’re here. I’m going to do a very brief agenda 6

review and then we’re going to have some beginnings 7

of the content of the day. 8

**Agenda Review** 9

MR. BROOKMAN: I think all of you received 10

a packet as you signed in this morning, and you can 11

see that immediately following this agenda review 12

and a few opening slides which sets the content for 13

today’s meeting, t here’s an opportunity for opening 14

r emarks , brief statements, only one person so far 15

has flagged the Department saying that they would 16

like to provi de comments in advance. If some of the 17

rest of you do, we welcome your additional thoughts 18

here at the outset. 19

Immediately following th ose opening 20

statements and remarks, there’s a rulemaking 21

overview and then we go directly into a test 22

procedure rule making overview. All of you received 23

this packet. You can see that the slides that are 24

here, they will be the basis for those questions 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 13 that the Department is putting forward, and also 1

your capacity to discuss them and answer them. 2

We’ll take a break m id

- morning, round 3

about 11 or so, and immediately following the break 4

we’ll talk about standards rulemaking analysis. 5

We’ll have lunch around 12:30. Immediately 6

following lunch, standards rulemaking analysis will 7

be continued, and then round about three o’clock or 8

3:30 today, we’ll be talking about next steps. This 9

is yet another opportunity for anybody that wishes 10

to do so, to make closing remarks. Any additional 11

issues that need to be raised at that time. 12

So that’s the general plan for today. 13

Que stions? Comments on that? I see none. 14

I’d ask for your consideration . Please 15

speak one at a time if you would

. Please say your 16

name for the record each time you speak. There will 17

be a complete transcript of this meeting provided. 18

I’m going to be cui ng individuals by name as best I 19

can. A lso wish to encourage follow on comments . I 20

think the Department sometimes finds it very useful, 21

the back and forth between individuals on these 22

subjects

. 23

If you can, keep the focus here. Please 24

t urn your cell p hones on silent mode. Limit the 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 14 sidebar conversations. These microphones actually 1

work pretty well, so they

-- if they’re turned on, 2

you might be heard on the system. Please be 3

concise, and share the air time. There’s a lot to 4

be said today, a lot of c ontent to be covered here. 5

So that’s what I would ask for

-- best 6

consideration. 7

Q uestions or comments before we actually 8

have a few opening slides to set the context? Okay. 9

Then, Jeremy Dommu. 10

**Purpose** 11

MR. DOMMU: Hi everyone. The purpose of 12

the framework public meeting today is to present the 13

procedural and analytical approaches to evaluate 14

energy conservation standards for Set

- Top Boxes. 15

(Pause for slides.) Okay. So the purpose 16

of the framework public meeting today is to present 17

the proced ural and analytical approaches to evaluate 18

energy conservation standards for Set

- Top Boxes. We 19

have a forum for public discussion, and we encourage 20

all interested parties to submit data, information, 21

and written comments. We’ll also inform interested 22

par ties and help us facilitate the rulemaking 23

process. 24

There is currently a Request for 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 15 Information that’s published in the Federal Register 1

in which we’re seeking comment. One housekeeping 2

item to discuss is there was a request to extend the 3

public comme nt period for 30 days. That will be 4

granted. The comment period will be extended until 5

March 15 th and a notice has been sent to the Federal 6

Register

We have already discussed the agenda and I 9

t hink at this time we will welcome opening remarks. 10 which should be published any day now,

7

announcing that. 8

MR. BROOKMAN: Great. And Noah, you 11

provided some power point slides. Can you cue those 12

up? 13

MR. HOROWITZ: Yes. 14

MR. BROOKMAN: The floor is yours. 15

**Opening Remarks** 16

MR. HOROWITZ: Okay. Good mor ning. I’m 17

Noah Horowitz with NRDC. I thought I’d take the 18

opportunity to share some contextual information to 19

help frame today’s discussion. It’s our belief, 20

prior to about a year ago there was little known 21

about the energy use of these devices, and the re’s 22

been a lot of attention paid to them. 23

So I’ll go quickly here. I think most 24

people know, in the room, but want to make sure 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 16 everybody’s starting at the same place, about 80 1

percent of the homes in the US subscribe to some 2

form of pay TV, whether it’s from the cable, 3

satellite, or telecom , and there are about 160 4

million Set

- Top Boxes in use. Many use have more 5

than one Set

- Top Box. And we did a study with the 6

heavy lifting done by Ecos Consulting. We went into 7

50 homes with power meters and we found if there was 8

an on/off button on the remote or the box, it made 9

little difference. So if the box used 30 watts when 10

on, maybe it used 29 watts when it was off or in 11

stand

- by mode. And increasingly, DVRs are being put 12

into people’s homes, and that’s resulted in an 13

increase in power use of the main box. 14

So here’s the data. If you start on the 15

left

- hand side, that’s a regular or standard 16

definition box. As you move to the right, that’s 17

high definition, and then the DVRs on the far right

18

hand side. The circles are how much power the 19

device used when it’s on, and then the bar beneath 20

it is the power use when it’ s in stand

- by or off 21

mode, and you’ll see little to no difference between 22

on and stand

- by. I think that’s the big opportunity 23

we’re all look ing to hopefully address here. 24

And the different colors represent whether 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 17 it’s cable, satellite or IPTV, or the T elcos. 1

Those of you that think in terms of 2

kilowatt hours per year, the basic box is 100, 150 3

watts. Now most of those boxes are HD boxes, and 4

when you go to the right, that’s a high definition 5

DVR with a couple of tuners in them, you could be 6

looking in excess of 300 kilowatt hours per year for 7

a single box. 8

I need to be clear here. All this data is 9

of models installed at 2010. There’s been a lot of 10

progress made, and I’ll talk about that in a moment. 11

But big picture, that DVR Set

- Top Box could consume 12

as much energy each year as a 42

- inch TV it’s 13

connected to. And then those homes that have a DVR 14

Set

- Top Box and a regular box on thei r second or 15

third TV, that could easily exceed the annual energy 16

use of a new refrigerator. 17

So in summary, about two billion dollars a 18

year is being spent to power these devices when 19

they’re not being used. And this is a big 20

opportunity. 21

Graphically, this is another way of 22

talking about it. Two

- thirds of the energy use of 23

these devices is when they’re not actively being 24

used, meaning the user’s not watching TV, recording 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 18 a show, or playing one back. So that’s about more 1

than 10 million tons of CO2 th at are being emitted, 2

and six power plants worth of electricity, when 3

they‘re not in use. 4

There’s some good news here. Energy Star 5

updated their specification for Set

- Top Boxes. 6

Version three is now live and there are about 40 7

models on the market that meet these requirements. 8

So the on mode energy has gone down about 30, 35 9

percent, and we are starting to see some difference 10

between on and stand

- by or sleep modes. So if the 11

box is using 25 watts in on mode, maybe it’s down to 12

20 or 18 in the best cas e, in stand

- by. So we’re 13

starting to see some progress. These are slowly 14

trickling into the market. 15

I live on the west coast. It’s very hard 16

for anyone to find an Energy Star v3 box on the 17

cable side. I don’t know how the deployment’s going 18

in the ot hers. But it’s a good first step, but it’s 19

not addressing that need to use much less power when 20

they’re not being actively used. 21

So the outcome that we’re hoping to see 22

driven by this DOE process is when the box is not 23

actively being used, it should be using low levels 24

of power. Is that number two watts, three watts, 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 19 we’re not sure, but something less than five watts, 1

we believe, is definitely achievable. And also, we 2

understand the need to preserve a good user 3

experience so that when they return to th eir TV and 4

hit the on button, it resumes very quickly, and the 5

box can wake up to record a show if the person so 6

desires, and there can be security updates and 7

things like that. 8

There are lots of great experiences out 9

there that we think this industry ca n borrow from. 10

The iPad or Smart Phones, they use a couple of 11

tenths of a watt when they’re in stand

- by mode, yet 12

they can wake up instantly to receive a phone call 13

or an e

- mail, or if you’re watching a video on an 14

iPad, it goes to sleep, you hit the butt on, it 15

resumes instantly. We think that sort of 16

functionality is possible here. 17

Then you have the second and third TV. Do 18

those need to have a Set

- Top Box, and/or can they 19

have a much simpler box? In a multi

- room solution, 20

you can have that second and third TV talking to the 21

main box, which is sometimes called a media server, 22

and that box doesn’t need to be connected to the 23

head end, and there are lots of huge energy savings 24

that are potentially there. Some people refer to 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 20 those as thin clients, and t hese are starting to 1

show up in the market. 2

It’s our understanding that in the best 3

case, the standard could be finished in about a year 4

and then there is the typical five year delay from 5

final publication to the effective date. So we’re 6

looking at a st andard that might not take effect for 7

six years from today, and we think the changes that 8

are needed are possible in that time frame. We 9

shouldn’t settle for an Energy Star v3 sort of level 10

where there’s still lots of waste in the box. So 11

there will be c hanges needed, both at the Set

- Top 12

Box level and the service provider level, but 13

there’s lots of silica out there that could be 14

developed by the I ntels, the M arvels of the world, 15

and software and better power scaling is the way to 16

achieve these savings, an d we’ll be talking about 17

those later today. 18

The very high level of the test method 19

level, we think it’s critically important for the 20

boxes to be tested in the real world situation. If 21

I take one company’s box and test it on a Comcast 22

system, I might get a very different answer on a 23

Time Warner system. It depends how it’s deployed 24

and also if the head end is able to take advantage 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 21 of those power savings features. 1

Then what are we going to test? On the 2

satellite side, there is a thing called LNBs, low 3

noise blocks. Those might be using two to four 4

watts, 24 hours a day. Are those considered? On 5

the Telco side, there might be a box placed in your 6

basement or garage called an optical network 7

terminal where you might receive your data, phone, 8

and also y our TV signal. That could be 15 watts 24 9

hours a day. That’s not considered in Energy Star, 10

and that’s 130 kilowatt hours per year. And some 11

portion of that might be apportioned to the Set

- Top 12

Box here. 13

This rulemaking also talks about 14

networking equi pment. There seems to be less 15

information in the publications from DOE, and we’re 16

hoping this can be filled in as well. There are 17

really two sort of major opportunities as we see 18

them. People receive high speed internet or 19

broadband, and as such, they’r e getting a cable or a 20

DSL modem, and many of those same customers have a 21

wireless network, and there’s a router box. Each of 22

those in round numbers, call it six watts, you do 23

the math. That’s another 100

- plus kilowatt hours 24

per year. 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 22 We need good de finitions, data and test 1

methods, and we hope that this process will move 2

those forward. 3

And the goal here, from our point of view, 4

is to have the energy use scaled to the amount of 5

data that’s being transferred. So if you’re not 6

downloading a movie or sending e

- mail, that should 7

be using very low power and then quickly wake up 8

when you need more. 9

So, the report can be found at the website 10

there. That’s where all the data that I showed you 11

came from, and here’s the raw data that’s available 12

in the fi le. I know you can’t see it here. Thank 13

you for the opportunity to give these introductory 14

remarks. 15

MR. BROOKMAN: Thank you. We want to 16

provide an opportunity for anybody else that wishes 17

to make opening remarks. But before we do that, I 18

just want t o welcome those that are joining us via 19

the webinar. This meeting is being broadcast, and 20

we have how many folks joining us via the web? 21

PARTICIPANT: Twenty

- five 22

MR. BROOKMAN: Twenty

- five. We will 23

endeavor today, the Department will endeavor, and I 24

will endeavor, to entertain questions from those 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 23 participating via the web as much as possible, so 1

we’ll be doing that. Other brief opening remarks , 2

statements at the outset here ? Yes, please. Is it 3

Garret? 4

MR. LANGILLE: It’s Gary Langille with 5

Echo Star, and also representing Dish Network. I’d 6

just like to also add to Noah’s presentation. First 7

of all Noah’s articles and publicity has certainly 8

elevated the attention to this whole product 9

category. And what we’d like to see is obviously, 10

for all o f us to work together to come up with an 11

accurate data set of which we can move forward. 12

There’s no point in sort of arguing about the data 13

here. I think that’s probably the first step is to 14

try to agree on what is the existing condition that 15

we’re prese nted with and where can we go from here. 16

So I really would like to stress that amongst all 17

participants. 18

I also wanted to just bring up that Eco’s 19

Consulting who did the work for NRBC in the report, 20

they made a report at the last Energy Star Partners’ 21

meeting, and they basically did an analysis of Set

22

Top Box products, just like Noah did, based on the 23

older data, except that they did it with the newer 24

data. In other words, they looked at 40 or 50 boxes 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 24 that are now listed in the new Energy Star Versio n 1

three program. And what’s important to note is that 2

they determined that HD DVR boxes, which is one of 3

the most power

- consuming configurations for our 4

industry, has already dropped 50 percent, on 5

average, and standard HD boxes has already dropped 6

35 per cent on average. And that’s before we do any 7

regulation or anything. That’s today’s situation, 8

so if we did nothing from today forward, the three 9

billion dollar problem or usage that Noah’s 10

describing has already been cut somewhere between a 11

third to a h alf, before we even do anything. So 12

it’s important that people understand the current 13

situation. 14

Now, how did that happen? It’s not a 15

miracle, but basically, it’s important to realize 16

that this industry went through a very, very large 17

transition for the D

- TV, US digital TV transition 18

period, and that took effect in, I think it actually 19

ended up taking effect in June 2009, and realized 20

that MVPDs, multi video service providers, had to 21

react very quickly to completely new technology 22

scenario. And obvio usly, the result of that was 23

that there were a lot of products to handle that 24

transition that use more energy, maybe weren’t the 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 25 most efficient. And basically what’s happened is 1

that since the two years or so since that occurred, 2

efficiencies have improve d dramatically, technology 3

providers have dramatically reduced energy 4

consumption, they’ve integrated components, and 5

we’re almost back to where we were before. 6

Before the transition, the average Set

- Top 7

Box was about ten watts. It jumped up to 20 watts 8

just to handle HD. Now it’s back down to ten watts, 9

if you look at a simple, HD Set

- Top Box, it’s now 10

what it was before the transition. Of course 11

there’s a new feature which everyone loves, which is 12

the ability to record content in a DVR, digital 13

video recorder, and obviously that adds some energy. 14

It’s a big disk drive. So those devices are down to 15

around 20 watts on average. 16

So admittedly, there was a lot of energy 17

use during that transition period. It’s now come 18

down back to almost what it was b efore, so we need 19

to keep that in mind as we move forward and look at 20

these efficiencies, because there’s already a lot of 21

gain without the need for any regulation. Thank you 22

very much. 23

MR. BROOKMAN: Thank you. Other comments 24

here at the outset? Yes, please, Doug Johnson. 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 26 MR. JOHNSON: Doug Johnson with CEA. Just 1

a general introductory comment. The Consumer 2

Electronics Association has in its membership, 3

companies that design, make and sell Set

- Top Boxes, 4

also companies that manufacture components for Set

5

Top Boxes, and also companies that make products 6

that connect with or operate in conjunction with 7

Set

- Top Boxes. So we certainly have a vital 8

interest in the Department’s examination of this 9

product category. 10

We have submitted comments to the 11

De partment on the questions related to the 12

definitions of Set

- Top Boxes and necessity and 13

appropriateness of categorizing them as covered 14

products, and also on the topic of technology market 15

trends that Gary was speaking of that relate to the 16

efficiency and future power consumption of Set

- Top 17

Boxes. 18

Most recently, we’ve contributed data on 19

the power consumption trends for Set

- Top Boxes and 20

submitted that as part of our overall report in 21

consumer electronics energy use. So we certainly 22

have an interest in this proceeding and we look 23

forward to commenting on the request for information 24

now due March 15 th . Thank you, Doug. 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 27 MR. BROOKMAN: Thank you. More comments 1

here at the outset? Andrew DeLaski. 2

MR. DeLASKI: I’m Andrew DeLaski. I know 3

many of you, but by way of introduction, ASAP is a 4

coalition project of efficiency advocates, 5

environmental organizations, consumer groups, 6

representatives of utilities and also state 7

government, that works to advance cost

- effective, 8

new energy efficiency standards. 9

We’re very supportive of the Department 10

beginning this process. We think that Set

- Top Boxes 11

and the other equipment addressed in the RFI are an 12

important energy use as documented by the 13

Department, and by other research that should be 14

addressed through DOE rulemaking. Certainly as 15

large as many of the other technologies that are 16

covered by the Department’s program, if not larger 17

than most. 18

The progress made by the industry as 19

described, I think is impressive. We first started 20

talking about Set

- Top B ox efficiency, I think, you 21

know, maybe a dozen years ago. Doug Johnson and I 22

crossed paths in a few state capitals, talking about 23

state Set

- Top Box efficiency. And there have been a 24

lot of changes since then. I think we’ve learned a 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 28 lot about how the i ndustry functions. I think we’ve 1

also seen that, as has been noted, that the overall 2

energy use has gone up over a dozen years, not down 3

over the past dozen years. 4

And I think that as we look at the 5

opportunity, one that really strikes me is that, as 6

described by Noah, the opportunity here is what 7

happens when the user is not watching television, or 8

not recording? So that the energy consumption, when 9

the product is off

-- and I understand, when it’s 10

off it’s still providing services to the customer

-- 11

but when it’s off, how do we get to a deep sleep 12

mode where the consumption is down at a low level so 13

that the actual, in

- the

- field energy use on kilowatt 14

hours per year basis, is much lower than it is 15

today? 16

And one thing that strikes me is there’s 17

b een a lot of buzz in the appliance world, in the 18

major home appliance world about smart appliances, 19

and how smart appliances will potentially save a lot 20

of energy for consumers down the road. But here we 21

have a product that’s already very smart. It’s a 22

d evice that’s already talking to a network all the 23

time. So the opportunity for this already very 24

smart device to operate even more smartly so that 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 29 when it’s in a stand

- by mode, the consumption goes 1

down to a very low level, potentially saves 2

consumers a l ot of money, provides significant 3

environmental and energy benefits, strikes us as an 4

opportunity that is ripe and we’re very glad that 5

the industry has begun to focus on it, and that the 6

opportunities for significant energy savings are 7

very real. I look forward to participating in this 8

process. Thank you. 9

MR. BROOKMAN: Thank you. Other opening 10

remarks here? I see none additional. Okay. So 11

then let’s go then to the substantive materials. 12

These will be in the handout that you received. 13

Jeremy. 14

**Rul emaking Overview**  15

MR. DOMMU: Yes, so as we go through the 16

substantive materials today, we’re going to present 17

overviews of the analyses, the work that Department 18

of Energy performs in considering energy 19

conservation standards and test procedures. So wha t 20

we’ve done is throughout the presentation, we put 21

issue boxes in, and these have identifying numbers 22

associated with them. So when they come up, we will 23

open up the floor to seek you comments and your 24

input on those specific issue boxes. 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 30 You also coul d find in your packet, 1

towards the end, a list with those identifying 2

numbers of all the issues on which of course you can 3

comment, and that comes mostly from the Request for 4

Information that was published in the Federal 5

Register

So I’m going to spend the next 15 minutes 12

or so giving an overview of what the rulemaking 13

process is, and then we will

-- I’ll hand it off to 14

some of my consultants from Navigant and Lawrence 15

Berkeley, and they will get into more detail on t he 16

test procedures and the detailed analysis. 17 . So yo ur feedback is cert ainly requested.

6

We’re obviously here today to get your all feedback 7

in person, and we have the Request for Information. 8

Here’s the information that you will need in order 9

to reply to that. And as we said earlier, the 10

comment period will close now on Mar ch 15, 2012. 11

So I’d like to begin by stating the goal 18

of energy conservation standards and what we’re 19

looking to do, and that is to achieve the maximum 20

improvement in energy efficiency which is 21

technologically feasible an d economically justified. 22

I want to discuss two key points now at 23

the very onset of the meeting . One is stakeholder 24

engagement. We want to ensure that your input is 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 31 welcome and we encourage you to provide us your 1

comments, to provide us information, and be part of 2

an open, honest dialogue. The more involvement that 3

we get from stakeholders, could help us consider and 4

establish the best possible rule. It also could 5

help us expedite the process and insure the rule 6

works as well as possible. So as I s aid, there’s 7

both the opportunity today, there’s a public comment 8

period, and also outside of public comment period, 9

we welcome ex parte communication where you can come 10

and you can meet with us and you can express any 11

concerns, or you can talk about any i ssues about the 12

rulemaking, and you would follow ex parte

As we go through the process, we also 18

don’t want to operate in a black box. We want to be 19

able to provide you information as it becomes 20

available. So we’re going to be performing a set of 21

analyses throughout the rulemaking process, and the 22

goal is as we pe rform them, we will post preliminary 23

subject to change

- versions of those on our Set

- Top 24

Box rulemaking website, before we post them 25 13

communication guidance, where you would document and 14

you would submit to make publicly available, the 15

issues discussed at those meetings. And we 16

certainly welcome and encourage you to do that. 17Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 32 ultimately in the Federal Register

The other issue I want to discuss is 5

innovation. We recognize that there are challenges 6

present in creating a rulemaking in a rapidly 7

changing industry. We know there are competitive 8

pressures as consumers demand content whenever, 9

wherever they want, and there will be many 10

innovations in the future regarding Set

- Top Boxes 11

and the way that content is provided. It is our 12

goal that as you innovate, you also innovate and 13

insure that these new innovations incre ase energy 14

efficiency, based on the stated goal. 15 for official

1

public comment, but we just want to be as forthright 2

with you, to keep you abreast as we go about the 3

rulemaking process. 4

So the goal here is to create a rulemaking 16

that increases energy efficiency while not impacting 17

consumer utility or without restricting innovation. 18

And the best way to accomplish that goal is your 19

stakeho lder engagement and your input. 20

**Regulatory History** 21

I want to discuss the regulatory history. 22

So Part A of the Energy Policy and Conservation Act, 23

commonly referred to as EPCA, and its subsequent 24

amendments, establishes the energy conservation 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 33 program f or consumer products, other than 1

automobiles. Essentially what this does is it 2

creates a list of covered products for the 3

Department to consider energy conservation 4

standards. Also, within EPCA, it gives DOE the 5

authority to classify additional types of consumer 6

products as covered products, and the criteria for 7

that is if the average annual per household energy 8

use of that product is likely to exceed 100 kilowatt 9

hours per year. 10

So last June we published a Notice of 11

Proposed Determination, and in that Notice, we 12

preliminarily determined that Set

- Top Boxes and 13

Network Equipment meet this criteria to be 14

considered a covered product. 15

We now have issued this Request for 16

Information which initiates the rulemaking process 17

as we consider efficiency standar ds and test 18

procedures for this potentially covered product, 19

Set

- Top Boxes. We’re now seeking your information 20

and comments as we begin this process. As we move 21

forward and we perform analyses, we’ll have to meet 22

additional criteria before we can describ e an energy 23

conservation standard, and that is that the average 24

household energy use exceeds 150 kilowatt hours per 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 34 year and the aggregate national energy use exceeds 1

4.2 terawatt hours per year. At a later stage, we 2

will issue a final determination. 3

A couple other regulatory issues. After a 4

final rule is published, there would then be a five 5

year compliance period from the issue of the final 6

rule until it becomes

-- until you

-- before 7

manufacturer have to adhere to that rule. So the 8

rule would apply to products manufactured for sale, 9

assembled, or imported into the United States after 10

the compliance date. Products that are manufactured 11

before the compliance date of the new standard may 12

still be sold after the compliance date, and there 13

would be no re quirements for consumers to replace 14

existing products. 15

We also today are initiating the 16

rulemaking data collection process for a federal 17

test procedure. The test procedure will specify the 18

test conditions for measuring the energy consumption 19

of the prod uct in various power modes, and that test 20

procedure would be used as we measure energy 21

consumption as part of our analysis and then later 22

would be used as manufacturers measure the energy 23

consumption to insure their products adhere to the 24

regulation. 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 35 Now I want to talk about the stages of the 1

energy conservation standard. So today we are at 2

this framework public meeting. We are kicking off 3

the rulemaking process, and we’re going to be 4

performing analyses. We’re first beginning with 5

test procedures and here’s our goal. Our goal is to 6

have a test procedure Notice of Proposed Rulemaking 7

in the summer of 2012. After that is published in 8

the Federal Register

Concurrently, we’re also going to be 15

working on the standard. And the goal for the 16

standar d is to publish a proposed rule in fall 2012, 17

so less than a year, and then again, have a comment 18

period, and have a public meeting, and then be able 19

to revise the NOPR and ultimately issue a final rule 20

with a goal of the summer of 2013. Then, as I said, 21

once the final rule comes into place for the 22

standard, the standard would become applicable five 23

years from that time. So we’re potentially looking, 24

if we follow this schedule, at a standard becoming 25 , jus t like there was with the

9

RFI, there will be a public comment period, there 10

will be a public me eting, in order to gain input. 11

Then we would be able to amend the NOPR and amend 12

the test procedure and ultimately issue a final rule 13

with a goal of spring 2013. 14Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 36 applicable in 2018. 1

So today’s public meeting covers t he 2

rulemaking process for Set

- Top Boxes and then, as I 3

explained, we’ll then have our Notice of Proposed 4

Rulemaking. We’ll then get your comments, revise 5

the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, issue a final 6

rule and then there’d be the effective date. 7

So, c omments for the RFI, again, due March 8

15 th

There are seven key factors which we 14

consider when working towards energy conservations 15

standard per Energy Policy and Conservation Act 16

guidance. They are: 17 . All the material from today’s public meeting

9

will be posted on our Set

- Top Box website, and that 10

is posted, the URL is below, and we will use all

-- 11

we’ll post all our analyses, as I mentioned before, 12

to that we bsite as well. 13

**•** The economic impacts on consumers and 18

manufacturers 19

**•** The lifetime operating cost sa vings 20

**•** The potential increased cost of the product 21

**•** The total projected energy savings 22

**•** The impact on utility performance 23

**•** The impact on any lessening of competition 24Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 37

**•** The need for national energy conservation 1

**•** And any other factors the Secretary considers 2

releva nt. 3

So before I get into

-- we get into the 4

details, I want to give a two minute overview of the 5
analyses that we perform in the rulemaking. So it 6

starts with a market technology assessment. And 7

what that does is it characterizes the industry, 8

identifi es the relevant players. It looks at 9

current energy consumption of product and 10

opportunities to reduce energy consumption, and it 11

also establishes product classes. 12

We then do a screening analysis, and in 13

the screening analysis, we screen out and determi ne 14

which technology and which design options we want to 15

consider efficiency standards for. That then feeds 16

into an engineering analysis . And the engineering 17

analysis looks at the relationship between cost and 18

efficiency of the product. And efficiency is 19

measured using the previous described test 20

procedure, and essentially what we’re doing is for 21

each increase in efficiency of a Set

- Top Box, we 22

look at what the associated cost to manufacture that 23

box to that level of efficiency is. So essentially 24Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 38 we deve lop a curve. 1

Once we understand what the cost of each 2

efficiency level is, we then apply mark ups to it, 3

so then we could see how the increase cost to 4

manufacture that product is then passed on to 5

consumers. The energy use characterization analyzes 6

wh at the energy consumption of that product would 7

be. 8

So using that information we could then 9

look at, in the life cycle cost and payback period 10

analysis, what the impact of a standard would be on 11

consumers. So what the cost will be of purchasing, 12

obtaini ng, and then operating that product over its 13

entire lifetime, and what the payback is. So what’s 14

-- how long would it take to get back any increase 15

cost to obtain that product through potentially 16

reductions in energy consumption, repairs and 17

maintenance, et cetera. 18

Once we understand what the 19

relationship is on the consumers, we can apply 20

shipment forecasts so we could see what shipments 21

would occur in the future considering what the 22

useful life, what removals are, what purchases are, 23

so we could see th e effect of a standard over a 30 24

year time frame. 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 39 With that analysis, we’re then able, and 1

all of these prior analyses feed into this national 2

impact analysis, and that calculates two key 3

metrics. The first is national energy savings, which 4

states how much energy would be saved by a standard 5

over a 30 year period. It also has a national net 6

present value, which looks at what the economic 7

impact on the country would be of any energy 8

conservation standard. Those two key metrics are 9

part of the criteria a nd are strongly used as we 10

consider what energy efficiency conservation 11

standard we would use. 12

Once we’ve completed that, we then do 13

downstream analysis that looks at what the impact of 14

the standard would be on certain groups of the 15

population. So in th e life cycle subgroup analysis, 16

we could look at specific demographics. In the 17

manufacturing impact analysis, we look at what the 18

impact of a standard with the manufacturers. In the 19

utility impact analysis, we look at what the impact 20

would be on power ge neration. In the employment 21

impact analysis we obviously look at what the effect 22

would be on direct and indirect employment. In the 23

emissions analysis and monetization of emissions, we 24

look at the environmental impact and we look at the 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 40 greenhouse gas an d power plant emissions that are 1

reduced associated with this standard. And then 2

finally, in the regulatory impact analysis, we will 3

look at other regulatory options and compare those 4

to a mandatory standard. 5

So that’s what we do to create an energy 6

con servation standard. That’s how everything fits 7

together. And throughout the rest of the day, we 8

are going to discuss in detail, each of these 9

analysis and get your input and comments on how we 10

pe r form them. So with that, I’m going to hand it 11

over to All en Tsao of Navigant Consulting, and he’s 12

going to walk us through the test procedures. 13

MR. BROOKMAN: Let’s see if there are any 14

questions here following this overview presentation. 15

We have a few. I’ll take this one first. 16

MR. N. GOLDBERG: Just a quick question. 17

MR. BROOKMAN: Please say your name for 18

the record. 19

MR. N. GOLDBERG: Neal Goldberg from the 20

National Cable Telecommunications Association. I 21

understand the flow on the time chart, but I assume 22

that anywhere along that line if there’s a 23

determination made or that could be made that a rule 24

is not necessary, the fact that we have final rule 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 41 in our chart here is not a preordained conclusion. 1

Is that correct? 2

MR. DOMMU: Yes. 3

MR. BROOKMAN: Thank you. Please say your 4

name. 5

MS. KAPLA N: Katharine Kaplan. 6

MR. BROOKMAN: You need to turn on the 7

microphone. There you go. 8

MS. KAPLAN: Great. Thanks. Katharine 9

Kaplan, US E PA’s Energy Star Program. I’m wondering 10

if we can have a little more clarity about the 11

effective date for the t est method in comparison to 12

the final rule so that

-- the test method is 13

finished in the summer of

-- or spring of 2015. 14

Does it just sit and wait for the standard to become 15

effective, or does it become the tool that one must 16

use to declare energy use soo ner than the final 17

rule? 18

MR. DOMMU: To the best of my knowledge, 19

it then becomes applicable after the final rule of 20

the test procedure

. 21

MR. BROOKMAN: Yes, please. Adam. 22

MR. A. GOLDBERG: Yeah, Adam Goldberg for 23

TiVo . Katharine, I think the

-- wha t is it

-- the 24

RFI says six months after adoption, it’s effective 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 42 for state use. 1

MR. BROOKMAN: Andrew. 2

MR. DeLASKI: I think it’s a question for 3

DOE General Counsel, that’s why

-- Jeremy, I think 4

your answer could be right, but I also think that in 5

my experience, I’ve seen the Department specify the 6

effective date as part of the final rule. So in 7

other words, that’s open for the Department to say, 8

and it could be flexible, depending on what 9

stakeholders say, what the Department decides. 10

That’ s rulema kings. 11

MR. BROOKMAN: So say that for the record, 12

thank you. 13

MS. SHER: Hi. This is Celia Sher. We 14

haven’t reached a determination on that yet. 15

MR. BROOKMAN: Thank you. 16

MR. DeLASKI: To give an example, there 17

was

-- and Chuck may remember this a s well

-- it was 18

clothes washers. There was a case where the 19

Department issued a new test method that went into 20

effect

-- when we went from EF to MEF for clothes 21

washers, there was a staging of the implementation 22

of the test method. That was to account f or change. 23

MR. BROOKMAN: We have a question via the 24

web. I’ll read this first. The question is, is the 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 43 cost of the regulation itself calculated in the cost 1

analysis of the product? 2

MR. DOMMU: I do not know the answer to 3

that question. Does anyone else? 4

MR. BROOKMAN: John Cymbalsky? 5

MR. CYMBALSKY: John Cymbalsky, DOE. The 6

impact of the regulation on manufacturers is part of 7

the National Impact analysis that Jeremy described 8

earlier. 9

MR. BROOKMAN: Thank you. Doug Johnson. 10

MR. JOHNSON: D oug Johnson, CEA. At what 11

stage in this chain of analyses do you typically 12

account for the savings impact of existing programs, 13

public and private sector, and also the natural rate 14

of innovation, the impact that has on efficiency? 15

Is that at the National Impact analysis level or 16

what stage? 17

MR. DOMMU: Yeah, we would look at it at 18

both the National Impact analysis level, and we 19

compare the base case to a standards case. The base 20

case likely would include improvements in 21

efficiency. And then also in th e manufacturing 22

impact analysis, we could potentially look at 23

alternative options to regulation, what the impact 24

would be. And then calculate the national energy 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 44 savings and the national net present value of those 1

regulatory alternatives. 2

MR. JOHNSON: One follow on. So the 3

Department is not planning to use a business as 4

usual point of comparison then? 5

MR. DOMMU: Yeah, I mean the goal would be 6

to make the analysis as accurate as possible. 7

MR. JOHNSON: Okay. Thank you. 8

MR. BROOKMAN: Thank you. 9

MR. CYMBALSKY: This is John Cymbalsky, 10

DOE. Just to get the terminology

-- business as 11

usual doesn’t mean necessarily, frozen efficiency. 12

I don’t know if you were characterizing it that way. 13

The shipments forecast would include Energy Star and 14

things like that in the baseline. 15

MR. BROOKMAN: Okay. Paul. 16

MR. GLIST: Jeremy, you’ve just spoken 17

about the cost to the manufacturer and the cost to 18

the consumer, and savings to the consumer, given 19

that Set

- Top Boxes operate on networks and there are 20

cost s on networks for changes in the CPE, where in 21

the analysis do you account for costs on the 22

network? I haven’t seen it in this or in the 23

ancillary documents so far. 24

MR. DOMMU: Yeah, I mean, as I said, we 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 45 want to make this analysis as true to life as 1

po ssible. So if there are costs associated with 2

performing and regulating with the conservation 3

standard that would increase the cost of 4

manufacturing, we would want to look at that in the 5

engineering analysis. 6

MR. GLIST: So the question I’m asking is, 7

cost of manufacturing of the box is one element of 8

cost. I’ll use cable as an example. There are 9

costs in the head end equipment, costs in protocols, 10

changes in operations, changes in education for CSI 11

-- I mean there’s a lot of stuff that’s outside of 12

t he box and not

-- doesn’t affect Cisco as a 13

manufacturer. So where in the analysis would DOE 14

account for those costs associated with these 15

changes? 16

MR. DOMMU: Right. So to the effect that 17

those costs are passed on to consumers, it would be 18

calculated in the markups analysis, so we determine 19

what the cost would be on consumers. And then that 20

feeds into the life cycle cost and ultimately the 21

national impact analysis. 22

MR. DOMMU: So markups would include any 23

costs anywhere in the eco system? 24

MR. DOMM U: That’s passed on to the 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 46

consumers. 1

MR. GLIST: That’s passed on to the 2

consumer. Okay. Thank you. 3

MR. BROOKMAN: Garrett. 4

MR. LANGILLE: Gary Langille, EcoStar. 5

I’m not sure if this will end up applying, but I 6

want to raise the issue that if t his is

-- these 7

decisions are made as viewed by a service provider 8

that actually provides installation services along 9

with the Set

- Top Box, sort of part of the delivery 10

infrastructure, you know, when it comes to emissions 11

and items like that, will

-- for i nstance, our 12

industry has this term called “truck roll.” It’s 13

something to always be avoided if possible. 14

Basically that means having a technician jump in a 15

truck and drive out to the customer’s site to either 16

service or install a product. In many cases we’ve 17

seen, quote, “new technology” which could be 18

extremely efficient, cause increased truck rolls of 19

which the emissions from the truck rolls and various 20

other environmental impact isn’t accounted for. Is 21

that at all within the scope of including those 22

kinds of things into this analysis? 23

MR. DOMMU: Well certainly we look at 24

repairs and maintenance when we look at the life 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 47 cycle costs, so that’s impacting in the life cycle 1

cost analysis. I’m unsure of how we fit that into 2

the emissions analysis, but I think it’s a valid 3

point and we certainly welcome your input and any 4

information you have on the impact of emissions for 5

truck roll. 6

MR. BROOKMAN: We have another question 7

via the web, and the question is, will DOE consider 8

the cost to service provide rs as well as 9

manufacturers? Is there any thought to define the 10

service providers as manufacturers? 11

MR. DOMMU: I’ll allow general counsel to 12

answer that question. 13

MS. SHER: We’ll consider that. This is 14

Celia Sher, DOE. We will consider that. You know, 15

we’re

-- at this phase of rulemaking we’ll consider 16

all comments, so, you know, we just encourage you to 17

send in those comments and we will definitely 18

consider it. 19

MR. BROOKMAN: Thank you. So this has 20

been a productive back and forth here. Addit ional 21

questions here before we proceed with the content in 22

more detail? Okay. So let’s proceed. Thank you, 23

Jeremy. 24

MR. DOMMU: All right. Thank you, 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 48 everyone. 1

MR. BROOKMAN: Now we’re going to hear 2

from Allen. 3

**Test Procedure Rulemaking Overview** 4

M R. TSAO: Good morning. I’m going to 5

talk about the test procedure rulemaking process as 6

well as bring up some of the RFI questions. The 7

objectives of the test procedure is to develop a 8

representative energy test that measures the energy 9

consumption of S et

- Top Boxes. As outlined in the 10

Energy Policy Conservation Act, it would include 11

active, stand

- by, and off mode power measurements. 12

And again, this is to support all of the analysis 13

and the standards level in terms of what we mean by 14

energy efficiency o r by energy consumption of the 15

Set

- Top Boxes. 16

So in looking at the test procedure, DOE 17

will look at factors like insuring that the test is 18

repeatable from lab to lab or time to time or just 19

to make sure that a Set

- Top Box can be characterized 20

accuratel y, and that it represents typical household 21

usage, and in general would attempt to minimize 22

burden on testing. 23

The rulemaking flow follows similar to the 24

standards rulemaking. We start off at this stage 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 49 with the Request for Information, which we’ve 1

alre ady published in the Federal Register

In order to establ ish the test procedure, 17

DOE will leverage from existing test procedures out 18

there and DOE has looked at the Energy Star test 19

procedure as well as the IEC or International 20

Electrotechnical Commission’s 62087 standard, and 21

we’ll also welcome and include any industry test 22

procedures that should be considered. 23 , fol lowed

2

by a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, and then ending 3

with a final rule. We talked about compliance 4

period before, but these are just typically, 5

compliance is some period to be determined after the 6

final rule is published. For both the Request for 7

Information or this framework public meeting, and 8

the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, there will be a 9

public meeting held specifically for the test 10

procedure to talk about the published

-- whatever’s 11

been published, a nd to gain additional feedback from 12

all the stakeholders. And similar to the RFI, 13

you’ll be allowed to provide written comments to it 14

as well. And as Jeremy described, this process does 15

run concurrently with the standards rulemaking. 16

In general, the test procedure would be, 24

one, to describe the power measurements for various 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 50 modes of operation. So as discussed, Set

- Top Boxes 1

are complicated functionality, so what constitutes 2

on a nd active and sleep modes would have to be 3

defined, as well as any energy metrics used to 4

define what it means to be

-- what the energy 5

efficiency or consumption of a Set

- Top Box would be. 6

I will describe the modes of operation in 7

a little more detail. A s an example, I’ve described 8

how the Energy Star test procedure records power 9

modes at various active and standby or off modes. 10

These are

-- the Department of Energy could include 11

any or all or just

-- or additional modes of 12

operation other than what’s li sted up here. But in 13

general, the Energy Star one does include things 14

like watching live TV, recording and playback from a 15

DVR, recording and playback from sort of removable 16

media, as well as playing through some sort of 17

multi

- room setup. And for standby and sleep mode, 18

the Energy Star , for example, has defined sleep and 19

auto power down modes, and deep sleep modes that are 20

additionally tested. 21

Once those modes of operations are 22

defined, the next step is to sort of determine what 23

the energy metric or the energy efficiency of the 24

Set

- Top Box would be. An example, DOE can consider 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 51 many different energy efficiency metrics. I outline 1

an example here on what Energy Star has used for 2

their energy efficiency metric, as maybe you guys 3

are more familiar with thi s type of metric. This is 4

taking all those power mode measurements and 5

combining them into a single metric referred to as 6

typical energy consumption or TEC, and it’s based on 7

various

-- on assumed weighted time durations of 8

each mode of operation. 9

As an example here, in a 24

- hour period, 10

Energy Star would assume, you know, depending on 11

available features, you know, seven hours on on 12

mode, six hours in the sleep mode, and if there’s 13

auto power

- down, seven hours for that, and if 14

there’s a deep sleep capab ility, then four hours for 15

that. 16

The next thing is to get into some of the 17

RFI questions that we had published regarding the 18

test procedure section. The first issue to talk 19

about that we’re asking comment about is sort of the 20

impact of all the software associated with the Set

21

Top Boxes. So this is to address, you know, in 22

general, the boxes as they are physically 23

manufactured, and then generally, and in some cases, 24

the service provider, the network, adds a software 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 52 layer on top of the Set

- Top Box. Now the software 1

may impact various functionalities and ultimately 2

the energy consumption of the Set

- Top Box. So, for 3

example, the software may provide constant 4

communication with the service provider, video on 5

demand, or security requirements, as well as 6

ele ctronic programming guide information. 7

Additionally, it may dictate behavior, like the 8

availability of low power sleep modes, or when 9

automated updates occur, as well as sort of the 10

utilization of the hardware while in operation. 11

So at this time we’re l ooking for just 12

comments, written and orally here, on just in 13

general how the service provider software would 14

impact the energy consumption of Set

- Top Boxes and 15

specifically, how it would impact idle and sleep 16

power modes that would be available. 17

MR. BRO OKMAN: Comments in response to 18

these two issue boxes? Noah. 19

MR. HOROWITZ: Noah Horowitz with NRDC. 20

Again, let’s say this is a Set

- Top Box, sorry for 21

those people on the phone, how it’s deployed by the 22

service provider can significantly impact the ene rgy 23

use. So if one service provider, its software and 24

how they deploy the box, that box might go to

-- 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 53 when you hit the on/off button, that might cause the 1

hard drive to stop spinning and maybe turn off some 2

tuners. Many of the boxes deployed today could have 3

that lower power, but the service provider has 4

chosen, for whatever reason, not to do so. So we 5

have to recognize that. 6

In fact, there are going to be some 7

software updates that are going to be pushed from 8

the cable industry to existing boxes, to take 9

advantage of that functionality. So, in summary, 10

the software and how the box is deployed really does 11

matter. It’s service

- provider specific. 12

MR. BROOKMAN: Okay. Andrew DeLaski. 13

MR. DeLASKI: I’ve got some questions on 14

the prior slide, is tha t okay? 15

MR. TSAO: Sure. 16

MR. DeLASKI: I don’t want to take 17

attention from these questions. 18

MR. BROOKMAN: No, let’s go back. 19

MR. DeLASKI: So I had a question on slide 20

-- bring you back a bit to slide

-- to your timeline 21

slide. Slide 15. This i s more of a process 22

question. As we

-- as you look at the schedule 23

here, with a test procedure proposed rule due in the 24

summer and then a final rule due in the fall, 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 54 concurrent, roughly, with the standard. So my 1

understanding, typically of how DOE does t hese 2

analyses is that you need to have your test method 3

pretty well locked down in order to do the analysis 4

for the NOPR. Is that a fair characterization? 5

MR. TSAO: Yep. 6

MR. DeLASKI: Because you can’t tell us 7

what the energy use is until you know wh at the test 8

method is. 9

MR. BROOKMAN: Jeremy, go ahead. 10

MR. DOMMU: Yeah, and that’s why, you 11

know, we will have at least the proposed rule for 12

how we do the test procedure before we come up with 13

the standard Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. 14

MR. DeLASK I: Right. But I guess my

-- as 15

I look at this schedule here, it looks like there’s 16

not a lot of flexibility as you go from the NOPR to 17

the final rule. Your flexibility is compromised, I 18

guess is what I would say, or limited, because 19

you’re trying to do an analysis for a rulemaking 20

where you went to a proposed rule and if you change 21

the test method, then you’ve just changed your 22

analysis, you know, and that sort of leads into this 23

do

- loop of redoing things and things get pushed 24

back. So what I’m wonderin g about is is there 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 55 something that can happen

-- I think there needs to 1

be more dialogue I guess is what I’m suggesting, 2

earlier in this process with stakeholders. Because 3

if what happens, if we meet here today and the next 4

time we meet is in a NOPR heari ng about the test 5

method, and people are all like, oh, this has got 6

this problem and this problem, then I see that as 7

knocking your schedule off rapidly. 8

MR. CYMBALSKY: Right. So this is John 9

Cymbalsky. I think Jeremy mentioned in his opening 10

remarks that we plan on putting all the analysis up 11

on the web as soon as we finish it, as opposed to 12

waiting for public meetings. And we also plan

-- we 13

discussed some webinars and things of that nature 14

along the way, so as not to wait for a public 15

meeting for a NOPR. So all the information’s out 16

there, and stakeholders can react in real time to 17

what we’re doing. 18

MR. DeLASKI: So that’s true for both the 19

standard analysis and the test method? 20

MR. CYMBALSKY: Yeah, I think both. I 21

think everything we can pro vide, we will provide. 22

MR. DeLASKI: So I would think that sort 23

of a draft NOPR test method, you know, something 24

along those lines, you know, figuring how to fit 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 56 that in so that people have a chance to respond to a 1

draft. 2

MR. CYMBALSKY: I think that’s important. 3

MR. DeLASKI: I just

-- I think we’ve seen 4

situations where that NOPR ends up being pretty much 5

the final because you don’t have the flexibility, 6

given the schedule you’re trying to adhere to. So I 7

think having a draft, that would really be valuable. 8

MR. CYMBALSKY: Okay. 9

MR. DeLASKI: And put that into your 10

schedule so people can plan for that and react to 11

it. 12

MR. BROOKMAN: Neal. 13

MR. N. GOLDBERG: Neal Goldberg, NCTA. I 14

echo those concerns. I think that’s very good 15

point. And I guess my question on the final rule, 16

the test procedure final rule, what does that 17

actually mean for a provider or manufacturer? Once 18

a final rule is adopted, what are the obligations on 19

the manufacturer or the provider? And I ask that 20

because the final rule’s going to be adopted before 21

a standards final rule is going to be adopted. So 22

I’m trying to figure out what the obligation is once 23

a test procedure final goes into place, and my 24

second question, probably for the general counsel, 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 57 is whether test proc edure final rule is a final 1

order for judicial review purposes? But maybe I 2

want to know the obligations first before I worry 3

about the other. 4

MR. BROOKMAN: Celia. 5

MS. SHER: This Celia Sher, DOE. I can 6

answer your first question, and the

-- it depe nds on 7

the effective date and the compliance date of the 8

test procedure. I don’t think

-- we haven’t

-- we 9

don’t have a final determination on that, but 10

typically, 180 days after a test procedure is

-- a 11

final test procedure is published, that test 12

proced ure is effective. So this is for 13

representation purposes, it’s not the same as a 14

compliance date. 15

MR. N. GOLDBERG: Right, but I guess , 16

getting back to my other question, which is what are 17

the obligations on a provider or a manufacturer once 18

the effecti ve date comes to pass on a test 19

procedure, particularly if the standards have not 20

been adopted yet? You adopt a test procedure, what 21

does that mean for Cisco, Motorola, Comcast, Cox, 22

EchoStar, Dish? 23

MR. BROOKMAN: John Cy mb alsky

-- I’m 24

sorry, Celia. 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 58 M S. SHER: Well, once that test procedure 1

is effective, under our statute 6293 of EPCA, 2

Section C, 180 days after a test procedure is 3

effective for representation purposes, basically you 4

have to have compliance for representation purposes. 5

So if you look a t Section C, you can take a look at 6

what that means of 6293 of EPCA. 7

MR. N. GOLDBERG: But does that mean a 8

manufacturer or a service provider has to do 9

something, has to change around his procedures as of 10

the effective date, possibly prior to the stand ard 11

in place? That’s my question, because of the 12

staggered final rule situation. And we can take 13

this off

- line. I’m just trying to figure out

-- 14

MR. CYMBALSKY: Yeah, I thought we 15

discussed this earlier that, you know, we haven’t 16

decided what the date of the final test procedure 17

that you’ll have to follow is. That will be known 18

well in advance of when

-- 19

MR. N. GOLDBERG: Let me just

-- what does 20

a manufacturer have to do? 21

MR. CYMBALSKY: Well, you’ll have to test 22

to the test procedure when the la w
-- when our 23

notice says it becomes compliant to do so. 24

MR. N. GOLDBERG: Right, so I suppose it’s 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 59 possible that your notice could say here’s our test 1

procedure, but we’re not going to put it into effect 2

until we put up final standards. 3

MR. CYMBALSKY: That’s a possibility, 4

sure. 5

MR. BROOKMAN: We’ll go to Adam first, and 6

then back to Doug. 7

MR. A. GOLDBERG: Adam Goldberg for TiVo

. 8

My understanding, and I apologize if it doesn’t 9

follow through to Set

- Top Boxes from TVs is that 10

when a test procedur e is effective than any time 11

you’re describing what the power consumption of your 12

device is, you’ve got to use the test method, and 13

any, for example, state regulations for disclosure 14

or state consumption requirements would all have to 15

be based on the offic ial DOE test procedure. Right? 16

MR. CYMBALSKY: That's correct. Yes. 17

MS. SHER: That's correct. 18

MR. A. GOLDBERG: So

-- 19

MS. SHER: It’s preempted. 20

MR. A. GOLDBERG: So whatever obligations 21

there are on manufacturers for standards promulgated 22

by others, you’ve got to use the DOE test procedure. 23

MS. SHER: The test procedure that DOE

-- 24

MR. CYMBALSKY: And so by representation 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 60 we mean any market literature, we mean the yellow 1

FTC sticker, all that kind of thing. 2

MR. TSAO: Energy Star

. 3

MR. CYMBALSKY: Energy Star

. 4

MR. BROOKMAN: So that was John Cymbalsky, 5

and now to Doug Johnson. 6

MR. JOHNSON: Adam essentially made the 7

same point I was about to make, but, for example, 8

the immediate obligation would be with Energy Star 9

program, if Energy Guide is in place, it would be an 10

obligation under the new

-- at that time, new DOE 11

test procedure. 12

MR. BROOKMAN: Okay. I’d like to flash 13

forward back to those issue boxes and see if we can 14

get some additional

-- Andrew’s not finished

-- go 15

ahead. 16

M R. DeLASKI: Slide 25. 17

MR. TSAO: I guess we went too fast, 18

Andrew. 19

MR. DeLASKI: I’m pretty much a newbie 20

when it comes to this technology and I don’t have ... 21

my apologies, so I have a

-- if you look at that 22

slide 25

-- 23

MR. TSAO: Sorry, the numbers on this 24

presentation

-- is it this slide? 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 61 MR. DeLASKI: Pie chart. 1

MR. TSAO: Pie chart, okay. Sorry about 2

that. 3

MR. DeLASKI: I’m curious, based upon 4

friends in the industry and friends around the 5

table, whether folks think that that pie chart 6

repr esents what happens in the field today. Is that 7

a good representation of what’s happening in the 8

field today? You want me to reask the question for 9

the record? 10

MR. BROOKMAN: Say it again, Andrew. 11

MR. DeLASKI: I’m asking folks around the 12

table, base d on their experience, does that pie 13

chart represent

-- is it a good representation or 14

somewhere in the ball park of what’s happening in 15

the field today? 16

MR. BROOKMAN: So we’ll start with Noah. 17

MR. HOROWITZ: Noah, with NRDC. I was 18

going to ask the s ame question and make a comment 19

here. I think there is general consensus around the 20

room, at least for the main TV in the home, that 21

it’s on for seven hours per day, and the box that’s 22

powering that TV is also on for seven hours a day. 23

What happens those other 17 hours is a mystery, I 24

think, to many of us, and I’m hoping the DOE process 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 62 can gather more data. 1

I think we have a terminology challenge, 2

and opportunity. We all, I think, can quickly agree 3

to what on or active means, but when you’re not 4

wat ching, you’re recording a show, is that one state 5

called standby or sleep, or are there various 6

degrees within that? We’ve heard terms that Energy 7

Star is using, light sleep and deep sleep. Is that 8

sufficiently tight or not? Let’s take a look at 9

that. Some of the test procedure that are out there 10

refer to something called standby, which may or may 11

not mean the same thing, so hoping we could rally 12

around some common terms. 13

What happens when you hit the on/off 14

button on the remote control, or less likel y, 15

physically touching the Set

- Top Box? That may put 16

it in a certain state. Call that standby, sleep, 17

light sleep. Will that box stay there until there’s 18

some signal from the cable or satellite or Telco 19

provider, and that’s what we’re measuring? Or doe s 20

something happen maybe at one in the morning where 21

it goes into even a lower power state? So are there 22

things like light and deep sleep? And then 23

something that’s not shown on slide 24

-- what 24

happens when you’re in that kind of steady state 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 63 condition where you’re not watching or recording a 1

show. You think, to the user’s terminology, they 2

turned it off, but then there’s some sort of 3

electronic program guide update, or some sort of 4

download of content from the service provider? 5

That’s not shown in ac tive or standby now. We need 6

to account for that. 7

MR. BROOKMAN: Okay. 8

MR. JOHNSON: These things also get 9

further complicated. The world I just described is 10

the main box, which might be a DVR in some homes. 11

The boxes on your second or third TV mi ght go to a 12

much lower power state all the time, not that 13

interim one. So I think the pie chart that’s shown 14

on 25 is not the world that’s currently out there. 15

I think we agree on the seven hours, but I don’t 16

think it’s correct to assume the other 17 hou rs are 17

as characterized there. 18

MR. BROOKMAN: Thank you. Garrett? 19

MR. LANGILLE: Hi, this is Gary from 20

EchoStar. 21

MR. BROOKMAN: Sorry, Gary. I apologize. 22

MR. LANGILLE: Try my last name. I agree 23

with Noah that all these terms need to be very wel l 24

defined. As far as this particular picture, it’s as 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 64 good as any other as far as today, but the biggest 1

issue I see is that we need to monitor

-- there 2

appears to be a trend starting, as Noah also 3

indicated, where there is sort of a central sort of 4

contr oller or server within the home, and then 5

there’ll be what we call thin clients in the 6

industry, out at all the individual TVs. And one 7

thing that we don’t

-- well, I haven’t seen good 8

data on, I think we all need to figure out how to 9

get it

-- is the usa ge rates, you know, from the 10

primary TV to the secondary TV to the third TV. And 11

it’s not really just how many hours each one is on, 12

it’s also are those hours concurrent or non

13

concurrent? Because if you turn on one of these 14

thin clients, you not only ne ed to turn that on, but 15

the main box has to turn on in addition to the thin 16

client to be able to use it. 17

So we’re definitely missing some data, you 18

know, I’ve been looking for for the last year, 19

because we have one of those products and I haven’t 20

been ab le to characterize it as good as I’d like to. 21

MR. BROOKMAN: Thank you. Charlie 22

Stephens. 23

MR. STEPHENS: Charlie Stephens, Northwest 24

Energy Efficiency Alliance. I guess

-- I’ll give a 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 65 little forecast here. We are now monitoring more 1

than 100 househo lds, the consumer electronic suites 2

in those households, including all the televisions 3

and the peripherals that go with them. And we

-- I 4

can’t tell you the recording interval, it may be 15 5

second data. We’re getting a lot of data, and we’re 6

also develop ing more ways to get more data quickly, 7

easily, and cheaply, once we understand what we 8

need. But that data will be shared with DOE and 9

everyone else when it’s done. 10

The houses are monitored now, but it’s a 11

long monitoring period. It’s about a

-- I t hink 12

it’s a six month monitoring period that we’re going 13

through. 14

MR. BROOKMAN: Do you think you’ll have 15

that data by when? 16

MR. STEPHENS: Summer, probably. 17

MR. BROOKMAN: Summer? Okay. Mark. 18

MR. SHARP: Mark Sharp with Panasonic. 19

Just point of clarification, perhaps Katharine and 20

EPA could help with this. I seem to recall, 21

relative to this pie chart, that for Energy Star 22

televisions it’s based on a five hours on 23

measurement, not seven hours, is that correct? 24

MS. KAPLAN: Yes, that’s right. 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 66 MR. SHARP: Okay. So I think relative 1

then to Noah’s comment, I’m not sure that we agree 2

that seven hours is the current universe. It may be 3

five if it’s based on Energy Star currently. 4

MR. BROOKMAN: Katharine, please, follow 5

on. 6

MS. KAPLAN: Katha rine Kaplan, EPA’s 7

Energy Star Program. Mark, you’re right, the 8

assumption for TVs is five hours. It was based on 9

the best available data

-- I think we had some 10

industry data and Nielson data. And the

-- I think 11

what’s sensible, I’ve heard even from CEA more 12

recently, that there was an assumption that hour was 13

too low, that we should be moving towards six or

-- 14

six was the last I heard. But anyway, I think we 15

should really look

-- dig in and see what kind of 16

data we can get on actual usage patterns. 17

M R. BROOKMAN: Doug, do you want to follow 18

on there? 19

MR. JOHNSON: I’m not aware of that 20

assumption, Katharine, but it’s worth further 21

discussion. Mark’s point, I think, is correct. 22

MR. BROOKMAN: Gary. 23

MR. LANGILLE: My understanding is also 24

during the Energy Star analysis that there was this 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 67 reality that Noah elevated very early today, is that 1

people would turn the TV off but forget to turn off 2

the Set

- Top Box. So we actually, I believe, several 3

hours were actually added to try to accommodate that 4

over an average of over many boxes in many 5

households. 6

MR. BROOKMAN: Thank you. I’m eager for 7

us to try and address these issue boxes that you see 8

on slide 26 in the printed version in front of you. 9

Let’s see if we can address these a little more if 10

we can. Adam Goldberg. 11

MR. A. GOLDBERG: Yeah, Adam Goldberg for 12

TiVo . I think

-- and it’s not directly written in 13

the issue boxes on this slide, but in addition to 14

service provider software on the Set

- Top Boxes, I 15

think the service provider network ar chitecture has 16

a big influence on the way that the Set

- Top Boxes 17

have to go. I mean, I think that Paul made this 18

point earlier, that depending on how the network 19

works, it affects how the Set

- Top Boxes have to 20

work. And so that needs to be considered as well, I 21

think. 22

MR. BROOKMAN: Okay. Thank you. I have 23

one more question coming from the web, which is, how 24

are IP enabled (interface) Set

- Top Boxes 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 68 contemplated under a DOE proposed standard? 1

MR. CYMBALSKY: That’s a later discussion. 2

MR. DOMMU: Y eah, that’s an important 3

discussion that we’re planning for later in the day, 4

and this is Jeremy Dommu. 5

MR. BROOKMAN: Great. Thank you. Okay. 6

Andrew DeLaski. 7

MR. DeLASKI: To follow on to my earlier 8

comment, so what I heard Greg say is that we need 9

more than one pie chart because there are different 10

types

-- if you’re going to annual energy 11

consumption you may need more than one pie chart to 12

represent these central boxes and then these client 13

boxes. That’s what I interpreted that point to 14

mean. 15

S o back to Mark’s point. Mark, you said 16

it’s five hours for the TV test method, or for the 17

Set

- Top Box test method? 18

MR. SHARP: TVs. 19

MR. DeLASKI: The TVs, okay. So this is 20

accurate for what the Energy Star is for Set

- Tops, 21

what’s on the slide? 22

MR. SHARP: Yeah. Correct. 23

MR. DeLASKI: Thank you for clarifying 24

that. I was just

-- my point of confusion. So as I 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 69 hear, one thing that strikes me is that the DOE 1

asked the question about

-- this is one approach in 2

annual energy consumption. I think an other approach 3

is to use watts in various modes

-- 4

MR. TSAO : Correct. 5

MR. DeLASKI:

-- for the test method. And 6

it strikes me, you know, that one of the things that 7

would be probably a good way to go with this test 8

method is to focus on the test meth od measuring 9

watts in various modes, because then you could use 10

the standard to apply some sort of weighting to 11

that, based on the current knowledge at the time. I 12

think that DOE took a similar approach with battery 13

chargers. I think that’s a way that w ould enable

-- 14

create more flexibility for both the programs and 15

the standards for various purposes, to be able to 16

have, for marketing frankly, if you have a test 17

method that focuses on watts as opposed to kilowatt 18

hours, I think you have more flexibility down the 19

road. 20

MR. TSAO : Yeah, I mean that’s definitely 21

a possibility that DOE could consider for the 22

metric. 23

MR. DOMMU: And I think

-- this is Jeremy 24

Dommu

-- I think even to calculate typical energy 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 70 consumption in kilowatt hours, you’re going to ha ve 1

to, of course, calculate them in watts. So one way 2

or another, the test procedure is going to 3

definitely have to calculate what the power 4

consumption is in watts. 5

MR. BROOKMAN: Thank you. And you can see 6

the issue box back up there on the screen. 7

Additional comments on these queries? Yes, Noah. 8

MR. HOROWITZ: Sorry to weigh in again 9

here. In terms of question two, depending how the 10

either service provider under a manufacturer 11

implements things makes a difference. So imagine if 12

I hit the on/off button and it takes me to a light 13

sleep, but if I push it and hold it for five or 15 14

seconds, or hit it twice or something, I could get a 15

different answer, depending how the software is set 16

up. Very few consumers might do that, but we need 17

to be cognizan t of that. 18

MR. BROOKMAN: Noah, please remember to 19

turn your microphone on. That wasn’t caught on the 20

record. 21

MR. HOROWITZ: It matters how you push the 22

button, both here

-- 23

MR. BROOKMAN: A good summary. Katharine, 24

you want to push your button, pl ease? 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 71 MS. KAPLAN: Sure. I’m wondering if DOE 1

has considered the implication of moving towards, 2

rather than thin clients and no clients in the 3

integration of Set

- Top Box functionality into TVs? 4

Would that kind of play in to this conversation and 5

analys is? 6

MR. BROOKMAN: Jeremy. 7

MR. DOMMU: Yeah, I mean, I think we 8

certainly welcome input on ways that we could 9

determine what the metric is to measure. If, 10

whatever the metric is, ultimately there is any 11

number of technological options that could be us ed 12

to meet it. So, you know, it wouldn’t specify one 13

technology over another. So if there was no thin 14

client, and there was a metric, it would essentially 15

meet it because there is no power consumption, 16

right? 17

MS. KAPLAN: This is Katharine from EPA. 18

D oes this have an implication for the TV test 19

procedure? For example, I saw that technology at 20

the Consumer Electronic Show this year. 21

MR. BROOKMAN: John. 22

MR. CYMBALSKY: John Cymbalsky. I think 23

that would be integral to the TV is what you’re 24

saying, so I think we’d have to look at all options 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 72 to measure that. 1

MR. BROOKMAN: Adam Goldberg. 2

MR. A. GOLDBERG: They covered it. 3

MR. BROOKMAN: They covered it. Gary. 4

MR. LANGILLE: Yeah, I think that

-- to 5

Katharine’s point

-- given the time frame for all 6

this, you know, it’s very likely that there may not 7

be Set

- Top Boxes in 2018. But besides that point, 8

it is very important, I think, for DOE to be 9

cognizant when they look at the new technology 10

possibilities, of power consumed within the 11

residence and then, you know, I mean, for instance, 12

I could tell you right now I could make a Set

- Top 13

Box very efficient by a large margin if I pushed a 14

lot of the functionality into the TV. But then, 15

Mark from Panasonic, would be in here saying, hey, 16

my energy co nsumption is rising fast. 17

The other thing I could do is push it out 18

onto the curb, so it’s outside the residence. So I 19

think it’s very important that as DOE considers new 20

technology, that they

-- you know, it’s sort of a 21

balloon that sort of functions a nd, you know, just 22

if you push on one side, it may make the Set

- Top Box 23

small, but now you have another nice refrigerator

24

sized box from Verizon sitting out on the front of 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 73 your house. I do realize that you’re looking at 1

inside the residence, but it is so mething to be 2

aware of. 3

MR. BROOKMAN: Okay. Thank you. 4

Additional comments, perhaps final comments on these 5

two issue boxes, because we’re moving on. Okay. 6

We’re moving on. 7

MR. TSAO: Okay. Thank you. The next 8

part of the RFI had to do with sort of the network 9

that the Set

- Top Box was connected to. DOE has 10

recognized sort of two different scenarios that a 11

Set

- Top Box could be tested. One, is on a live 12

network, similar to what a consumer would actually 13

do, so you obtain a subscription, connect t he Set

14

Top Box to it, and get it activated and test it in 15

that mode. The advantage is that that would reflect 16

typical usage that a consumer would see, and 17

relatively simple test setup with low service 18

provider involvement. The disadvantage being that 19

DOE had some concerns that maybe the repeatability 20

of this type of setup would be difficult due to the 21

fact that it’s not as controlled of an environment. 22

So some issues are whether the subscription is even 23

available at a lab for testing, or any variation 24

th at may occur due to the time of day, weather, 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 74 geography, or any other thing like that. And the 1

last issue again would be the video format would not 2

be as controllable because it would just be sort of 3

what a typical service provider network would 4

provide. 5

An alternative method would be to use more 6

of a closed simulated

- type environment, where the 7

head end is just sort of provided in conjunction 8

with the Set

- Top Box for testing. This would allow 9

for more controlled environment and would not have

- 10

- possib ly have less variation. But it may be large 11

or more costly to set up this type of

-- to perform 12

this type of test. It would require a lot of 13

service provider involvement in that the equipment 14

is necessarily complex to configure, and would not, 15

you know, be easy to understand or transferable 16

between different service providers. And it may not 17

necessarily represent exactly what the customers’ 18

typical viewing conditions would be like and whether 19

or not it had all the available features that a 20

normal live ne twork would provide. 21

So at this time, we’re looking for comment 22

as to, you know, one, whether or not there’s much of 23

a difference between a live network test versus sort 24

of a closed environment testing? And whether or not 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 75 for a live network test there a re variation concerns 1

or, you know, due to geographic location or time of 2

day. 3

MR. BROOKMAN: Paul? 4

MR. GLIST: Paul Glist. I won’t be able 5

to answer this question fully. I mean, we will be 6

doing a lot in writing, but I think that there are 7

some thin gs you should account for in your own 8

thinking. To take account of existing test 9

facilities that have been created by the service 10

providers. A good example, as you know, we’ve 11

introduced Cable Labs to you all, which has rolled up 12

the many, many different flavors of cable 13

architecture that exists in North America, in order 14

to provide testing. And it is something that would 15

be very difficult to replicate in the home, all 16

those various settings. 17

The other thing that I think you should 18

account for is that b ecause Set

- Top Boxes are 19

typically purchased in wholesale quantities by 20

service providers, and there is a compliance and 21

acceptance and quality assurance process that 22

precedes ordering and acceptance, that it’s very 23

hard for me to imagine folding live test ing as the 24

primary method into the actual acquisition cycle. 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 76 In other words, because beta boxes don’t show up in 1

live homes

-- live plant would be a bad idea. So 2

I’m just posing those as subsidiary questions to 3

this and we will try to answer this when we get to 4

writing. 5

MR. BROOKMAN: Thank you. Adam Goldberg. 6

MR. A. GOLDBERG: Yeah. Adam Goldberg for 7

TIVO. The one thing we need to, I think, keep in 8

mind is the burden to actually do the test, and in 9

particular, whether the lab that’s doing the test is 10

even in North America. For example, if I was 11

building

-- if I was building boxes in Taiwan, it 12

would be very difficult to run tests against Direct 13

TV and EchoStar satellites on the wrong side of the 14

planet, for example. 15

MR. BROOKMAN: Thank you. No ah. 16

MR. HOROWITZ: I hit the button. Noah 17

Horowitz, NRDC. Your first

-- I’m sorry, your 18

second question, time of day. Time of day does 19

matter. On some satellite systems they push movies 20

in the middle of the night. If you didn’t specify 21

the time, you wouldn’t capture that energy use. 22

Similarly, the EPG, the electronic program guide, 23

that might be pushed once a day, once a week, every 24

20 minutes, depending how they do it, so you need to 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 77 account for that. Part of that also will be dealt 1

with in what y ou assume for a duty cycle. 2

We don’t have a firm

-- we’re agnostic if 3

you will, whether it’s a closed or an open system. 4

I think what’s critical is, are you adequately 5

simulating or testing as if the box were hooked up 6

to Time Warner or ComCast, for e xample, on the cable 7

side, and if Cable Labs has the capability to do that 8

and it’s representing up to date head end, we don’t 9

have a problem with that. But you need to make sure 10

that you’re really representing what’s going to 11

happen in the field. 12

MR. BR OOKMAN: Do you have any opinion 13

about what’s more doable? 14

MR. HOROWITZ: Not at this time. 15

MR. BROOKMAN: Gary. 16

MR. LANGILLE: I was just going to comment 17

that you may find that for different types of 18

services you may have to take a different approa ch. 19

Like, for instance, to bring in the whole cable head 20

end, and all the flavors to some lab somewhere, 21

would be extraordinarily expensive and most likely 22

not doable. But it’s not

-- if you’re in the US, 23

it’s not very hard to throw up a satellite dish t o 24

get a live feed. So, you know, you may find that 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 78 depending on the product type, in one case you can 1

test in a live environment, but in another case it 2

doesn’t make sense because of

-- mostly because of 3

the cost is a major issue. 4

MR. BROOKMAN: Okay. Final comments on 5

these two issue boxes? For those of you that are 6

wondering, in about 15 minutes or so we’re going to 7

take a break. So hang in there. Allen. 8

MR. TSAO: Okay. Thanks. The other 9

question we had brought up in the Request for 10

Informati on had to do with the video source of the 11

Set

- Top Box and how the video source would impact 12

the energy consumption of the Set

- Top Box. So as an 13

example, I’m just going to describe how Energy Star 14

outlines what video to use when conducting the 15

testing. Th ey outline three reference channels with 16

three different content types, as well as different 17

resolutions. 18

So two channels would be a standard def 19

resolution, like 4ADI (ph), and one of the channels 20

would have to be at some high def channel if the 21

Set

- Top Box supported it of 720P. 22

So what we’re looking for in comment on 23

this part is just sort of, one, with those channels, 24

do service providers offer sort of different bid 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 79 rates or frame rates or just general network 1

throughput for the same channel? So wou ld CNN in 2

high def be similar across, or different across 3

service providers? And additionally, would the 4

content itself make a difference? So like would a 5

sports content impact the energy consumption of a 6

Set

- Top Box differently from, you know, a news 7

ch annel where the content is more static? 8

MR. BROOKMAN: Gary. 9

MR. LANGILLE: This is Gary from EchoStar. 10

It’s been my experience that you cannot count on the 11

same channel being the same technical specifications 12

for the video stream across

-- between an y two 13

providers. Not only that, but it actually changes 14

over time. Like, for instance, in a satellite 15

system, and cable systems will be there soon, I’m 16

sure, we actually use what is called variable bit 17

rate system, whereby we actually mix maybe up to 10, 18

12, 15 channels together, and the system actually 19

analyzes which channel happens to have the most 20

activity and it actually gives that channel more 21

bits than the other channels. So we can vary from

- 22

- you know, high definition could go from 19 23

megabits a second, but if it’s just a person 24

standing there giving the news, it may go down to 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 80 one megabit a second, depending on what it requires. 1

So this will be a challenge for all of us to figure 2

out how to do this. 3

MR. BROOKMAN: Thank you for that comment. 4

Paul. 5

MR. GLIST: This is really a question for 6

you. Do you have a level of significance that we 7

should be looking for? So if I determine that yes, 8

all of these things change, but not by much, how 9

much is “much” for your purposes? 10

MR. TSAO: I’d say we would like to look 11

at that data and

-- to determine whether or not it 12

matters. Like, if we’re talking about something 13

that’s less than one percent then it’s possible we 14

would exclude it. I don’t know if there’s 15

necessarily a fixed value where we say i t matters or 16

not. Because obviously, it’s a combination of a lot 17

of things. We would look at, holistically, probably 18

the entire test procedure in terms of how repeatable 19

the end result would be. So that would be 20

contributions from different things like time of day 21

or the video source or things like that. So I’d say 22

we would like as much data as possible so we can 23

aggregate that and make a determination. 24

MR. BROOKMAN: Noah. 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 81 MR. HOROWITZ: Noah with NRDC. Two things 1

that we think might make a differ ence is whether the 2

signal is HD or not. And secondly, and not shown 3

here is whether that content is 3D. If we’re 4

looking six years in the future, we might see 5

increased penetration of content that’s 3D and 6

typically that’s higher processing requirements and 7

proportional power needs. 8

MR. BROOKMAN: Thank you. These comments 9

are very on point and much appreciated. Are we

-- 10

MR. TSAO: There’s a couple more follow 11

ons. 12

MR. BROOKMAN: And I want you to tell us 13

what we’re missing, okay? 14

MR. TSAO: Okay. 15

MR. BROOKMAN: So keep going. 16

MR. TSAO: All right. So the next 17

comments are sort of

-- another option to consider 18

in the test procedure is that the

-- is if the bit 19

rates are variable, is it possible the test 20

procedure could record whatever parameters were 21

important to energy consumption to be factored into 22

the standards. So if it was determined that yeah, 23

maybe it varies, but the test procedure may need to 24

include that. Is that something that’s doable? So 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 82 we’re looking for comment on whe ther, you know, this 1

kind of information can be easily measured, or 2

there’s a way to measure that kind of information? 3

And then, in general, any other parameters that may 4

impact the video source which would impact the 5

energy consumption of the Set

- Top Box we’re looking 6

for comment on. 7

MR. BROOKMAN: Paul. 8

MR. GLIST: Paul Glist again. As I look 9

forward to the time table for implementation and I 10

think about variabilities, I’m having a hard time 11

knowing what are the devices for which we are trying 12

to es tablish test procedures. So right now we may 13

have an intuitive sense of what a Set

- Top Box is, 14

but I don’t even know if you want a test procedure 15

for R oxie or Roku (ph), and looking at the time 16

frame, I’m not sure how different the actual IP 17

transport mig ht be between current service providers 18

and edge providers. So can you help us understand 19

what is the

-- what’s the category of devices for 20

which we are trying to develop test procedures? 21

MR. BROOKMAN: Jeremy Dommu. 22

MR. DOMMU: Yeah, I mean it’s a gr eat 23

question and it’s one of the primary determinations 24

we need to make right off the bat, the discussion of 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 83 what product classes we establish. For each product 1

class we establish there would be a unique standard, 2

and unique analysis performed. I think r ight after 3

the break we’re planning on getting into that 4

conversation, so we’ll push that comment back until 5

then. 6

MR. BROOKMAN: Thanks for the question. 7

You see the two comment boxes here. Additional 8

information related to these two. Yes, please. 9

MR. JOSEPH: Kuriacose Joseph of Direct 10

TV. In addition to parameters of the input video 11

stream, you know, there’s also the question of how 12

the customer has configured the box at the output, 13

and different Set

- Top Boxes, different products, 14

they have diffe rent combination of things

-- of 15

selections you can make, so how is all that going to 16

be drafted into this analysis, combination of watts 17

and coming to the box first and what customers have 18

set. 19

MR. BROOKMAN: Input and output. Yeah. 20

Okay. 21

MR. JOSE PH: So this is an issue for 22

testing. 23

MR. BROOKMAN: Okay. Thank you. Nothing 24

more? Okay. 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 84 MR. TSAO: Okay. The next question in the 1

RFI concerns sort of the DVR testing, you know, what 2

the DVR

-- there are different modes of operation, 3

such as pa using and fast forward, or playing and 4

play back of the DVR. So Energy Star , for example, 5

in their test procedure has outlined sort of a 6

certain percentage of time that during playback that 7

these operations should occur, generally. Like five 8

percent of t he time is for pause, ten percent for 9

fast forward or rewind, and the majority of the 10

time, for playback. So when DOE is considering sort 11

of the impact of the DVR on energy consumption, we 12

have some questions about that, basically. 13

So we’re not sure if sort of the

-- that 14

the order of the operations matter in terms of the 15

energy consumption, or whether or not that sort of 16

human element, when conducting the testing, in terms 17

of how much

-- when I say it played, or I play and 18

then periodically pause or do I pause all at once, 19

or anything like that? And whether or not that 20

would sort of impact the repeatability of the test? 21

So one aspect is we could separate on to separate 22

modes and measure each mode of operation separately, 23

as alternative. 24

But in genera l at this point we’re just 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 85 seeking comment on the DVR testing, on one, you 1

know, whether or not this is an issue for 2

repeatability of testing, and two, whether or not 3

those usage profiles on DVR seem to make sense or if 4

there is any data on what a typical usage profile 5

would look like. 6

MR. BROOKMAN: I’ll start with Noah first. 7

MR. HOROWITZ: Noah with NRDC. One thing 8

that’s missing here is recording time. How much 9

power does it take when you record a show? Is that 10

the same or different than when you ’re playing it 11

back? And that also has an impact on your duty 12

cycle. It might be, if it’s a one hour show, it’s 13

one hour to record it, and if you do watch it, it’s 14

another hour to play it back, so when we looked at 15

that pie chart from Energy Star , I don’ t know if 16

that was considered. Also, not to pick on TiVo , but 17

when it first came out it had a thing called 18

speculative recording, so if you watched the Andy 19

Griffith Show, it would automatically look for 20

anything with Andy Griffith or Don Knotts. I might 21

be dating myself here. But as a result, it might be 22

constantly recording and using a lot more power, and 23

if that feature is enabled or disabled upon 24

shipment, that’s another consideration. 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 86 MR. BROOKMAN: Okay. Yes, Gary. 1

MR. LANGILLE: I was just go ing to 2

comment, and I think Paul made an excellent point 3

earlier is that a lot of this has to do with at what 4

level are we considering something significant? I 5

mean I’m sure if you, I mean for the most part DVR 6

means your disk drive is doing different thi ngs 7

depending on what you’re doing, and how often you’re 8

accessing it. If you look at the microlevel, of 9

course the energy’s going to change, it doesn’t 10

matter what you do. Right? But, you know, the fact 11

of the matter is, if I hook up a, you know, I bri ng 12

one of those kilowatts up to my home and I hook it 13

up to my DVR, it doesn’t matter what I do to it, as 14

long as that disk is moving, it pretty much stays 15

the same. So I’m sure, you know, in the middle 16

range it’s moving up and down, but when you’re 17

looki ng at a box that’s maybe 20 watts, it seems 18

pretty insignificant and it may not even be valid. 19

So I would suggest that to really get 20

answers on these things, because does this matter or 21

not is going to be a question at a high level for 22

testing that we re ally need to decide up front, is 23

it one

-- anything less than one percent we should 24

consider insignificant, so we would answer the 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 87 question. If it’s less than one percent variation 1

then the answer is no, it doesn’t matter. We should 2

try to establish that level. 3

MR. BROOKMAN: Charlie Stephens. I was 4

wondering the data you’re gathering, whether it goes 5

to that level of detail. 6

MR. STEPHENS: It might go to that level 7

of detail provided we can correlate the time stamp 8

on each event that occurs with wha t’s happening 9

physically or with what the consumer is doing with 10

it. This is one of the places where we’re going to 11

try to establish a protocol for matching up a time 12

stamp on the data with an event. I’m doing that 13

laundry right now and we may push it in to consumer 14

electronics. 15

MR. BROOKMAN: Adam Goldberg. 16

MR. A. GOLDBERG: This is Adam for TiVo

. 17

I think it’s really, really difficult to look out a 18

five or six years for things like this. But I think 19

one thing that we should try to keep in mind someh ow 20

is that today, generally or maybe exclusively, DVR 21

is using rotating magnetic media like hard drives. 22

In the past couple of years, there’s been a real 23

push in certain cases to solid state drives, which 24

my understanding is, both a fair bit more energy 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 88

e fficient and it’s completely irrelevant whether 1

it’s seeking to a different part of the drive or 2

reading sequentially, that is to say things like 3

fast forward, and playback may have absolutely no 4

difference. But the problem with solid state drives 5

is they ’re really kind of expensive just now, but 6

hey gosh, six years is four turns of Moore’s Law and 7

so it’s easy to see where we might be into SSDs and 8

out of them and into the next thing by then. 9

So I’m not sure worrying too much about 10

DVR modes is worth spending a lot of time hitting 11

our head about. I know Energy Star certainly does, 12

and it makes sense for Energy Star because those 13

specs can revise much faster than a DOE standard 14

can. 15

MR. BROOKMAN: Okay. Katharine. 16

MR. DeLASKI: Just a follow

- on. If I may. 17

I mean I think the group ought to know just about 18

the effect of a DOE test method being preemptive and 19

being the test method that Energy Star and other 20

programs have to use, I think does speak to the need 21

to address modes, even if they’re not going to be

-- 22

even if six years from now

-- it will matter sooner 23

in other programs, so we still have to muscle with 24

these questions. 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 89 MR. BROOKMAN: Thank you, Andrew. 1

Katharine. 2

MS. KAPLAN: Just two very minor points. 3

One, following Adam on your c omment, my 4

understanding from our computer stakeholders who 5

have been talking about solid state for a while is 6

that the price has been coming down, and I would 7

imagine in five years it would really be a non

8

issue. 9

And then I wanted to point out that, you 10

know, yes, Energy Star now focuses on these various 11

aspects of the operations of the DVR, including

-- I 12

remember there was a question about whether or not 13

we recorded

-- we covered recording as well as 14

playback, and we do. So we cover all of the 15

differe nt functions. 16

MR. BROOKMAN: Okay. Thank you. Let’s 17

proceed. 18

MR. TSAO: Okay. The next topic concerns 19

more the satellite Set

- Top Boxes as

-- this is the 20

low noise block, our LNB units that are attached to 21

satellites and these are used, you know, in general 22

they improve the signal reception or convert the 23

satellite signal to be accessible by the Set

- Top 24

Box. 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 90 One of the issues that we face with

-- 1

when looking at test procedures is that the LNBs can 2

be powered separately from the set top box , but the y 3

could also be powered directly by the Set

- Top Box 4

through the coaxial connection. So in general, for 5

whether or not this

-- the question comes up, 6

whether or not it should be included in the test 7

procedure for the energy measurement, and the first 8

aspec t would be how much power does the LNB consume 9

relative to the Set

- Top Box, so how significant is 10

it? 11

And if DOE were to sort of include the LNB 12

power consumption, are there additional factors 13

around the testing that would have to be considered 14

to make it a representative test, and a repeatable 15

test? And if it were excluded, sort of what options 16

would there be for testing it, given that sometimes 17

they are powered directly by the Set

- Top Box? So is 18

it possible that they could always be powered 19

separate ly by another box? Is it possible to test 20

them without them connected? So, I guess that’s, in 21

general, what we’re opening up for comment and 22

discussion about. 23

MR. BROOKMAN: Gary. 24

MR. LANGILLE: Gary Langille, Dish Network 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 91 this time. The issue of LN Bs is one that is a 1

little bit complex because it can

-- the number of 2

LNBs in a household changes by geography, it changes 3

by what subscription package that particular 4

subscriber wants, and it also changed, frankly, due 5

to the digital TV transition. When that transition 6

happened, it’s great we went from analog to digital, 7

the problem is that all of us service providers had 8

to carry both, and not only that, but then we added 9

all those HD content, which was like five times the 10

band width requirement. So wh at happened was, we 11

had to launch more satellites and put more 12

satellites up there, which meant we needed more 13

LNBs. So we will include in our comments, you know, 14

information about LNBs themselves. I mean, frankly, 15

we all buy them from the same one or tw o companies, 16

so it’s not like a big secret. 17

However, the issue I am concerned about 18

is, for the satellite industry perspective, is that, 19

you know, once this procedure’s in place and ratings 20

are given for Set

- Top Boxes, people will tend to 21

compare one v ersus the other. And in a satellite 22

architecture, it just so happens that the network 23

receiving device happens to be in the household. 24

But we don’t have any cables in the ground. We 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 92 don’t have amplifiers on every corner, and we don’t 1

have these refriger ator sized boxes in every 2

neighborhood. Okay. So, we just don’t want to see 3

a satellite is disadvantaged when it’s looked at as 4

an energy

-- from an energy perspective, because 5

actually overall, the energy efficiency of a 6

satellite distribution system is far, far, far, more 7

efficient than the alternatives. And we have solar 8

power head ends, right, flying around in space. We 9

have no infrastructure in neighborhoods. I mean, , 10

you know, we have no

-- we don’t dig up streets, we 11

don’t do any of that stuff, so that’s what we’re 12

concerned about. So whether it’s included or not, 13

and the regulation of the LNB

-- we’re more 14

concerned about how it’s presented at the end, than 15

we are whether you want a submission or not. 16

MR. BROOKMAN: Okay. Thank you. Noah. 17

MR. HOROWITZ: Noah with NRDC. I think, 18

in almost all cases, there might be a few 19

exceptions, the LNB is indeed powered by the Set

- Top 20

Box, and we don’t understand why you would 21

disconnect it as part of the test. Although I’m 22

sympathetic to Gary’s poin t, I think after lunch, I 23

think we’re going to talk about scope and what’s in 24

or out. Is it just the box, and if there are many 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 93 boxes around the house, in this case, the LNB or the 1

gateway box Telco provider might provide, I think 2

that’s fair game how muc h of that should be in. But 3

the LNB, I think, is critical to simulate the actual 4

operation, so I don’t know how you could disconnect 5

the LNB and appropriately measure the energy use of 6

the Set

- Top Box. So I’m a little confused there. 7

Also, it’s possibl e that a home that has 8

multiple LNBs could have an implementation where one 9

of the LNBs turns off in the middle of the night, or 10

powers down and we want to encourage that, and the 11

only way to do that is to measure it. 12

MR. BROOKMAN: Gary, follow on? 13

MR . LANGILLE: Yeah, just a quick follow 14

on. I was going to mention, or I forgot to mention 15

that there’s various configurations that are offered 16

in terms of whether the LNB is powered from the Set

17

Top Box or powered from a separate power supply. 18

There’s ad vantages and disadvantages to each 19

configuration. For instance, if it’s powered from 20

the Set

- Top Box, if we get to the point where we can 21

turn that power off, turn the Set

- Top Box off when 22

it’s not being used, or go into a reduced power 23

mode, then the LNB is automatically turned off. 24

The other point is that when you go with a 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 94 separate power supply, now you need some 1

communication mechanisms, some standard develop that 2

Set

- Top Boxes in a home can all communicate with 3

each other so that one doesn’t tell it to shut off 4

and the other one needs it. The other thing is that 5

if you go

-- if you separate the power supply, 6

introduce a single point of failure. When you have 7

it supplied by any of the boxes within a home, if 8

one box fails, the other two boxes pick i t up 9

automatically. So all of that comes into sort of 10

the dynamics of how you design a system. It has to 11

be considered. 12

MR. TSAO: Right. 13

MR. BROOKMAN: Noah. 14

MR. HOROWITZ: Quick question for either 15

Gary or Navigant. How much power are we talking 16

about? Are these two to four watts 24 hours a day? 17

MR. LANGILLE: I would say that, you know, 18

the other thing is that LNB isn’t an LNB and an LNB. 19

Most LNBs today actually are an LNB plus an RF 20

switch, plus all sorts of other electronics. So 21

they’ve changed over time. But you could be a 22

couple watts each, so if you have three satellites, 23

you’re starting to get up to four, six, eight, could 24

even be ten watts. 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 95 MR. HOROWITZ: And those tend to be on all 1

day? 2

MR. LANGILLE: And these days, they’re 3

mo stly on 24/7 because we have to maintain 4

continuous communication with the satellite, but 5

that’s for a different discussion later, I guess. 6

MR. BROOKMAN: Let’s just take additional 7

comments on these issue boxes you see up on the 8

screen, 10, 11, and 12. Okay. 9

I think we’re due for a break. It’s now 10

almost ten minutes after 11, let’s break for 15 11

minutes, which means we’ll resume at 11:25. How 12

many of you are new to the Forestall Building? 13

Several of you are. Okay. You must wear this badge 14

inside the building or someone will escort you 15

somewhere else. There are rest rooms on both ends 16

of the hall. There’s a coffee shop down on the 17

ground floor directly below us on the opposite side 18

of the hallway, but you need to go quickly to make 19

it back here in 15 minutes. 20

(Whereupon, at 11:08 a.m., the meeting was 21

recessed for a 21 minute period.) 22

MR. BROOKMAN: So now we’re moving on. 23

We’re really, remarkably, despite starting a few 24

minutes late, quite close to being on schedule. 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 96 We’re going to hear S tandards Rulemaking Analysis 1

and back to Jeremy. 2

**Standards Rulemaking Analysis** 3

MR. DOMMU: Okay. So we’ve talked about 4

test procedures, we gave you the overview, and now 5

we’re going to move forward and we’re going to talk 6

about each analysis, each asses sment that goes into 7

the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in more detail. 8

So we will begin with the Market and Technology 9

Assessment. 10

**Market and Technology Assessment** 11

Now many of you have seen a preliminary 12

version of the Market and Technology Assessment, 13

which we posted on the Set

- Top Boxes Network 14

Equipment rulemaking website. So you’ve had the 15

opportunity to peruse that. As I mentioned 16

previously, that’s a preliminary version. What’s 17

ultimately published in the Notice of Proposed 18

Rulemaking will be dif ferent and will be updated, 19

and there’s additional content that needs to go into 20

that. 21

So the purpose of the Market and 22

Technology Assessment is to characterize the 23

markets, the relevant industries, and the measures 24

to improve efficiency. So we do thi s by identifying 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 97 and characterizing the manufacturers and service 1

providers of Set

- Top Boxes. So we look at trends in 2

the industry, estimate shipments. We analyzed all 3

the existing regulatory and non

- regulatory 4

initiatives applicable to equipment covered under 5

the rulemaking. We identified technologies that 6

could improve efficiency, and one of the primary 7

outputs of the Market and Technology Assessment is 8

the establishment of product classes. 9

In the version that’s on line in the 10

rulemaking website, w e do not establish preliminary 11

what those product classes are. Many questions so 12

far today have come up asking about this product 13

class issue. So this determination of what product 14

classes are is one of the major decisions we need to 15

make as we begin the rulemaking process, and it’s an 16

issue that we very much welcome your inputs on, 17

because we will perform a separate analysis and 18

we’ll establish a unique conservation standard for 19

each of the product classes that’s determined. 20

**Product Classes** 21

So when n ecessary, the Department of 22

Energy divides covered products into classes by the 23

type of energy used, the capacity of the product, 24

and any other performance

- related feature that 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 98 justifies different standard levels, such as 1

features that affect consumer util ity. 2

So the relationship here is in the Market 3

and Technology Assessment, one of the primary 4

outputs would be product classes, but we’d also look 5

at these technology options. And a technology 6

option would include any component technology that 7

can redu ce energy consumption. So, for example, a 8

low power CPU or a hard disk in a Set

- Top Box could 9

be an example of a technology option. 10

We then conduct a screening analysis, and 11

we’ll talk about that shortly, but essentially what 12

that does is it screens out those technology options 13

which we aren’t considering and design options that 14

are technology feasible and could be considered as a 15

measure to improve product efficiency. So design 16

options can include innovative ways of designing 17

products using standard co mponents. So maybe a 18

multi

- room configuration could be an example of a 19

design option in Set

- Top Boxes. 20

At the end of the day, regardless of the 21

determination of what the technology option, what’s 22

a design option, in the engineering analysis we will 23

esta blish a different efficiency level based on the 24

metric that we’re going to base the standard on for 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 99 each candidate standard level. So for each 1

potentially design option, we would have a different 2

standard level, and we’ll talk more about this in 3

engineeri ng analysis. And for each of those 4

standard levels, we would analyze the effect on 5

energy efficiency and cost for each of the product 6

classes that’s determined. So product classes is a 7

key determination. 8

So the way that Energy Star does it, and 9

this is something that we’ve looked at in the Market 10

and Technology Assessment, they characterize Set

- Top 11

Boxes into base functionalities such as cable, 12

satellite, IP

- TV, or Telecom, and additional 13

allowances. So, high definition DVR, or multi

- room. 14

For example to earn an Energy Star label, you would 15

look at the base functionality and any additional 16

functionality that exists for Set

- Top Box model to 17

determine what energy consumption it needs to meet 18

to earn the Energy Star label. So you’d add 19

everything up. So if you had a cable Set

- Top Box 20

that has additional functionality of advanced video 21

processing, cable card DVR and HD, you’d add up all 22

the associated numbers with that model to determine 23

what the energy consumption would be to be certified 24

as Energy Star , based on that version number. 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 100 For Department of Energy, as we consider 1

energy conservation standards, we would prescribe a 2

unique conservation level for each product class. 3

So we wouldn’t necessarily use this allowance system 4

that Energy Star did, beca use each product class 5

that we determine would have a different 6

conservation level. What we could consider doing, 7

though, is establishing a new product class for each 8

combination of base functionality and additional 9

features, based on the Energy Star defi nitions, 10

provided each one of those product classes meets 11

DOE’s criteria for being a product class. 12

So one thing we could do is instead of 13

taking every possible iteration of this chart, we 14

could focus on those permutations that are most 15

commonly seen i n the market when the standard 16

becomes applicable. So there’s a lot of decisions 17

that we need to make in order to determine what 18

product classes to look at. 19

Here is an example, and I just want to 20

stress that kind of this exercise in these next 21

couple sl ides that I’m going to show you are 22

examples. This is in no way a preliminary 23

determination of what we think product classes 24

should be. We very much welcome your input on this 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 101 important determination. But I think it’s good to 1

kind of go through this exe rcise to show what some 2

of these issues that we have to look at would be. 3

So here is one way that we could 4

potentially do product classes, and we’ll go through 5

the next couple slides, focus first on cable and 6

then on satellite, and then on IP. But for c able, 7

we looked at in the future, we’re assuming, and this 8

is obviously purely an example, that advanced video 9

processing, high definition, and cable card would be 10

included in all future cable Set

- Top Boxes. So 11

regardless of the product class, we could sa y let’s 12

just assume that it has those three different 13

additional functionalities. We also are saying that 14

removable media does not require a different product 15

class, DVRs would include multi

- shim and multi

- room 16

functionality. Home network interface and d ocks 17

would be combined into a single networking 18

functionality. 19

So by way of example here, if this is what 20

we were to go with, we’re not to say that you need 21

to have all of those features to meet the product 22

class. So like cable base, we’re saying it’s h igh 23

def, and in this example we would say all Set

- Top 24

Boxes in the standard would be assumed to have high 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 102 definition, but if one was standard definition, it 1

would still be included in that base product class, 2

just essentially, if standard definition uses l ess 3

energy than high definition, ... we’ll see what the 4

market share is and we welcome that input to help us 5

determine what those product classes are. 6

Again, now moving on to satellite . Here 7

are some additional assumptions

-- and again, all 8

for illustrati ve purposes here. I just think it’s 9

important to kind of present something of what 10

product classes could look like to kind of tease out 11

the issues that we need to determine. So here we’d 12

say advanced video processing in HD again, would be 13

included. Remo vable media does not require a 14

separate product class and that’s true for what we 15

said in cable too, and that means, like, if there is 16

a DVD player, a Blue Ray tape player built into a 17

future Set

- Top Box, that we wouldn’t necessarily 18

build our conservation standard to include the 19

energy consumption and have a test procedure include 20

testing the playback of a removable media device. 21

DVRs would include multi

- stream and multi

- room 22

functionality again. So that would say, you know, 23

we’ve seen most prevalent tha t multi

- stream and 24

multi

- room functionality correlates with DVRs. 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 103 And by the way, I should have mentioned, 1

we based this kind of determination looking at 2

Energy Star ’s qualified product list, so we’re 3

looking for the most common correlations of 4

functio nalities, and this is kind of just

-- this is 5

what we based this on. Again, it’s an example, and 6

we welcome your feedback. 7

Again, home network interface for 8

satellite product classes would not require 9

different product class, but may be folded into the 10

DVR

- based type. We welcome your input on that. 11

When we go to IP or Telecom, again, the 12

same assumption of advanced video processing, high 13

def and home network interface, the same assumption 14

about not including removable media. IP boxes can 15

provide mult i

- stream and multi

- room independent of 16

DVR functionality. We saw that one analyzing the 17

Energy Star qualified product list. So we kind of 18

separated that one into four potential product 19

classes for IP here, based on whether it’s multi

20

room, DVR or DVR wit h multi

- room. 21

And then finally, other product classes we 22

could look at, thin client interrestial (ph) could 23

potentially have their own product class. 24

So that’s an overview, and I know there 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 104 have already been many questions and comments today, 1

so we’ll open up the floor now, and we very much 2

welcome your input on the establishment of product 3

classes with any of these following four issues: 4

**•** What product classes should be considered , 5

**•** h ow many classes to consider , 6

**•** p otential methods to combine or reduce the 7

number of product classes, and 8

**•** f eedback on the impact of baseline equipment 9

class 10

**•** feedback on the market share 11

**•** comment on the consideration of Energy Star ’s 12

definition of base functionalities, and 13

**•** additional features. 14

MR. BROOKMAN: Adam Goldberg. 15

MR . A. GOLDBERG: Yes, excuse me. This 16

sort of scheme of product classes, is this the way 17

that things have to be done in the

-- in an eventual 18

regulation, or could it be done sort of more similar 19

to what Energy Star does with feature allowances and 20

a base t ype? 21

MR. DOMMU: I’ll let Celia with General 22

Counsel answer that question. 23

MS. SHER: Well, we haven’t determined if 24Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 105 we would set product classes at all. Like I said, 1

this is just a preliminary information

- gathering 2

stage. But if we were going to sep arate out by 3

classes, under EPCO we have the authority to do it 4

by product class, and to focus on, you know, 5

performance

- related features that would justify a 6

different standard level, the capacity of the 7

project. We don’t necessarily have the authority t o 8

do what Energy Star does under our statute. So, for 9

separate

-- so we would go

-- we haven’t determined 10

whether we’re doing product classes, but we can’t 11

necessarily do what Energy Star does. 12

MR. A. GOLDBERG: Can’t necessarily do 13

what Energy Star doe s. Does that mean you

-- you 14

don’t know whether you can or not, or you can or you 15

can’t? I’m sorry. 16

MS. SHER: No, that’s okay. I mean, we’ll 17

address this at the next stage of the rulemaking, in 18

our Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, in the event that 19

we do decide to separate out Set

- Top Boxes into 20

classes. But right now under our statute, we have 21

the authority

-- we have the authority to separate 22

out into product classes. We haven’t determine 23

whether we will do that yet. 24

MR. DeLASKI: Just to follow o n to Adam’s 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 106 question

-- 1

MR. BROOKMAN: Andrew DeLaski. 2

MR. DeLASKI: It seems to me that there’s 3

no reason why you couldn’t have a

-- the 4

architecture of it couldn’t be why you couldn’t have 5

a product which has one set of features as a certain 6

class. You add another function, it’s now in a new 7

class, and that new class would have its own 8

standard. So I’m not quite sure I get the 9

distinction. I read DOE’s documents, but I’m not 10

sure why the document made a big fuss about why they 11

can’t do what EPA had done. But what is clear is 12

that, in my experience, that for a product to have a 13

different standard, for a widget to have, you know, 14

to be allowed to use 20 kilowatt hours per year 15

instead of 25, means they’re in two different 16

classes. So as you add a fu nctionality, that would 17

be a new class. 18

MR. BROOKMAN: Paul. 19

MR. GLIST: Let me give you an example 20

that maybe can help us focus on this. So, let’s 21

suppose that the world is divided into multiple 22

classes based on functionality and features. But in 23

a world where those devices are connected to service 24

providers who invent and add new functionalities by 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 107 software download, that might, in fact, affect the 1

performance of the device. What then

-- how does 2

that fit into a model of

-- I mean is it, like, can 3

we not represent the energy consumption anymore 4

because that invention hasn’t been tested? I don’t 5

understand how all that fits together for this 6

market. So can someone help me? Anyone? 7

MR. DeLASKI: So what you’re saying, Paul, 8

is

-- this is Andrew a gain

-- so you’re saying the 9

energy consumption might change after the product is 10

deployed to the field? 11

MR. GLIST: Right. This is very common in 12

how

-- because these things are dynamically 13

interacting with service providers who

-- Gary and I 14

are compe ting all the time, we’re trying to invent 15

new stuff that consumers want. 16

MR. DeLASKI: Right. 17

MR. GLIST: So whatever features you take 18

a snapshot of today in this subdivided world, will 19

change on products that are actually in the field. 20

And so I don’ t know how to understand how to fit 21

that model into even subdivided product 22

classifications. 23

MR. BROOKMAN: Charlie Stephens. 24

MR. STEPHENS: Charlie Stephens. I sense 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 108 that no one will commit to anything here, so I’ll 1

just make some observations about what’s happened in 2

the past with other product types. When that sort 3

of thing would happen, typically, the manufacturer 4

would have two choices, and the provider together

-- 5

I mean, you guys don’t do this without a 6

manufacturer, I presume. You know, you h ave to 7

agree on what capability the box has before you can 8

use it, I presume. You would have two choices

-- 9

well, I know that it has some functionalities that 10

you can then use and change in the future, but you 11

have two choices based on what I’ve seen in t he 12

past. You either adjust the energy consumption of 13

the whole thing so that you stay within the existing 14

limit of that class as you change it, or you can 15

petition to DOE to make it a new class, and you can 16

petition to test it under a different regime and 17

represent its energy use. There are a number of 18

products that have gotten waivers on a temporary 19

basis until some decision is made about, you know, 20

whether it is a new class or whether for some period 21

of time it’ll have to tested in a different way. 22

MR . BROOKMAN: Neal, go ahead. 23

MR. N. GOLDBERG: Neal Goldberg, NCTA. 24

But the problem with that scenario, the third option 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 109 is that the consumer doesn’t get the benefit of the 1

new service. But the problem, even if you went for 2

a waiver is that, as Paul sa id, cable is in 3

competition with the Telco TVs, with the satellite 4

folks, and it’s a very intense competitive industry. 5

We roll out innovation as soon as we can, and I 6

don’t think it behooves the consumer to have to wait 7

for a waiver from DOE or anyone el se to get the 8

benefit of the new services. 9

MR. BROOKMAN: Gary, go ahead. 10

MR. LANGILLE: I was just going to comment 11

that it will happen, not might. What Paul said will 12

happen. It will happen. It’s been the history of 13

the industry. It has never not been so. I can give 14

you an example where Dish shipped products for years 15

that an Ethernet port of the back. It wasn’t even 16

turned on, it was never used, but that was by design 17

because we knew that eventually we would offer an 18

optional, if the customer c onnects that to their 19

internet, they now have access to a whole library of 20

content. And now that’s offered in every single 21

box, even boxes that were shipped five years ago, 22

six years ago. You know, it’s a whole new feature. 23

Probably, like I said, depend ing on the level we’re 24

looking at for energy differences, it could have an 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 110 energy impact, could affect the duty cycle of how 1

often people use it all day long, because there’s a 2

new feature now, so now I can spend more time, have 3

more reasons to have my TV on and watch. 4

So, you know, the only

-- I mean, the only 5

solution I would see to this is you would have to 6

actually take a Set

- Top Box, look at all the 7

functions in it, figure out how to run every 8

function at its absolute maximum energy use, so that 9

the box, theoretically, never could exceed that, it 10

doesn’t matter what you did to it. I mean that 11

would be

-- and I think that would be very difficult 12

to do from a test prospective, but that’s the only 13

sort of theoretical solution I could think of. 14

MR. BRO OKMAN: Paul, follow on. 15

MR. GLIST: And Gary’s right, no one’s 16

going to commit to an answer to this. But another 17

problem set that might help us think about it is

-- 18

this gets back to what are we measuring, and so you 19

have an example of a Set

- Top Box t hat plays 20

removable media, so let’s imagine that you’ve got a 21

Blue Ray player built into a leased Set

- Top Box, and 22

that’s one thing in your sights, right. But let’s 23

also recognize that Blue Ray players are in commerce 24

today with connectivity to the networ k and 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 111 subscription packages from Netflix and other video 1

providers. Is that in class or out? Is it 2

different? Does it matter who the source is? Does 3

it need a cable card to be in the class? Why, if 4

it’s consuming the same content from the edge of the 5

net, the distant edge of the net, as opposed to 6

something closer in or up in space? So how do we 7

define what those products are that we’re looking 8

at? And we use a problem set because I like to 9

think in examples. 10

MR. BROOKMAN: Noah Horowitz. 11

MR. HOR OWITZ: Thanks for the examples on 12

how you might consider going for product classes. I 13

know this is not meant to be exhaustive, but it did 14

pop out to me that you didn’t show examples of 15

network equipment. So we would encourage, in 16

developing product clas ses, at a minimum, you have 17

two clusters of the broadband devices, so a cable or 18

DSL modem, and then separately, the routers. These 19

are the conventional products in a residential 20

setting. And then I think the question Paul is 21

alluding to, there’s a term in the industry OTT, 22

over

- the

- top. So you have your cable, satellite, or 23

Telco box, and sitting on top of that, physically, 24

might be Apple TV or a Roku box. Are those in or 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 112 out? I don’t have an opinion, but needs to be 1

decided upon. 2

MR. DOMMU: Yeah. I think that was more 3

of a detail question that was in the RFI, do you 4

consider those OTT boxes as part of IP or Telcom 5

boxes, in that product class, or do you establish 6

your own separate product class for those? And we 7

certainly welcome input on that de cision. 8

MR. BROOKMAN: On that specific question, 9

do we have comment at this point? OTT boxes? 10

Katharine? 11

MS. KAPLAN: They qualify as IP boxes 12

under the Energy Star program. 13

MR. BROOKMAN: That’s helpful. Thank you. 14

Gary. 15

MR. LANGILLE: I thin k they’re in. I 16

guarantee they will get more functionality over 17

time. They’ll sort of be rising to meet

-- there’ll 18

be a convergence where, you know, maybe some things 19

you can do in a service provider Set

- Top Box which 20

you can’t do with an IP

- TV Set

- Top Box, but it’ll 21

change over time. 22

MR. DOMMU: Okay. Those are the questions 23

on product classes and we certainly welcome your 24

input. 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 113 MR. BROOKMAN: Well, and if you look at 1

the ones that are up there on the screen, there’s 2

some more specific. That was a very useful bit of 3

commentary at the very broad level, and there are 4

many more specific questions here: baseline energy 5

consumption, market share, et cetera, et cetera. So 6

can we get some additional comment on that? Gary. 7

MR. LANGILLE: Well, my gene ral comment 8

would be is that, at least from our perspective, the 9

Energy Star method works extremely well. So I mean, 10

whatever you can do to mimic that, you know, maybe 11

you have to change how you present it for certain 12

limitations you have, but the more yo u can mimic 13

that, the better. 14

The only other comment I have is that I do 15

think that multi

- room, that sort of category, has 16

evolved a bit since we first did the Energy Star 17

program, and I’m sure that’ll come up for discussion 18

before the next version of Energy Star , but what 19

we’re finding, for instance, Dish Network and Direct 20

TV recently have started shipping what I would call, 21

I don’t know, for lack of any other word, true 22

multi

- room, where you have a main box and then you 23

have clients. And those client s are totally 24

dependent on that main box. But what we’re finding 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 114 is that neither one of our products are able to meet 1

the Energy Star , even though the sort of multi

- room 2

category allowance is applied. So multi

- room may 3

turn out to be a category, not just something 4

included. 5

MR. BROOKMAN: Katharine, you want in 6

here? 7

MS. KAPLAN: Well, I just

-- thinking 8

about a couple of the comments that have been made 9

so far, speaking to desire to ensure kind of enough 10

room for innovation of course, and also thinki ng 11

about simplicity for the consumer, that , you know, 12

sometimes I think that having 16 or 17 categories 13

makes things very confusing to the consumer, they 14

don’t really sort of know what they’re getting

. 15

So I encourage DOE to, you know, as with 16

this prod uct category you’re thinking about 17

different ways of interacting with stakeholders, 18

maybe webinars and other things sort of during your 19

process, I encourage you to see what you can do to 20

approach this a little differently, approach this 21

product class a lit tle differently to ensure, again, 22

head room for innovation and clarity for the 23

consumer. And I would suggest fewer classes is more 24

desirable. 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 115 MR. BROOKMAN: Adam. 1

MS. KAPLAN: And more nimbleness as far as 2

adding allowances for functionality. However you 3

are allowed to do that, you know. 4

MR. BROOKMAN: And now to Adam. 5

MR. A. GOLDBERG: Adam Goldberg for TiVo

. 6

I just want to follow up on what Gary was saying a 7

moment ago. I think that it seems to me one of the 8

more attractive areas for energy co nservation in 9

Set

- Top Boxes is to focus a bit more on what the 10

consumption is per outlet in a multi

- room box 11

situation. You get a lot of, I think, get a lot of 12

opportunities if you have one box that does most of 13

the functionality and then lots of the

-- c all them 14

thin clients or satellite

-- lower case

-- satellite 15

boxes scattered about the house. 16

One of the frustrations that TiVo has had 17

in the past with the way the Energy Star program has 18

been set up to date is that there is only a limited 19

allowance for additional tuners, so you can’t

-- it 20

makes it very difficult to qualify a box for Energy 21

Star if it’s got four, six, or eight tuners in it. 22

But if you look at how much power is consumed by the 23

total number of boxes in a home, if you have one big 24

box and lots of little boxes, the total power is 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 116 much less than if you have lots of medium

- size 1

boxes. 2

So I think when we’re looking at defining, 3

setting up classes, we need to somehow, and I don’t 4

know how you would do this, somehow construct a 5

situation wh ere you can reward, you can make 6

allowance for a situation where one box may consume 7

a bit more power, but in aggregate for the home, 8

it’s less power. 9

MR. BROOKMAN: You would need some sort of 10

system configuration thing. 11

MR. A. GOLDBERG: It’s complic ated. I 12

mean I don’t have a good solution for you 13

extemporaneously here today, but I think that, you 14

know, just in terms of keeping things in mind and 15

setting goals for ourselves, we

-- we should keep 16

this in mind. 17

MR. DOMMU: I think it’s certainly a p oint 18

well taken, and we welcome comments or any potential 19

solutions or recommendations in the comment period 20

for how we could address some of those issues that 21

you guys brought up. 22

MR. BROOKMAN: Gary. 23

MR. LANGILLE: Just to follow up. I think 24

Noah sa id this a few minutes ago, about the network 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 117 equipment. I met

-- I do think clarification is 1

necessary in terms of what’s meant by network 2

equipment as far as this particular RFI. I did 3

notice that there was an RFI, I believe, issued 4

yesterday for miscel laneous products in the home, 5

and that also has

-- includes network equipment. 6

My reading of the technical analysis, as 7

well as the RFI, and sort of looking at the kinds of 8

questions you’re asking, my interpretation is that 9

what you may have meant by Set

- Top Boxes and Network 10

Equipment, was really Set

- Top Boxes and video

11

related Network Equipment. And not just the general 12

wireless router that many people have in their home 13

for wireless access. But I

-- I think it should be 14

clarified by DOE at some point as to which RFI those 15

kind of products should apply to. 16

And someone was mentioning, you know, 17

there’s a whole bunch of companies that aren’t here 18

that would want to be here if you actually meant 19

wireless routers and things like that. 20

MR. DOMMU: Yeah, I mean, in the summer we 21

issued a coverage determination that gave a 22

definition of what Set

- Top Boxes and Network 23

Equipment is. I don’t have that in front of me, but 24

I think it’s even within the RFI. But there are 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 118 many questions and comments that came b ack from that 1

proposed determination that had comments and 2

concerns about what our definition is. So we’ve 3

been considering them, and at future times in the 4

rulemaking process, if we so decide, that we could 5

alter or change that definition, but for now we just 6

ask you to focus on the questions that are in the 7

RFI. 8

MR. BROOKMAN: So that was Jeremy. And 9

let me direct your attention back to these issue 10

boxes to see if we have any additional comment here. 11

Andrew DeLaski. 12

MR. DeLASKI: Two observations, not 13

particular view, but

-- and I’m struck that, you 14

know, this is, I think we all recognize this is a 15

very different kind of product for DOE to set 16

standards for, compared to anything you’ve ever 17

regulated before. I mean we all know pretty much a 18

refrige rator, they sell them to the consumer, they 19

no longer have a relationship with that 20

refrigerator. They have warranty obligations, but 21

they don’t have an ongoing relationship, they don’t 22

have ongoing control. 23

In this case, a product is being made by a 24

ma nufacturer, sold to a service provider, and 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 119 typically, ownership is then retained by that 1

service provider, who then has an ongoing electronic 2

communication with that device, and able to change 3

it both remotely and on site. 4

So I think back to the quest ion of the 5

energy consumption changing over time, I think a 6

question that needs to be wrestled with is, is it

-- 7

do you try to set the standard based on as the 8

product is initially deployed, or do you set the 9

standard based on what the product is capable o f? 10

It goes to the question you’re raising, which is do 11

you have to say what is this thing capable of and 12

make sure you capture everything, or capture it as 13

initially deployed, knowing full well that you just 14

can’t know what’s going to happen over the five year 15

life of the product. I don’t know the answer to 16

that. I think it’s a very important question, and 17

that energy consumption could double over the life 18

of the product is something we care about a lot, and 19

have

-- another matter is having control over how 20

energy consumption can happen over time, I think is 21

something is a lot of interest around the table. 22

I think a second question that’s come up 23

is, you know, how many product classes make sense. 24

There are different motivations or different 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 120 benefits th at push in different directions. 1

Katharine mentioned the need for simplicity, 2

simplicity makes it easier for consumers to 3

understand. I think that’s an important value. I 4

would note that for something like home 5

refrigerators, there’s something like 30 p roduct 6

classes for DOE standards. I don’t think any 7

consumer knows. 8

So I think DOE’s product classes are not 9

something that necessarily is visible to any 10

consumer anywhere. The risk in limiting product 11

classes is that you end up having to set product 12

classes based on the highest energy consuming 13

product that fits in that product class, and things 14

that can use less energy, basically get an easier 15

ride. So that you have a fairness question, I 16

think, that comes into play, and also a question of, 17

you kno w, are we capturing the energy savings that’s 18

achievable, technologically feasible and 19

economically justified if we lump things into too 20

small a number of product classes. In that sense, 21

the energy hog drives the level, as opposed to the 22

energy

-- the thi ng that’s doing the most, you know, 23

and the thing that’s doing the least gets a much 24

easier ride. So I think we need to balance those 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 121 factors. I think they’re all important and need to 1

be balanced. 2

MR. BROOKMAN: Thank you. Katharine. 3

MS. KAPLAN: Y ou know, Andrew, your points 4

about sort of letting the most consumptive product 5

drive the limit, resonates with me for sure. But on 6

the consumer, the clarity for the consumer, I agree 7

that a lot of things can be behind the scenes, but, 8

you know, I also be lieve that when a consumer looks 9

at an Energy Guide label and is trying to make a 10

comparison between one product and another, that it 11

is confusing. The limits are different for 12

different classes, and it’s very hard to make a fair 13

comparison whether someth ing’s a leadership product 14

or not because of all the various classes. 15

MR. DeLASKI: And that’s well taken. I 16

think it goes to, I think we think about how

-- what 17

the classes are serving for the purpose of this 18

particular docket, and in this case, this i s a 19

product not bought by a consumer but by these guys, 20

and the Energy Guide label is not even in play here. 21

So I think that’s

-- 22

MR. BROOKMAN: Adam Goldberg. 23

MR. A. GOLDBERG: Yeah, I just want to 24

point out for TiVo that TiVo devices are both sold 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 122 t o retail and bought by some service providers and 1

deployed, so it’s not always the case. 2

MR. BROOKMAN: Thank you. Okay. I’ll 3

give you one more chance to look at these boxes to 4

see if there’s anything additional to be said before 5

we move on. Yes, Tom Eckman. 6

MR. ECKMAN: Tom Eckman, Northwest Power 7

and Conservation Council. I think it would be 8

useful to DOE to get some feedback on the market 9

share going forward for some of these products, 10

rather than the current market share, because that’s 11

probably not very helpful given the lead time for 12

the standards application. That some of the product 13

class may basically disappear as we see them today 14

in terms of combinations going forward

-- 15

MR. BROOKMAN: You’re asking them to 16

forecast

-- 17

MR. ECKMAN: W ell, they have business 18

plans, I suspect, going forward, some idea what the 19

product offering might be. They may not want to 20

disclose those, but it would be useful to not spend 21

an awful lot of time regulating something that won’t 22

exist. 23

MR. BROOKMAN: Th ere are a lot of folks in 24

the room that haven’t participated in these 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 123 proceedings previously, and they may not know about 1

the confidentiality provisions. Was that in the 2

RFI? 3

MR. DOMMU: Yeah, I think that is a very 4

good question. Celia, do you want to comment on the 5

confidentiality of obtaining information from 6

stakeholders? 7

MR. BROOKMAN: It’s a big topic. 8

MS. SHER: Okay. I think that during the 9

market impact analysis, our consultants will be 10

doing interviews with corporations, entities, and I 11

t hink at that time they will sign

-- they will do 12

non

- disclosure agreements. So the conversations 13

that you have with the consultants on this technical 14

information is kept confidential. To the extent 15

that you submit your comments to the Department and 16

you want to keep things confidential, you should 17

mark that, and then to the best of our ability, we 18

will keep that information confidential, to the 19

extent permitted by law. 20

MR. N. GOLDBERG: One question. Neal 21

Goldberg, NCTA. Will the consultants be reachi ng 22

out to individual companies, whether or not they 23

participated previously, so someone might just get a 24

communication out of the blue? 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 124 MS. SHER : I’m not sure exactly how that 1

process works. If Jeremy or John might be able

-- 2

MR. BROOKMAN: John Cymb alsky. 3

MR. CYMBALSKY: Sure. The consultants 4

will contact you directly. They know who the major 5

players are and they do their research and they will 6

go down the list with phone calls, and follow

-- and 7

traditionally, they’ll go to the manufacturing 8

fac ility with a series of questions and that’s how 9

they gather their data. 10

MR. BROOKMAN: John. 11

MR. HERRICK: This is John Herrick from 12

Brownstein. On that point, your materials say you 13

will go to the manufacturers and this situation will 14

also be the ser vice providers and manufacturers and 15

other interested stakeholders, rather than just 16

manufacturers? 17

MR. CYMBALSKY: Right. I use the word 18

manufacturer, but of course this is a unique 19

product, as Andrew had pointed out, and it’s not 20

just the manufacturer s, but the service providers. 21

MR. BROOKMAN: Adam. 22

MR. A. GOLDBERG: In response to

-- sorry, 23

this is Adam for TiVo

-- in response to the 24

discussion about forecasts and business plans, I 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 125 think that maybe this industry is a little bit 1

different from oth ers, but six years hence is, I 2

think, off the end of the earth. And one might have 3

just the barest conception of what might happen that 4

far away, and, you know, that’s number one. And 5

number two, even if one does make some plans or some 6

forecasts, I mean , I think if we could accurately 7

predict what’s going to happen six years from now, 8

let me know, because we could make a lot of money. 9

MR. BROOKMAN: Noah Horowitz. 10

MR. HOROWITZ: I want to echo Tom’s 11

suggestion. I think it’s impossible to forecast th e 12

future perfectly, or all of us would be doing a 13

different job. But I think it is fair to say the 14

business model of two years ago is what a lot of the 15

data is based on, and we know what today is let’s at 16

a minimum make sure things reflect the present, an d 17

to the extent we could look into the future, albeit 18

with some uncertainty, let’s do so. I think we all 19

are pretty confident that the DTA, the digital TV 20

adapter that goes on a CRT TV, in six years is going 21

to become close to extinct. How much resources 22

should be put on that, that will inform it. 23

Similarly, satellite companies used to 24

provide a DVR in every room. That’s probably not 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 126 going to be the case for this slim client world, so 1

if we looked at today, we won’t adequately reflect 2

what it’s really going to look like in the future. 3

MR. BROOKMAN: Okay. So that kind of 4

illustration, those kinds of call

- outs, I think, are 5

very helpful to the Department in writing. 6

MR. CYMBALSKY: This is John Cymbalsky, 7

DOE. Just to let you know, we’ve had

-- int ernally, 8

we’ve had meetings with the team and me and sat in a 9

room and brainstormed all this stuff. You know, 10

we’re just not ready to commit to anything, but 11

we’re really asking the key stakeholders here to 12

help us out on this. We know it’s a sticky issu e. 13

To the best of our ability, we’ve discussed it 14

internally already, but we know that you guys are 15

the experts, not necessarily us, so we’re really 16

looking for the input here. Thank you. 17

MR. BROOKMAN: Are we ready to move on 18

now? Let’s. 19

**Screening An alysis**  20

MR. DOMMU: Okay. We’re next going to 21

talk about the screening analysis and I’m going to 22

welcome back Al len Tsao from Navigant Consulting. 23

He’s going to walk us through the screening 24

analysis, and then the engineering analysis, and all 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 127 the detai l that goes into those. 1

MR. BROOKMAN: Our target time for lunch 2

is approximately 12:30, another 20 minutes or so. 3

MR. DOMMU: Go ahead, Allen. 4

**Screening Analysis** 5

MR. TSAO: So once we get through the 6

sticky issue which is product classes, we go thro ugh 7

the screening analysis of technologies. So the idea 8

of this is that the market and tech assessment 9

report included many various possible options for 10

improving the efficiencies. Some we’ve heard, like 11

the multi

- room set

- ups, or things like that. 12

At this point, DOE then needs to screen 13

out certain technology options based on four 14

factors, and they may include 15

**•** the feasibility of such a technology option, 16

**•** or the practibility to manufacture, install or 17

service such a technology option, 18

**•** or any adverse i mpacts on utility or consumer 19

utility, so basically any loss of 20

functionality or features that are considered 21

vital to the consumers, 22

**•** or any impacts on health and safety 23

would not be included for any future like standard 24Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 128 or any of the analysis downstream. 1

I want to talk about a few of the 2

technology options that were outlined in the 3

preliminary market and tech assessment report. The 4

first being, you know, we’ve discussed sort of deep 5

sleep or light sleep, but in general there are 6

power management featur es where you could possibly 7

place the processor or the video in a lower power 8

state or a lower functionality state when not in 9

use, but perhaps the active network connection is 10

still maintained and the memory or the RAM is still 11

powered in order to maintai n state, and that would 12

be to minimize, you know, any wake up time or 13

resume time that would be a negative impact to 14

consumers. 15

We also identified the multi

- room set ups, 16

which I think a lot has been discussed so far 17

around using thin clients as opposed to full

18

function Set

- Top Boxes. And in general, other 19

technology options like using more efficient 20

components, like more efficient power supplies or 21

lower power or lower voltage electronic components, 22

would help, as well as perhaps reducing disk energy 23

by using

-- we discussed a little bit, solid state 24

drives or other lower energy hard drives for DVR 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 129 Set

- Top Boxes. 1

So we’d like to open up for comment on 2

sort of how the screening criteria outlined may 3

apply to those technology options that were 4

described, and whether or not there are other 5

technology options that should be considered when 6

looking at sort of what efficiency improvements 7

could be applied. 8

MR. BROOKMAN: Noah

. 9

MR. HOROWITZ: Noah Horowitz, NCTA. Have 10

you considered the cable card require ment? It’s 11

imposed by the Federal Communications Commission on 12

cable operators, unless they get a waiver, so every 13

cable operator’s leased box has to have a cable 14

card in it, even though it doesn’t really provide 15

any functions or features beyond what the pre

- cable 16

card boxes did, the integrated boxes? There’s not 17

much anybody can do about it until the FCC changes 18

that rule, but is that something you would want 19

comment on? 20

MR. BROOKMAN: Jeremy? 21

MR. DOMMU: I think at this time we would 22

invite you to t ake that issue up with the 23

Commission. There’s not much that we could 24

specifically do or address regarding cable card 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 130 requirement. 1

MR. HOROWITZ: I understood that. I was 2

just wondering if someone might end up opining on 3

whether or not the fact that yo u’re required

-- 4

that a cable card is required even though it 5

doesn’t add any function, but does take up

-- 6

consume some energy, might be relevant to this 7

discussion. We can raise that in our comment. 8

MR. DOMMU: That would be helpful. 9

MR. BROOKMAN: Thank you. You see the 10

question there. Comments on how the above four 11

screening criteria might apply to technology 12

options discussed in the preliminary market and 13

technology assessment, and others? Gary. 14

MR. LANGILLE: Just sort of a topical comment 15

o n solid state disk drives. I mean obviously the 16

favorable attributes are clear. However, based on 17

our most recent knowledge, disk drive manufacturers 18

who manufacture these devices really aren’t 19

recommending them for a DVR activity. Apparently 20

the duty c ycle isn’t quite what it needs to be, and 21

the failure rates would be far too high. So I’m 22

not saying that it won’t happen. It probably will. 23

Everything happens. But at least today it’s, you 24

know, besides the cost factor, I know there’s other 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 131 factors th at generally tend to trend down at some 1

point, but there are some basic technical issues 2

still. 3

MR. BROOKMAN: Paul. 4

MR. GLIST: I think in the earlier 5

overview discussion, Jeremy may have said, or it 6

could have been you, that you typically look at 7

usi ng standard components in applying the screening 8

analysis. Did I get that right, or what does it 9

mean in this field? Do we posit the invention of 10

new technology in screening, or do we take 11

technology as it stands now? Do we project 12

forward? What do we do in screening? 13

MR. TSAO: None of that is actually 14

screened out, necessarily, at the screening point. 15

The criteria is sort of outlined for the screening. 16

But that may be factored in in towards the 17

engineering analysis, which we’ll get to

-- which 18

is the next step in the process, which is where we 19

look at sort of the cost and efficiency curves, and 20

things like whether or not we forecast, or whether 21

or not we use existing technologies, I think we’ll 22

answer in a few slides. So hopefully we’ll get to 23

tha t. 24

MR. BROOKMAN: Please say your name. 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 132 MS. SANFORD: Hi. I’m Jennifer Sanford 1

with Cisco. I just wanted to echo Gary’s comment 2

about solid state drives, that we’re hearing from 3

our engineers that as of today those are not a 4

feasible, reliable altern ative to hard disk drives, 5

so wanted to make sure that that was mentioned on 6

the record from a technological standpoint. 7

MR. BROOKMAN: Okay. Follow on Gary, and 8

then Noah. 9

MR. LANGILLE: Okay. I also wanted to 10

mention that the natural tendency, beca use of how 11

these programs have tended to work is to always 12

focus on this, you know, turn the thing off when 13

it’s not being used. And that’s certainly viable. 14

However, I think you have to look at each 15

individually. For instance, in a multi

- room set

- up 16

wh ere this central box now does video, but the 17

trends we’re seeing is that it’s also going to be 18

your phone. It’s also going to be your internet 19

distribution center. It’s also going to manage a 20

security system. It’s also going to be connected 21

to your doct or’s office. It’s also going to be 22

connected to ordering, you know, specialty 23

services. 24

So when you look at that particular box, 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 133 as admirable as the goal is to put it to sleep, 1

when you look at the duty cycle, it’s going to have 2

to be on 23.99999 hours a day out of 24. Really 3

the goal should be how to lower the on power, not 4

worry about putting it to sleep. 5

Now when you look at another device, like 6

a client, or something that’s in a spare bedroom 7

where a TV gets used, you know, two weeks a year 8

when y our mother

- in

- law visits, obviously, putting 9

it to sleep is the right answer. 10

PARTICIPANT: Two weeks? 11

MR. LANGILLE: Not consecutively. And I 12

didn’t say put my mother

- in

- law to sleep. 13

MR. BROOKMAN: I’m glad you clarified that 14

for the record. Noah

. 15

MR. HOROWITZ: I’m going to go in a 16

different direction. These are more suggestions 17

for the DOE and its consultant team to take a look 18

at is, the electronic program guide, how that’s 19

currently deployed, and if it were deployed 20

differently how could th at positively lower standby 21

power? Because often that’s

-- that may be the 22

reason why they’re using such how standby power 23

levels because when the consumer hits the on/off 24

button it takes a long time for it to reboot, and 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 134 if the EPG were delivered in a di fferent way that 1

might go away. I didn’t see that in the list. 2

Also in terms of the discussion of solid 3

state drives, I think there is consensus that they 4

could potentially save power. They’re a new 5

technology. Many of the new small thin cool

6

looking laptops that are being introduced all have 7

some form of solid state drives. They’re being 8

introduced. If they weren’t reliable, I don’t know 9

if they’d be placed in there. So if there are 10

similar devices, let’s see what we can learn from 11

that deployment. 12

MR. BROOKMAN: Okay. Thanks. Yes, Adam. 13

MR. A. GOLDBERG: Adam for TiVo . I want 14

to caution a little bit. I’ve heard Noah say a lot 15

today and lots over the past few years, that one of 16

the, or maybe the reason why boxes can’t be powered 17

to off now o r why long boot

- up time would happen 18

relates to the program guide, and I’d suggest that 19

there are other reasons that are far more important 20

as to why the box needs to

-- boxes typically now 21

need to be on line all the time, and that relates 22

to service autho rization. Even if the boxes had no 23

program guide at all, they’d still need to be 24

listening to the network. 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 135 MR. BROOKMAN: Thank you. I think we’re 1

ready. 2

MR. TSAO: This is a follow on to the 3

previous questions, but in general, you know, we’re 4

lookin g for basically any feedback or comments on 5

technological or economic or competitive impacts 6

using the various sleep modes that have sort of 7

been discussed on what can be powered down and what 8

cannot be powered down and why. And we’re also 9

looking, just i n general, what technologies that 10

could improve energy efficiency, or what are 11

possible options out there, while still maintaining 12

the consumer functionality of resuming very quickly 13

without having a negative experience. 14

And I think the need to follow on on your 15

point, or TiVo ’s point, if there are other design 16

limitations based on sort of the network or cable, 17

satellite, or terrestrial infrastructure that’s 18

sort of dictating, you know, what is 19

technologically feasible or not feasible, is also 20

important to get any feedback on that would be very 21

helpful. 22

MR. BROOKMAN: It’s close to lunch. 23

MR. TSAO: Okay. 24

MR. BROOKMAN: So I want you to repeat the 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 136 question one more time. 1

MR. TSAO: Okay. So, on issue 20 we’re 2

talking about any infrastructure l imitations by the 3

cable or satellite or the infrastructure that 4

could, you know, prevent sleep modes or any other 5

efficiency improvements being made. And in general 6

just additional comment or market data or any other 7

information related to that. 8

MR. BRO OKMAN: Thank you. Gary. 9

MR. LANGILLE: I’d ad lib. Gary from 10

EchoStar. Today’s satellite systems mandate 11

continuous connection to the satellite. Done. 12

There may be opportunities to disconnect from the 13

satellite for short periods of time, but you ha ve 14

to realize that a satellite system is a one

- way 15

broadcast system , so for a satellite provider to 16

communicate with Noah’s Set

- Top Box in his home, 17

that small communication has to go out and be 18

broadcast to everybody, and then each box has to 19

sort of be s itting there, looking for it. Now if 20

it happens to go to sleep for 29 minutes and comes 21

up for five minutes, that’s great, but the problem 22

is the communication came flying by during the 29 23

minutes you were asleep. 24

So there are certain inherent limitatio ns 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 137 when you’re dealing with the broadcast system. You 1

know, I’m not saying that there won’t be research 2

done to see if that can’t be handled in different 3

ways. We’re always looking at that, and we will 4

continue to look at that. But it’s not

-- in a 5

two

- way system, it’s a little different. I mean, 6

you could have a Set

- Top Box go to sleep and when 7

it finally wakes up it sends a communication back 8

to the system that says, I was asleep for six 9

hours, tell me what I missed, kind of thing. 10

Now you may not be happy with the wake up 11

time and all that, but I’m just saying that there 12

is some inherent limitations in how these networks 13

are designed at a high level that has to be 14

recognized. 15

MR. BROOKMAN: Let’s hear from Paul first. 16

MR. GLIST: This is Paul. Gary’s raising 17

a critical point and we’ll also put in written 18

comments to discuss this. I would say that Gary’s 19

solution for cable isn’t quite right, but the cable 20

industry, as you know, has publicly committed to go 21

into a voluntary initiative where lig ht sleep is 22

being rolled out for deployment this year, and we 23

have a lot of resources in place to get to deep 24

sleep modes to address some of the most critical 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 138 issues that the Department is trying to address. 1

Part of the art there is to be able to 2

vary th e power in ways that do not lose heartbeat 3

to the network, and do not harm the customer 4

experience. US customers want their TVs on when 5

they turn them on. That doesn’t mean we can’t do 6

it in a smarter way, and the cable operators have 7

committed to do tha t, and are working very 8

aggressively to do that. 9

We’ll fill you in in writing, but the 10

fundamental issue here is that, unlike whatever you 11

want to do with other pieces of CPE that don’t 12

require constant connectivity, this is a different 13

animal you’re d ealing with, and we can’t lose the 14

heartbeat. 15

MR. BROOKMAN: Okay. 16

MS. KAPLAN: In follow up, Gary to your 17

comment. I wonder if there are any lessons that 18

can be learned from the computer industry where, 19

for example, the proxying standard has allowe d for 20

maintenance of network connectivity at a very low 21

sleep mode, and so now Energy Star computers are 22

picking up the proxying standard. We’ve also 23

proposed picking up a proxying standard in small 24

network equipment, so can something similar happen 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 139 here so that you maintain the connection but you 1

just do it in a low power mode. 2

MR. GLIST: Yeah, that’s definitely, 3

depending on technology availability, you 4

certainly don’t need to have 100 percent of the 5

Set

- Top Box powered in order to maintain 6

communica tion. The dilemma is you need

-- 7

unfortunately today you need quite a bit of the 8

Set

- Top Box powered to maintain communication. So, 9

you know, it’s not like you have one little 10

internet connection so you can drop down to two 11

watts and still be monitoring. So it’s just a 12

limitation of how the system works right now that’s 13

a barrier. 14

MR. BROOKMAN: Tom Eckman. 15

MR. ECKMAN: Tom Eckman. When this 16

question

-- because I’m unfamiliar with the 17

technology, but that may mean a different product 18

class if there’ s internet connectivity to the 19

satellite or phone connectivity to the satellite 20

box relative to

-- because that provides two

- way 21

communication, that that might be a differential in 22

product class because we have to maintain 23

relatively high power to stay con nected with the 24

bird upstairs, versus if you’ve got internet 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 140 connectivity, you can wake it up on land and send a 1

different signal to the same IP address. I don’t 2

know if that’s possible, but

-- 3

MR. GLIST: All things are possible, but I 4

do want to highl ight the fact that it could take 5
$100 million dollars to develop a system to now 6

manage both the satellite and an IP system. 7

MR. BROOKMAN: Okay. I’d like you to take 8

one more look at these issue boxes because we’re 9

about to break for lunch. Let’s see if we have any 10

additional comments on these before we head out of 11

here. Nothing additional at this time? Okay. 12

So I want to thank all of you. This has 13

been a very, very constructive conversation this 14

morning. We are now going to break for lunch. 15

I t’s just about 12:30 by this watch. We’re going 16

to pause for an hour. Please don’t leave the DOE 17

campus, you won’t make it back in time. We’re 18

going to resume at 1:30. Wear your badge inside 19

the building. There’s a big cafeteria down to the 20

ground flo or and walk about 100 yards that way and 21

there’s a lot of food offerings there, and I think 22

most any dietary preference can be served. 23

(Whereupon, at 12:28 p.m., the meet ing in 24

the above captioned matter was adjourned for lunch 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 141

recess , to reconvene at 1:30 p .m.) 1

2Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 142

1:37 p.m. 2 AFTERNOON SESSION 1

MR. BROOKMAN: We’re going to resume. 3

We’ve had one or two individuals that joined us that 4

weren’t with us here this morning when everybody was 5

doing introductions. We’ll give those individuals a 6

chance to introd uce themselves. Please say your 7

name and organizational affiliation. You need to 8

turn it on. Yes, thank you. 9

MR. BELL: Bill Bell from the Consumer 10

Electronics Association. 11

MR. BROOKMAN: Anybody else that didn’t 12

get a chance to introduce him or her self? Okay. I 13

guess we’ve covered everybody. Jeremy, who is 14

continuing to be on top of things passed me a note 15

and on the slide presentation on the screen, we 16

didn’t push up issue 19, which is on Page 48 on your 17

PowerPoint slides in your packet, and I w ant to make 18

sure that we get comment on 19, should there be any, 19

before we move forward with the program. 20

It says DOE is interested in other 21

examples and data of energy

- reducing technologies, 22

configurations, or product designs, other than sleep 23

modes, th at could help improve the efficiency of 24

Set

- Top Boxes. So I guess we’ve covered some of 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 1 43 that. We hit a glancing blow on some of that 1

content. 2

MR. DOMMU: Yeah. We tried to make the 3

issue boxes in numerical order, but some of them got 4

out of order when we were finalizing the 5

presentation, but you will see all of the issues in 6

the supplement to your packet in order, those 7

include both the ones that will appear as issue 8

boxes in the presentation and other ones that we 9

didn’t bring up that were in the Requ est for 10

Information. 11

MR. BROOKMAN: Thank you, Jeremy. So 12

we’re back to Allen and we’re going to continue with 13

the content presentation and discussion. 14

**Engineering Analysis** 15

MR. TSAO: Okay. Thank you. So the next 16

step on the analysis is, after we’ve screened out 17

various technology options is to perform the actual 18

engineering analysis. The engineering analysis is 19

sort of the key piece for all the downstream 20

analysis, and this is where we sort of generate the 21

relationship between the efficiency and th e cost 22

associated with Set

- Top Boxes. And that data is 23

then used for all the life cycle cost and payback 24

period, as well as impacts to manufacturers and 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 144 employment impacts, and just in general all the 1

downstream analysis. 2

So I’ll go through each of the steps that 3

are taken through the engineering analysis in 4

detail. This is just to give you a general overview 5

of the various

-- of the rough order in which the 6

engineering analysis is done. 7

So the first thing DOE will attempt to 8

analyze is pare down th e list of product classes 9

into representative product classes to be analyzed. 10

And this is, going back to our discussion, the 11

product class feature sets could be very numerous, 12

depending on what features we allow adding into 13

separate product classes. If t here were 100

- ish 14

product classes, DOE could not analyze all of them 15

in great detail. So DOE will choose various 16

representative product classes and the 17

representation may be based sort of what are the 18

expected high volume products, and availability of 19

thos e products to be analyzed, and the ability to 20

sort of scale to the other product classes that 21

weren’t chosen for representation. 22

So I would say, in general, for all the 23

features that we would say would distinguish a 24

product class, there would tend to be representative 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 145 of at least one product class, so DVR would, for 1

example, maybe analyze for cable

-- there may be a 2

cable DVR product class and that may scale to 3

satellite DVR product class, or depending on what 4

makes the most sense. 5

From the representati ve product classes, a 6

baseline model is chosen, or the characteristics of 7

a baseline model, I should say. And this is really 8

the reference point by which a standard is sort of 9

judged and analyzed. It usually represents a 10

commercially available product, i ncluding 11

commercially available capabilities and energy 12

efficiency and cost. The baseline model is used 13

when we’re looking at life cycle cost and payback in 14

terms of like, a higher standard requiring a payback 15

relative to the baseline model. And so in g eneral, 16

all the energy savings and changes in price, all of 17

that is done relative to the baseline model. 18

Once that’s complete, we will then 19

identify specific Set

- Top Box models to perform the 20

more detailed analysis. So these may be higher than 21

baseline efficiency models, so they’re not 22

necessarily just the baseline models, but they would 23

-- we would look like at Energy Star qualified boxes 24

in terms of maybe what would constitute say, higher 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 146 efficiency product, and that sort of spread would 1

help generate what we’re ultimately trying to get to 2

is a cost efficiency curve. We’ll evaluate various 3

design options that are commercially available or 4

are present in a working prototype, which could 5

include proprietary designs or technologies. And I 6

do want to emph asize again that in general we will 7

attempt to like, for the Set

- Top Boxes, have a wide 8

range of features and definitions in order to make 9

it a very representative set of products, set of 10

models to analyze. 11

A little more about proprietary designs

-- 12

and they would only

-- proprietary designs 13

specifically, would only be considered if it’s not a 14

unique path to an energy efficiency level. So in 15

some cases, perhaps a very efficient level, there’s 16

only a single proprietary design, it may not be 17

feasible to im pose that kind of design across the 18

entire market. 19

So in general, we’d open up the floor to

- 20

- on are there any issues or are there any 21

proprietary designs that DOE should consider or 22

should not consider in this rulemaking, and if so, 23

how would we acqu ire the cost and efficiency data 24

needed to perform our analysis? 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 147 MR. BROOKMAN: So proprietary 1

technologies. Gary. 2

MR. LANGILLE: I’m not sure I totally 3

understand what you’re looking for here, but one 4

group of companies that aren’t at the table here, 5

have a pretty big impact on Set

- Top Boxes in 6

general, and that’s like the BroadCom, Intel, ST, 7

Micro Electronics. You know, it sort of works with 8

the service providers tell the Set

- Top Box 9

manufacturers the kind of design goals or features 10

they’d like to see and then the Set

- Top Box 11

manufacturers turn around and tell the chip 12

suppliers, you know, this is what we’d like to see. 13

And they have a fairly large impact on energy use of 14

a Set

- Top Box. I’m not sure if their designs would 15

be considered proprietar y or not, but it’s something 16

for DOE to be aware of. 17

MR. TSAO: Right. 18

MR. BROOKMAN: John. 19

MR. HERRICK: Yes, on the proprietary. 20

I’m assuming any information supplied would be under 21

the Trade Secrets Act, protected by federal 22

employees. But how w ould that be applicable to your 23

contractor employees, regarding proprietary 24

information? 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 148 MR. BROOKMAN: Celia. 1

MS. SHER: This is Celia Sher with DOE. 2

Like I mentioned before, I think the way this 3

process will work is when our consultants conduct 4

the interviews, you will sign non

- disclosure 5

agreements with them that will lay out those 6

details. I’m not

-- so I think sensitive 7

information will be protected that way. 8

MR. HERRICK: So that would be just 9

information between the submitter and the 10

consulta nt? 11

MS. SHER: Do you want to

-- Allen do you 12

know how that process works when you do interviews? 13

MR. TSAO: Yeah, so when we conduct 14

interviews at the various manufacturers or service 15

providers, yes, those NDAs would be specific between 16

-- if we were conducting them, us, and the service 17

provider, and it would not be disclosed to DOE or 18

anyone

-- I mean, there would be provisions in terms 19

of what would be allowed to be disclosed. 20

MS. SHER: This is Celia Sher again. I 21

think that data is then aggregat ed so there aren’t 22

any specific parties’ names when we do put out the 23

data, when we publish that data. 24

MR. TSAO: Right. 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 149 MR. BROOKMAN: Adam. 1

MR. A. GOLDBERG: Can somebody give an 2

example of what

-- what this might be, proprietary 3

designs, proprieta ry technolog y. What are we 4

talking about? 5

MR. TSAO: My view is any proprietary 6

designs would be, let’s say you have developed an IP 7

for some sort of power savings feature that no one 8

else can implement because you have patented it or 9

it’s considered yo ur own design and no one else is 10

allowed to mimic or copy that. That would not 11

necessarily be considered unless there were other 12

ways to reach the similar energy savings level. So 13

if you have some advanced technology, for example, 14

that is unique to TiVo , that may or many not be 15

licensed out or secure agreements that no one else 16

is allowed to copy basically, then that would be 17

considered proprietary design. 18

MR. BROOKMAN: John, go ahead. 19

MR. HERRICK: This is John Herrick. So 20

that would be both, I ima gine, intellectual property 21

of the submitter that’s either a patent or

-- I 22

imagine it would be a trade secret we’re talking 23

about. 24

MR. TSAO: Yeah, that could be an example, 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 150 yeah. 1

MR. HERRICK: And again, a follow up. 2

Those NDAs would have to be very , very tight. 3

MR. TSAO: Yes. 4

MR. BROOKMAN: Please say your name for 5

the record. 6

MR. RIVEST: Sorry, this is Mike Rivest 7

from Navigant Consulting. We’ve been conducting 8

these types of interviews since 1994, and draw a 9

distinction between sort of pr oprietary information 10

and technology that can be considered in a 11

rulemaking. So you may have proprietary information 12

you wish to share, but not in your name, or you want 13

to share it, for example, cost information of 14

achieving 50 percent savings in energy, and you want 15

that considered in the rulemaking, but you don’t 16

want it attributed. So that’s something that would 17

fall under our NDA. The NDA is between Navigant 18

Consulting and your firm, and it can’t be FOIA’d by 19

external parties. And typically the len gth of

-- 20

the duration of that is negotiated between our 21

lawyers and yours, so it’s a number of years after 22

the end of the rulemaking, for example. 23

In terms of designs that are proprietary, 24

those can be in the public domain, it’s known that 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 151 you own that patent, so it’s not a trade secret, but 1

it’s not something that can be implemented by 2

others, so if it turns out that that’s the only way 3

to achieve the 50 percent energy savings, then the 4

Department would

-- it would create a problem if the 5

Department wer e to set a standard that only you can 6

achieve. So it has to be proprietary, and it has to 7

be unique in its ability to meet the standard for it 8

to be, quote, “screened out.” 9

MR. BROOKMAN: Yes, Noah. 10

MR. HOROWITZ: This is not on the legal 11

stuff, can I move on? 12

MR. BROOKMAN: Well, let’s see if there 13

are any other legal questions before we move on. 14

Yes, Gary. 15

MR. LANGILLE: Maybe I could try to repeat 16

back and see if you can

-- so in other words, if DOE 17

becomes aware of some technique, technology, method 18

to save energy, but it’s unique to a single party or 19

multiple parties, then they would refrain from 20

recommending that since it couldn’t be used by 21

others. Is that sort of the idea? 22

MR. BROOKMAN: That’s essentially it. 23

That’s how I interpreted M ike Rivest’s statement. 24

MR. LANGILLE: Okay. 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 152 MR. BROOKMAN: If you have a proprietary 1

interest in it, you have a patent for something and 2

others can’t use it, then DOE can’t say that’s a 3

technology that others can use to meet the standard. 4

Adam. 5

M R. A. GOLDBERG: Sorry, Adam from TiVo

. 6

That’s interesting, but that’s not

-- that doesn’t 7

seem responsive to the question in the yellow box. 8

MR. BROOKMAN: Well, no, it isn’t. 9

MR. A. GOLDBERG: Well, I mean and what 10

Gary said, I think I understand t hat, but it’s still 11

not the same thing as what’s in issue 21. 12

MR. BROOKMAN: Okay. Well, let’s try and 13

focus in on that. I’ll go to John first. 14

MR. LANGILLE: But it involves more than 15

something that’s patented. It would involve trade 16

secrets of a c ompany, and that’s slightly

-- not 17

slightly, that’s a completely different matter, and 18

again there’s the Trade Secrets Acts that deals with 19

DOE, but that doesn’t deal with the consultants. 20

MR. BROOKMAN: And how are trade secrets 21

different in this contex t. 22

MR. LANGILLE: Well, a patent you’re 23

protected, other people can’t use it. A trade 24

secret, if you let it go, it’s gone. 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 153 MR. BROOKMAN: Okay. 1

MS. SHER: And I would just suggest to

-- 2

we’re taking these comments in now, but to submit 3

comments like that so that we can consider that in 4

the next phase of rulemaking. 5

MR. BROOKMAN: Adam. Are you

-- 6

MR. A. GOLDBERG: I still don’t know

-- I 7

still don’t know what we’re talking about in issue 8

21. So we talked about some proprietary 9

technologies that DOE shouldn’t consider, what are 10

some proprietary technologies that DOE should 11

consider? How does that

-- I mean I think what we 12

talked about was so if I happen to have a magic 13

technique that causes my boxes to generate power 14

rather than consume it, but it’s something that I’m 15

not going to license to anyone else, DOE won’t 16

consider it. That makes sense to the extent that 17

power

- generating Set

- Top Boxes make sense. But I 18

don’t know what this is, which is the other side of 19

that. Is proprietary designs which it should 20

consider. 21

MR. RIVEST: I agree with you, it seems 22

like the question is poorly formulated. 23

MR. A. GOLDBERG: Okay. 24

MR. BROOKMAN: Okay. Thanks, Mike. That 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 154 was Mike Rivest. Now to Charlie Stephens. 1

MR. STEPHENS: I’m Charlie Ste phens. I’ve 2

been doing this for about as long as Mike has, so 3

I’ll try a stab here. I think if

-- there could be 4

multiple proprietary designs here, all of them 5

leading to 30 percent energy savings. But the only 6

place where you can really get the informa tion 7

required to analyze those three proprietary designs 8

that all achieve the same level of efficiency is 9

from the owner of the proprietary design, really. 10

Unless you’ve sold the right to use it to somebody 11

else, but the idea is that if

-- this is an 12

engi neering analysis where you look at the cost of 13

achieving a certain level of efficiency . Some of 14

those things will be proprietary. There could be 15

multiple ways to get to that level and all of them 16

can be considered, but the data to do that can only 17

come f rom the owner of the proprietary design. 18

MR. A. GOLDBERG: Yeah, okay. So let me 19

see if I’ve got this right. So if I’m a 20

manufacturer and I know that one product cycle away, 21

say 18 months, I’m going to have some breakthrough. 22

And I want DOE to conside r that breakthrough is 23

coming, I can somehow share that with DOE in a way 24

that is protected somehow? 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 155 MR. BROOKMAN: In this case, Navigant. 1

MR. A. GOLDBERG: Whatever. I’m sorry, 2

I’m just trying to get the scheme right. And that 3

seems

-- it’s puzzlin g to me because we might be 4

able to have something forecasted to come in 18 5

months, might possibly be able to look at the 6

product cycle after that. I mean, we’re talking 7

about six years from now. There’s no proprietary 8

data that anybody can give you that will tell you 9

anything useful about what’s going to happen six 10

years from now, so maybe that’s part of my 11

confusion. 12

MR. BROOKMAN: Okay. Thank you. 13

MR. TSAO: I think we’ll address the time 14

line and scope of what the engineering and costs

-- 15

I think that question came up before in terms of 16

what efficiency levels we were talking about, and 17

what time frame are we talking about in terms of 18

cost and efficiency, and I think that should come up 19

in the next slide or next few slides. 20

MR. BROOKMAN: Yes, No ah, please. Thank 21

you. 22

MR. HOROWITZ: In terms of a higher than 23

baseline, I think we can acknowledge that the higher 24

than baseline product or the ones that are 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 156 delivering the significant savings that we’ve been 1

talking about, aspirationally, that’s a ne xt 2

generation product and doesn’t exist, and you’re 3

probably not going to be able to get your hands on a 4

prototype. A lot of that, as Gary mentioned, the 5

guts is on getting that new silica. So I agree with 6

Gary, you should be talking to the silica vendor s, 7

and we could supplement the list, if needed, and you 8

should also look at products outside the Set

- Top Box 9

world that might have implemented some of the same 10

functionality, whether it’s an iPad, whether it’s an 11

Ultra Book, whether it’s a Smart Phone, whe re it may 12

be different silica, but the same sort of power 13

savings schemes have already been implemented. 14

And in terms of your cost curve, it could 15

be that dramatic energy savings were achieved 16

through a system on a chip with little to no 17

incremental cost . So there could be lessons learned 18

there. 19

MR. BROOKMAN: Okay. Thank you. Let’s 20

move on. 21

MR. TSAO: Okay. So in general, to 22

collect this data there’s sort of three general 23

approaches that can be taken, and a combination of 24

these could be used to generate sort of the cost 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 157 efficiency curve. Items says that the quickest 1

method or the survey approach, where the efficiency 2

is known relies on cost provided by the 3

manufacturers, or various surveys to estimate the 4

costs associated with certain efficienc y levels. So 5

this is we would come, saying, to meet, as an 6

example, if we chose an efficiency level like Energy 7

Star , we would say what does it cost to implement 8

version three or version four of Energy Star or some 9

other efficiency level ? 10

The second app roach, the designs options 11

approach, which I think gets to sort of Noah’s idea 12

in terms of technologies that are not necessarily 13

commercially available as of right now. This would 14

estimate cost and performance of specific designs, 15

which could be based on sort of calculations, or 16

preliminary test results, or simulation models to 17

sort of identify if a sleep mode were implemented or 18

something like that, what would an estimated 19

efficiency look like and the costs associated with 20

that. 21

The last approach is sor t of the cost 22

assessment approach, which is similar to the survey 23

approach where the efficiency level’s already known, 24

but the cost is then determined by a listing of 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 158 materials or a bill of materials from product tear 1

downs that are existing on the market. 2

So in general, all of these are sort of

-- 3

can be mirrored in the design options approach, like 4

a lot of feedback from manufacturers or service 5

providers could be

-- would be included. 6

So I’d like to open up the floor in 7

general to any comments on app roaches for describing 8

-- any feedback on the outlined approaches or any 9

other approaches that could be used to generate 10

these cost efficiency curves, as well as comment on 11

any of the methods described. 12

MR. BROOKMAN: Comments at this point? I 13

don’t see any. 14

MR. TSAO: Okay. So once the cost 15

efficiency curves are known, we develop what are 16

called candidate standard levels, and they’ll range 17

anywhere from the baseline case to the maximum 18

technologically feasible case. And DOE is required 19

to analyze wh at they call the max tech efficiency 20

level, which is not necessarily the same as the max 21

available. It may not be commercially available to 22

look at. In order to get that kind of data, though, 23

a lot of

-- the interviews or interactions with 24

manufacturers and service providers would be used to 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 159 sort of describe what the max tech model may look 1

like. I think there’s a question? 2

MR. HERRICK: This is John Herrick. 3

Celia, is that a statutory standard, that max tech 4

level that is required? 5

MS. SHER: Yeah, I believe it is, but I 6

can give that comment to Navigant and let you know. 7

MR. BROOKMAN: So, just for the record, 8

Celia said she believes it is and she can provide 9

that information. Thank you. Keep going. 10

MR. TSAO: And for the intermediate 11

candida te standard levels, Energy Star values could 12

be used or some other arbitrary values could be used 13

to be determined by DOE. 14

So at this time, DOE would like comments 15

on any of the approaches, basically, for improving 16

the efficiency, including describing wa ys to 17

describe a max tech model, you know, and information 18

sort of on performance and incremental manufacturing 19

cost would also be needed at some point, and if 20

those are preferred through the manufacturer 21

interviews, or if they prefer to be confidential, 22

t hen that can be done too. 23

MR. BROOKMAN: And of course, whatever 24

cannot be provided here today, this is the kind of 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 160 information in considerable detail that the 1

Department would like to receive in writing. Yes, 2

Gary. 3

MR. LANGILLE: I just had a comment on the 4

phrasing of this issue it says “incremental 5

manufacturing costs,” and I do want to stress

-- I 6

think Paul stressed this morning that it’s really 7

not just manufacturing cost, it’s also

-- I mean if 8

we had to allocate a transponder on a satellite or 9

other costs that may not be actually in the device, 10

so just want to re

- stress that. 11

MR. BROOKMAN: That’s a good point. It’s 12

good to repeat the point. Andrew. 13

MR. DeLASKI: I want to follow up on that 14

because this is the kind of question for you, All en, 15

and maybe you, Mike, based on your experience. I’m 16

trying to think of other examples where this has 17

come up, so typically we have a cost of energy curve 18

that’s based on the technology. So you’re putting 19

in

-- you’re changing the widget in some way to make 20

it more efficient, and you have to do things to that 21

widget and that cost might go up because there’s 22

more materials involved, the cost of engineering 23

involved. But in this case, engineering is 24

happening on other things that communicate with the 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 161 dev ice, and I’m just curious

-- so, is that 1

reflected in the

-- does that go in that curve 2

somehow? How do we capture that? I don’t know how 3

that’s been done in the past, or if there’s an 4

analogy in prior rulemaking. 5

MR. BROOKMAN: I see Mike Rivest. 6

MR . RIVEST: Nothing approaching this 7

level. So we always capture the cost of modifying 8

manufacturing facilities, for example, the 9

incremental tooling, the incremental research and 10

development expenditures, and we capture that as a 11

markup, basically, lookin g at an investment, 12

depreciating it over many years, spreading it over 13

a lot of material and labor costs. Here, you know, 14

it also comes to the definition of who the 15

manufacturer is. I mean, is it the box or is it 16

the person downloading the software? So, depending 17

on how we frame the manufacturer, I think allows us 18

to incorporate those costs. I mean a lot of them 19

are intellectual property type

-- software 20

development, but they’re real, and they would be 21

marked up. They would be

-- it would be a certain 22

markup, maybe a doubling of the materials and labor 23

to account for all that added value. But we’ll 24

have to ask questions to understand what’s going 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 162

on. 1

MR. BROOKMAN: Paul. 2

MR. GLIST: So I think, to me, it’s a 3

little bit beyond squeezing the service provider 4

into the category of manufacturer, in that if max 5

tech means that you have to consider all of the 6

available models and we’re dealing realistically 7

with architectures and eco systems, Gary said 8

before, then make all the TV manufacturers take my 9

Set

- Top Box processing in house and do it that way. 10

Or you could turn to me and say, why don’t you guys 11

do everything in the cloud, you know, and stop all 12

this head end nonsense? Right. How much

-- when 13

you say max tech, in this context, for this market, 14

w hat are the bounds of what we’re supposed to think 15

of as alternatives? 16

MR. BROOKMAN: Do you have a response on 17

that one yet? 18

MR. RIVEST: Well, it gets to the 19

definition of the product, again. If we think of 20

the product as the function it serves, the n it 21

doesn’t really matter where it is, we draw the 22

bounds there and the costs there. If it’s brought 23

into the TV, we can’t just transfer the cost to the 24

TV and ignore those costs. 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 163 MR. GLIST: So for costing this out, you 1

need to then look at the cost o f the entire eco 2

system of delivery? 3

MR. RIVEST: I don’t know if I’d use the 4

word eco system, because that’s scary, but the cost 5

of the function. 6

MR. GLIST: Well, no, even Noah and others 7

have said, you know, maybe you’d do better putting 8

the gateway furnace in the basement and putting 9

six, eight tuners, whatever it is, serving the 10

whole home. That’s one thing. It’s not a Set

- Top 11

Box the way we might think of it today, that’s one 12

approach. 13

MR. RIVEST: I don’t look forward to doing 14

that but I don’ t think it should be excluded. 15

Again, I don’t think we can shrink it into a 16

partial function and give it an energy budget when 17

we’re expecting the full function to be 18

accomplished, and the costs are borne by others. 19

MR. BROOKMAN: I think you’re asking 20

really good questions and the Department is 21

benefiting from your descriptions of the 22

complexity, and I’m also hoping that experts in the 23

room can begin to describe how to make it work. I 24

think that the questions might lead us, you, to be 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 164 able to describe some way that this is doable. 1

MR. RIVEST: Something I’d like to say

-- 2

MR. BROOKMAN: Mike Rivest. 3

MR. RIVEST: This is a fast moving 4

technology, and there might be a temptation to jump 5

right away to six years from now, but the problem 6

is, there’s so much unknown. If we could take 7

smaller steps, put some stakes in the ground, so 8

that we start from a base that’s a little more 9

certain

-- I mean the product definitions are a 10

little more clear and then we gradually move 11

towards evolving technologies, e volving costs, so 12

at least we get better accuracy on things that 13

exist that we know, and we don’t immediately jump 14

into the realm of 100 percent speculation. Maybe 15

I’m just speaking for someone who’s going to have 16

to do the analysis. 17

MR. BROOKMAN: Kuri a. 18

MR. JOSEPH: This is Kuriacos e from Direct 19

TV. So along the same lines of the questions that 20

are being asked, when doing this engineering 21

analysis, is there going to be some assumption as 22

to how the system is configured, be it a satellite 23

system, hea d end satellite system, or whether it’s 24

a cable system? And a corollary of this is by 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 165 coming up with the standards for Set

- Top Boxes, is 1

there going to be some push back to say your 2

systems have to be designed to work in a certain 3

way? 4

MR. BROOKMAN: As sumptions about 5

configurations? Jeremy. 6

MR. DOMMU: Yeah, I mean at this point I 7

think we haven’t performed that analysis yet and 8

come to any conclusions as to those configuration 9

issues. 10

MR. BROOKMAN: Okay. Thank you. Mike 11

Rivest. 12

MR. RIVEST: So if I understand the 13

question, we have to perform an analysis so we’re 14

going to have to make assumptions about how things 15

are configured, so we say okay, this is how the 16

system exists today, and this is how our more 17

efficient system would look, and we t ry to get some 18

agreement about that’s a reasonable assumption 19

about how it might look under

-- you know, if it’s 20

more efficient. But there’s no prescription that 21

that’s how it’s going to have to look. 22

So if the goal is to reduce energy 23

efficiency by 3 0 percent, we’ve identified a 24

technology pathway together that gets you to 30 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 166 percent. We’ve determined it’s not the only way to 1

get there, it’s not a proprietary way to get there, 2

but it’s a reasonable way to get there. We cost 3

that out. Once the rule i s over, you find a better 4

way, you do it that way. You do it your way and 5

maybe technology’s evolved and it costs a fraction 6

of that. We don’t know. Does that answer your 7

question? I mean, you will never be forced to do 8

it in a certain configuration. 9

MR. BROOKMAN: Kuria. 10

MR. JOSEPH: This is Kuriacos e from Direct 11

TV. It’s not the actual solution, but if there are 12

some assumptions made in how a system operates 13

which are not easily achievable, which cannot be

-- 14

let’s call it proprietary, as an exam ple, is that 15

something that is going to drive what the standard 16

is for the Set

- Top Box? 17

MR. RIVEST: So if the technology pathway 18

identified to reduce energy by 30 percent is 19

something that you feel is problematic, that’s 20

something you have to comment on , and ... will know 21

that that’s problematic for these reasons and here 22

is another way that gives us better certainty of 23

achieving the goal. 24

MR. BROOKMAN: Adam. 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 167 MR. A. GOLDBERG: Okay. So I’ve heard

-- 1

this is Adam for TiVo . I’ve heard goal and then 2

I’ ve heard 30 percent. Are those

-- I mean, are 3

those numbers or were those examples. 4

MR. RIVEST: No, they’re absolutely made 5

up numbers. 6

MR. A. GOLDBERG: Okay. I mean it seems 7

like

-- see if I’ve got this right. It seems like 8

what’s been said just now is

-- I don’t mean to 9

pick on satellite, satellite systems

-- but let’s 10

say that today boxes consume 15 watts, and it’s 11

conceivable that with technological innovations or 12

something, you might be able to get to 10 or 12 13

watts, not including LNBs. But y ou could get to 14

say two watts, if you constructed a whole IP back 15

channel. So if you required that every box be 16

connected to the internet, you required that the 17

satellite operations had a facility for bi

18

directional communication s with the box

-- so right 19

now they’re listening to entitlement messages that 20

get broadcast, and they have to be live to hear 21

those messages. If we said, okay, one way to get 22

to three or four or five watts is to spend this 23

amount of money and require consumers have the 24

internet an d other things, it’s possible to make a 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 168 guess as to how much all that costs, add it up and 1

decide whether or not that sort of solution is 2

cost

- effective, right? Is that one of the things 3

that we’re going to be doing in all this process? 4

MR. RIVEST: So under your scenario, would 5

everyone have to have access to the internet to 6

make that work? 7

MR. A. GOLDBERG: Well, that’s one

-- I 8

mean in my hypothetical situation here, yes. The 9

boxes would have to be connected to the internet. 10

And there’s a cost ass ociated with that to 11

consumers, and energy costs as well. Furthermore, 12

there’s costs and energy costs associated with this 13

new equipment and data centers that the satellite 14

providers would have to create, but I mean you can 15

gain this all up and add it all up, but what I’m 16

trying to get at is, this sort of calculation is 17

what’s going to happen and because we have a whole 18

system, we’re not limited to looking at just the 19

box. 20

I understand that if we’re talking about a 21

clock radio and say, okay, clock radios go down to 22

about a watt for each model cycle, and then a 23

couple model cycles we expect they’ll be down a 24

couple of watts, and over time that’ll decrease to 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 169 very little changes and we can say, well it costs a 1

dollar extra to make an alarm clock consume a w att 2

less. In an isolated box like that, that’s the way 3

you can do it. 4

But in what we’re talking about, I think, 5

it’s so

-- it’s Gary’s balloon, right? If you poke 6

on it here, it’s going to pop out there, so we’ve 7

got to look at a whole system. So in order to make 8

the calculations that I think that what I heard you 9

talking about, we really need to do something 10

broad

- ranging, like what I just described. And I 11

wonder if that’s really what we have in mind, or if 12

it’s more constrained than that. 13

MR. RI VEST: Well, I didn’t say that we 14

were

-- so what I said is that if costs were being 15

moved elsewhere they need to be captured. I didn’t 16

say that there’s some

-- that decision has been 17

made about adopting a system approach whereby the 18

Department has the le gal right to force those types 19

of infrastructure changes to make Set

- Top Boxes 20

more efficient. I don’t think, you know, I don’t 21

know that that’s been

-- 22

MR. A. GOLDBERG: I’m not a lawyer, so I 23

don’t

-- 24

MR. RIVEST: What I’m saying is we can’t 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 170 arbitra rily move costs out of the box and justify 1

the standard, ignoring those costs, which is 2

different from what you’re saying. 3

MR. A. GOLDBERG: All right. I don’t 4

understand how that’s different. We have a whole 5

system, and in large measure the power cons umption 6

of the Set

- Top Boxes depends on how the system 7

works. I mean I could make a satellite box that 8

could consume zero watts in standby mode, but it 9

wouldn’t work. And so

-- right Gary? I mean, it 10

wouldn’t work. 11

MR. LANGILLE: I’m sure not to your 12

s atisfaction. 13

MR. A. GOLDBERG: So I mean if

-- if the 14

standard, the eventual standard says satellite 15

boxes need to consume less than five watts in stand 16

by, and either one or the only way to do that has 17

the effect of requiring these data centers and 18

inte rnet activity and a whole new architecture on 19

things, you know, you’d have to consider those 20

costs. I mean, if we say, okay, well, you’ve got 21

to account for the costs that aren’t in the box, 22

but we’re not going to account for the whole 23

system, then I don’ t know

-- 24

MR. RIVEST: No, that’s not what I said. 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 171 So the first question is, can we take that system 1

view, and if we do, then we have to account for all 2

the costs. I don’t think that first question’s 3

been answered. 4

MR. A. GOLDBERG: Oh. I’m not sur e how 5

you could not. 6

MR. BROOKMAN: Okay. Gary. 7

MR. LANGILLE: Well, if we

-- 8

MR. RIVEST: Could not what? 9

MR. A. GOLDBERG : If we are not taking a 10

systems view, then it seems that the only other 11

assumption that we could make is that the system

-- 12

that all of our investigation needs to make an 13

assumption that the systems stay as they are, and 14

that only energy reduction opportunities that are 15

considered are ones that allow the system to remain 16

the same. 17

MR. RIVEST: So, you know, I’m not from 18

th is industry, so the word system here can mean a 19

lot of things. If system means software that’s 20

already been downloaded

-- 21

MR. LANGILLE: Well, let me give you an 22

example. 23

MR. RIVEST:

-- and modification of that 24

software

-- 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 172 MR. LANGILLE: I’m tryin g to give you a

-- 1

I’m making this up, this isn’t real. Let’s say 2

that DOE interviews one of the semiconductor 3

manufacturers, and they say, oh, yeah, we know how 4

to save energy. We just need to get the satellite 5

guys to triple the data rate on this one 6

i nformation stream, and piece of cake, won’t even 7

increase the cost. So DOE goes off and says well, 8

we’re going to recommend that this technology be 9

used. But what’s not being taken into account is 10

that for that satellite company to triple the data 11

rate o n that one stream may involve launching 12

another damn satellite. 13

MR. RIVEST: All right. So how about this 14

intermediate thing. What if a requirement were to 15

enable those Set

- Top Boxes in an area where the 16

rate is three times, to save energy, without 17

req uiring that function to be enabled? So that 18

there would be maybe one

- third of consumers would 19

save energy, and that would be cost

- effective 20

because

-- 21

MR. LANGILLE: I think that would be fine, 22

but what you just admitted to was looking at the 23

whole syst em, instead of just the box. 24

MR. RIVEST: I’m not admitting anything, 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 173 I’m just

-- I’m just brainstorming with you here. 1

MR. LANGILLE: But by the statement you 2

made, meant that you had to look at that system to 3

know it would only go to a third

-- 4

MR . RIVEST: All right, well, this is an 5

evolving thing here, right. So it’s

-- so if we 6

replace the word system thinking with system 7

regulation, I think that’s the point that hasn’t 8

been discussed. I think we need system thinking, 9

because otherwise this d oesn’t work. So can we 10

have system thinking and system benefits without 11

imposing system costs that, you know, where you may 12

not have authority to regulate those satellite. 13

MR. BROOKMAN: I’d hate for us to just be 14

totally speculative here, and it’d be n ice if we 15

could get back to concrete questions and answers 16

and all. I know this is necessary to a degree. 17

Adam first, then you. 18

MR. A. GOLDBERG: So I mean, I think, to 19

me I think Gary laid it out rather clearly a few 20

minutes ago. Our choices are eith er consider the 21

costs end to end, the whole enchilada, or consider 22

that everything outside of the Set

- Top Box is fixed 23

and talk about how much it costs to decrease 24

consumption in the Set

- Top Box over time. Because 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 174 if you

-- 1

MR. RIVEST: I don’t formula te it that 2

way. I think we have to consider the costs 3

everywhere, no matter what. 4

MR. A. GOLDBERG: Okay, but our choices 5

are to consider the whole thing, because when you 6

change something

-- if you change something in the 7

Set

- Top Box, it’s going to hav e some effect on the 8

network, and head ends, and the whole enchilada. 9

And it’s the balloon. If you poke here, it’s going 10

to pop out there, and you’ve got to deal with that. 11

Or, you can not deal with that at all and 12

just focus on the box itself. So it ’s possible 13

that the next generation of silicon, changing 14

nothing about the network, the next generation of 15

silicon is six, ten

-- ten percent less power, and 16

the following generation, 15 percent less power. 17

We can calculate all that and we can draw curve s or 18

whatever, and come up with numbers. That’s fine 19

and that might be a perfect way to do. 20

But if we’re going to talk about things 21

like deep sleep, there’s nothing you can do in the 22

silicon that’s going to change the laws of physics 23

to make it so tha t Gary’s message doesn’t get lost. 24

MR. RIVEST: Earlier I heard someone 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 175 mention that they had installed an Ethernet port on 1

their box years before it was widely available, 2

movies were available for download. So that’s what 3

I’m thinking about. Is there a way of building in 4

a feature that will benefit from those technology 5

advances that won’t be a costly feature, and that 6

we take five years of benefits by not having to 7

replace those boxes when they come? That’s what I 8

have in mind. 9

MR. BROOKMAN: Adam , let me let Gary 10

follow on first, and then I’m coming back here. 11

MR. LANGILLE: Well, you mentioned trying 12

to get more to a hard example. I think that to a 13

large extent some of these new multi

- room boxes 14

that Direct TV and we just recently introduced we re 15

developed with the assumption that the system, the 16

broadcast system, basically stays the way it is. 17

But yet we were able to come up with different 18

configurations of product, looking at a whole 19

household perspective that saves almost 50 percent 20

of the e nergy consumption of that household. But 21

yet we didn’t change a single thing on the system. 22

So what I was proposing before was is 23

that, you know, because of the complexity of this 24

product area, maybe the first step that we take is 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 176 to assume that the sys tems will stay the same and 1

let’s first look at sort of the low hanging fruit, 2

and just look at things that don’t require any 3

changes to the system. Now once we go through that 4

process, we’re all going to be a lot more educated 5

and then maybe we attack th e next level, which is, 6

you know, what changes to the system could be made 7

that allow for even more energy savings. 8

MR. BROOKMAN: Getting to the thrust of 9

Mike Rivest’s comments, we have received a bit of 10

information from someone on the webinar, and it is 11

-- what this person says is, the FCC has already 12

required Set

- Top Boxes to have IP interface by the 13

year end 2012. No? Okay. Andrew’s next in the 14

queue. 15

MR. DeLASKI: A couple of questions or 16

points. One is that, Gary you make the point that 17

maybe

-- so there’s the hardware produced by the 18

Ciscos and the Motorolas of the world, and then 19

there’s what the service providers, how the service 20

providers deploy and use that hardware, whether 21

they’re satellite or cable companies or Telcos, and 22

you might m ake changes

-- it may be

-- you just put 23

up a hypothesis that the changes that you make to 24

your system, and again, maybe I’m getting caught up 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 177 in the word system here, but the changes that you 1

make to the system may be the harder things. 2

And I guess I want to sort of test the 3

hypothesis and would like this analysis to test 4

this hypothesis, because it may be that the things 5

that you guys do on your system with existing boxes 6

may yield efficiency. And is that going to 7

actually be cheaper on a per unit ba sis than 8

changing the boxes? So I guess I want to think 9

about the engineering choices, that they need to be 10

considered together, the changes that you make, and 11

the changes that the Ciscos and the Motorolas make. 12

And that’s where you get that curve, the c ost of 13

energy curve, is a combination of those functions, 14

of those changes. And if we disaggregate them, 15

then I’m afraid we’re not going to be getting an 16

accurate curve for what could be done. So really, 17

you need to talk to both these guys, to the set of 18

providers to understand what that shape of that 19

curve looks like. 20

MR. RIVEST: But remember, we’re measuring 21

the energy on site , so that metric is a hard 22

metric, where we can’t

-- the energy that will be 23

saved at Cisco’s headquarters of course will go 24

w herever that energy is being consumed, is not part 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 178 of our test procedure. So I still think we’re 1

limited to the energy on site that we’re measuring 2

with the test procedure, the improvements that we 3

can make in the box, and then the improvements we 4

can mak e

-- and that’s where there needs to be 5

discussion

-- the improvements that can be made on 6

site through the connection to the network, either 7

through the signals that are coming in. And the 8

signals that are coming in, some may be simple

-- 9

I’m reluctant t o use the word simple, but some may 10

be more software, like more upgrades that you would 11

do. Some may be massive hardware changes that 12

would be very costly. But we are limited to what’s 13

on site and what we measure with the test 14

procedure. 15

MR. BROOKMAN: Charlie Stephens. 16

MR. DeLASKI: I have a second point if I 17

could just finish. 18

MR. BROOKMAN: Yes, please. 19

MR. DeLASKI: To Adam’s point, or maybe it 20

was Gary’s point about energy

-- pushing energy 21

use, the balloon question. We care about energy 22

sav ings. So it’s important to us that we’re 23

modeling what happens to energy consumption. So 24

simply pushing it off, sort of outside the box or 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 179 this device isn't going to address our concerns. 1

We want to know what’s happened to total energy 2

consumption, so t he Department does this in other 3

rulemakings all the time, you know, when you make a 4

change to one device, that does have impact on 5

choices consumers make, and typically I think it’s 6

important that we model that and understand how 7

overall energy use change s. 8

MR. BROOKMAN: Charlie Stephens. 9

MR. STEPHENS: I’m Charlie Stephens. I 10

think, just to kind of reiterate before I make a 11

point. I’ve heard, through our own research in the 12

past, at NEA, and around the table here that there 13

are boxes out there that have functionality that’s 14

not yet enabled by service providers or that isn't 15

enabled by every service provider or that’s enabled 16

differently by different service providers, and 17

that could change, and that there might be a cost 18

to implementing that or impl ementing those changes. 19

I’ve also heard that there’s some potential for box 20

changes that then could be implemented. And I 21

believe we should take all those costs into 22

account. 23

That being said, my constituents, the 130

- 24

some utilities I represent, are ob ligated by law to 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 180 meet the power demands of this system, regardless 1

of what everyone around this table decides to do. 2

We’re interested in what the thing uses in the 3

field, which is why we’re out there measuring it, 4

and we’ll be coming back and we’ll be pr oviding 5

Mike data on

-- by model, by system type, and by 6

public service provider

-- on a lot of households, 7

and we’ll be setting up protocols where, if we need 8

to, and Mike comes up short of data, we can maybe 9

go get some more. And we may be recruiting s ome 10

other people around the country to use those 11

protocols to get some data from some other service 12

provider networks so that we all have some 13

consistent data. 14

So what he’s going to have is he’s going 15

to have some nice time

- stamped data that has when 16

the television was on, and when it was off, and 17

what the Set

- Top Box was doing, when the DVR was 18

going, when

-- all of these things are going to be 19

on there with time stamped data, watching what the 20

box is doing, and we’re going to have that by 21

provider netwo rk, and we’re going to ship it to 22

Mike, so at least he’ll know what some of these 23

boxes do when they’re deployed. And then he can 24

ask questions about what he’s seeing, and hopefully 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 181 it will lead to some answers about whey there are 1

differences when we see differences, and where they 2

come from. And if we need more data, I’m going to 3

put my budget out there, and if we need to, we’ll 4

go get some more. 5

MR. BROOKMAN: Okay. Paul, you want to 6

follow on here? 7

MR. GLIST: Well, it’s just an 8

observation. I t hink people have said throughout 9

the day that this is unique, unique situation, and 10

what we’re all struggling with is trying to take a 11

system that is basically designed for white goods

- 12

- excuse me, and apply it to a dynamic network 13

where functionalities, costs, are moving all across 14

the ecosystem. And I think it’s really hard. 15

I think what’s incumbent on all of us is 16

to provide you with enough suggestions in the 17

written cycle so that we can do something 18

practical. I think we may find that the ways that 19

the Department has historically analyzed this 20

problem isn't suitable for applying to this market 21

in the same way, that you may have to adjust your 22

models and your analytical tools far beyond saying 23

okay service provider is a manufacturer. It’s much 24

more complicated. 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 182 I’ll do my best to give you some 1

suggestions, but I’m suggesting that also

-- you’ve 2

done a great job in explaining how you normally 3

confront these issues over the decades, please be 4

open to some greater flexibility on how we address 5

this pr oblem together. 6

MR. BROOKMAN: Okay. Thanks for that and 7

I think we’ve uncovered a lot of the complexity, 8

and in the last hour or so of discussion, some of 9

the options that exist. I’m eager for us to keep 10

pressing on, there’s a lot of content yet to c over, 11

some of it maybe you don’t have full capture on 12

right now, but I’m going to suggest we move on. 13

MR. TSAO: Okay. So the last step is, if 14

you recall, we analyze certain product classes and 15

develop cost efficiency curves for those 16

representative pro duct classes, and the last step 17

is to sort of scale those product classes to any 18

classes that were not analyzed for

-- due to lack 19

of availability or low market share. 20

Essentially some methods that we would 21

consider for the

-- depending on how and if the 22

product classes are defined, this scaling could be 23

based on component difference, cost component 24

differences, and energy differences between the 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 183 two, as well as sort of general architectural 1

differences between the two types of product 2

classes. 3

So the c omment we have is when it comes to 4

scaling, are there any sort of methodologies that 5

would help us scale representative product classes 6

to other product classes? You can think of the 7

scaling as similar to the Energy Star where adders 8

are sort of added on to the base product types, and 9

in essence, the scaling would be how to derive 10

those types of values to do that kind of scaling. 11

MR. BROOKMAN: Comments on scaling, 12

because we’re going to have to pick up the pace 13

here a little bit, otherwise, we’re not go ing to 14

get through this content. Yes, please, Kuria. 15

MR. JOSEPH: Kuriacos e from Direct TV. We 16

have to be a little careful with this. For 17

example, just saying that DVR box will work the 18

same way for a cable system as for a satellite 19

system is not nece ssarily true. The fact that 20

there is a hard drive and we have only a one

- way 21

system, we might actually use the

-- the results 22

slightly differently just because the system is 23

different. So we’ve got to be very careful with 24

this kind of methodology. 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 184 MR. TSAO: Right, and I think that’s where 1

we would try to get a lot of feedback from 2

stakeholders of well, we’re thinking this is a way 3

to scale, does this sound reasonable? Does this 4

methodology make sense? Or perhaps this scaling 5

methodology is incorrect or invalid. 6

MR. BROOKMAN: Additional comments here? 7

Okay. 8

MR. TSAO: Another outside thing to 9

consider are outside regulatory changes. So DOE 10

will take into consideration the effects on 11

manufacturers for other regulatory changes outside 12

of the effi ciency standards that are being outlined 13

here. 14

MR. BROOKMAN: Yes. 15

MR. N. GOLDBERG: Neal Goldberg, NCTA. 16

I’m sorry I don’t understand what that means? What 17

do you mean by regulatory changes? And I’m not 18

sure how you define them in the context of a n 19

engineering analysis. 20

MR. TSAO: For example, and previously 21

it’s been described that FCC required a cable card 22

type thing, type access. So if FCC were to, or any 23

other organization, were to impose some sort of 24

regulation that automatically required a dditional 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 185 energy to be used by the Set

- Top Box, that would be 1

factored in into the cost and efficiency of those 2

Set

- Top Boxes in generating those curves. 3

MR. N. GOLDBERG: Okay. 4

MR. BROOKMAN: Thank you. So you can see 5

the comment box there

-- do yo u want to repeat what 6

you’re looking for? 7

MR. TSAO: Yes, so we’re looking to see if 8

there are any outside regulatory changes we need to 9

be

-- DOE needs to be considering in its analysis. 10

MR. BROOKMAN: That you see now, or 11

anticipate in the not

- too

- di stant future. 12

MR. TSAO: Right. 13

MR. BROOKMAN: Yes, Noah. 14

MR. HOROWITZ: Quick question. Either 15

today or afterwards, if there’s anything going on 16

on the FCC either potential or real that might 17

impact this, whether it’s 911 communication, 18

requiring o r getting rid of the cable card, it 19

would be great to have that input from the 20

industry. 21

MR. BROOKMAN: Okay. Thank you. Nothing 22

additional? Okay. 23

MR. TSAO: Some just general other 24

engineering issues that weren’t necessarily brought 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 186 up in the spe cific. Issue 27, you know, DOE is 1

looking for just energy use and configurations of 2

available Set

- Top Boxes in the market. 3

Additionally, as part of the analysis, and some of 4

the methodologies did involve possibly testing Set

5

Top Boxes or tearing down Set

- Top Boxes to 6

determine costs, DOE welcomes sort of information 7

on how to conduct those tests, whether it would 8

require DOE access to subscription or head end 9

equipment to perform the tests, or if there are 10

certain labs that should be used for testing. 11

And additionally, acquiring the Set

- Top 12

Box units for purchase in order to perform

-- if 13

that’s the approach we take

-- to generate a bill 14

of material costing of Set

- Top Boxes. And lastly, 15

just sort of general technology and information 16

regarding energy and cost data. 17

MR. BROOKMAN: Gary. 18

MR. LANGILLE: Just a quick question on 19

27. When you say on energy use and configuration 20

of current STBs in the market, are you

-- is that 21

currently available for sale, or just they’re out 22

there? I mean Noah indica tes this before, there’s 23

a big difference that we’re seeing from the stuff 24

that is already out there that was shipped in the 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 187 past five years versus some of the ones that will 1

be shipped in 2012, and I think

-- I mean I can’t 2

think of a better source of inf ormation, actually, 3

than the Energy Star list, because it’s even sort 4

of more robust this year because it’s required the 5

use, since version three, it requires the use of an 6

outside certified lab to verify the testing. It’s 7

not a self

- verification or anyth ing, so it’s got to 8

be very reliable data. 9

MR. BROOKMAN: So and that list

-- how far 10

back does that equipment go? 11

MR. LANGILLE: The program was only 12

started September 1 st

MR. BROOKMAN: So it’s all

-- 14 , so

-- 13

MR. LANGILLE: It’s mostly all new stu ff, 15

what’s currently being shipped or will be shipped 16

shortly. 17

MR. BROOKMAN: Adam. 18

MR. A. GOLDBERG: But it’s by no means 19

all

- inclusive. 20

MR. LANGILLE: That’s right. 21

MR. A. GOLDBERG: For example, as I 22

understand it, Katharine will correct me if I ’m 23

wrong, but I don’t believe there’s any TiVo 24

products on that list for Set

- Top equipment. 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 188 MR. BROOKMAN: Okay. So the Department 1

will really benefit from anybody that’s got this 2

kind of data or structure for data collection. 3

MR. CYMBALSKY: This is John Cymbalsky. 4

We’ll take all the data that you have, and then I 5

think we can filter through what is relevant, and 6

if it’s stuff that’s five years old and we know 7

you’re not going to sell it anymore, probably not 8

very relevant. 9

MR. BROOKMAN: We’re goi ng to keep 10

pressing ahead. 11

MR. TSAO: Okay. At this time, Louis, 12

from LBL will talk about the downstream analysis. 13

**Downstream Analysis: Energy use Characterization** 14

MR. BENOIT

- DESROCHES: So I will describe 15

the rest of the data analysis steps that norm ally 16

go into a typical rulemaking analysis. I’ll start 17

with the energy use characterization. 18

The purpose of the energy use analysis is 19

to determine an accurate in

- field characterization 20

of the devices. Because the test procedure and the 21

engineering as we’ve discussed earlier today is 22

likely to involve a total energy consumption 23

metric, the transition to an annual energy use is 24

going to be somewhat simple. But at the same time, 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 189 DOE takes into account the variation that is out 1

there in terms of consumer usage of these devices. 2

And so when the energy use analysis is carried out, 3

DOE typically uses the fully distribution that is 4

available from all the data that we have at our 5

disposal. 6

DOE will typically likely use typical 7

television viewing habits and any other Set

- Top Box 8

usage data that we have to develop these 9

distributions of operating hours. And again, this 10

is an attempt to capture the full variability out 11

there in the general user population. 12

So DOE seeks to obtain any relevant energy 13

use infor mation on this topic, and if the range of 14

energy use is found to be very large, DOE will 15

conduct sensitivity analysis to determine how the 16

high and low energy use cases impact the standard, 17

and how it impacts economic feasibility of the 18

standard. DOE welc omes any recommendations on 19

sources of data to do this energy use 20

characterization. 21

MR. BROOKMAN: And let’s consider 31 and 22

32 at the same time, since they’re linked. 23

Comments on how the usage profiles are different or 24

similar, and comment on end use i ssues that could 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 190 impact energy use analysis. Adam. 1

MR. A. GOLDBERG: Can you tell me what a 2

sensitivity analysis is? 3

MR. BENOIT

- DESROCHES: So the, at the end 4

of the day, there’s the national impact analysis 5

and cost analysis that will produce a singl e result 6

that compares all the different standard cases to a 7

base case. A sensitivity analysis looks at the 8

extremes and sees

-- if you take a somewhat 9

unlikely, but extreme scenario, how does that 10

impact the overall number? And if the end answer 11

changes substantially, that is a sensitivity we 12

have to take into consideration, and if it doesn’t 13

change substantially, then that sensitivity 14

analysis shows that the extreme cases in the inputs 15

don’t matter that much. 16

MR. BROOKMAN: Let’s return to the issue 17

b oxes here: sources of data, how usage profiles are 18

different or similar for each product, and end use 19

issues that could impact energy use analysis. 20

Nothing at this time. Okay, we know there’s data 21

coming from some sources. Keep going. 22

MR. BENOIT

- DESRO CHES: We appreciate any 23

and all data. 24

MR. BROOKMAN: the Department’s made that 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 191 very, very clear, especially in this case, any and 1

all, right. Okay. Yes, Charlie Stephens. 2

MR. STEPHENS: Charlie Stephens. One 3

thing I didn’t mention is that you will also get 4

full demographics for all of these households to go 5

along with it, so including the ages of the 6

occupants. 7

MR. BENOIT

- DESROCHES: That will be very 8

much appreciated. 9

MR. BROOKMAN: It’s too bad they didn’t 10

live all over the country, Charlie, not just in the 11

northwest. 12

MR. STEPHENS: I’m working on that. 13

MR. BROOKMAN: Okay. We’re moving on. 14

**Markups for Product Price Determination** 15

MR. BENOIT

- DESROCHES: So the next 16

analysis step is the markups for product price 17

determination. And this i s

-- so when we do 18

markups analysis, there’s two parts to it. One, 19

the first set of markups is done in engineering 20

analysis and that’s to determine, again, this is 21

what the DOE typically does

-- this is to determine 22

the markups from the manufacturer to th e next stage 23

in the distribution channel. The purpose of this 24

analysis is to figure out the rest of the markups 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 192 down to the consumer. And I’ll talk about the 1

unique issues in a second for Set

- Top Boxes. 2

So again, DOE typically analyzes the 3

markups to t he consumer and then

-- in order to do 4

that, it identifies the distribution channels and 5

if relevant, any kind of sales tax that may be 6

applicable. DOE can collect retail price data 7

where available, but we also appreciate any data 8

that are submitted. DOE typically uses US Census 9

Bureau for its rulemakings, and particularly the 10

manufacturing series and the business expenditure 11

survey for some of these markups. 12

Now, as we’ve discussed several times, 13

there’s some unique issues with Set

- Top Boxes and 14

this i ssue of the markup to the consumer is 15

different for this product, and the equipment price 16

actually paid by an individual consumer may be 17

difficult to assess. Some of these devices are 18

potentially free to the consumer in the sense that 19

there’s no line item charge, but it’s likely to be 20

included in a base subscription fee. Sometimes 21

there is a line item charge. Some of the 22

additional features have explicit costs associated 23

in the monthly billing, and some of these devices 24

are purchased through retail. And so there’s a 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 193 variety of different pricing mechanisms here which 1

makes for a more complicated markup analysis. 2

The exact pricing strategy of service 3

providers is proprietary, and as I said before, 4

there’s a mix of availability of distribution 5

channels for Set

- Top Boxes. 6

So possible solutions to address these 7

unique challenges. We again can have confidential 8

submission of data on the pricing structure that is 9

used by service providers to accurately model how 10

costs are passed to consumers. We can also at tempt 11

to use simplifying assumptions if that is found to 12

be necessary. 13

And so DOE welcomes feedback and data on 14

how to properly address the equipment price markups 15

for Set

- Top Boxes and how to accurately assess what 16

consumers are paying for them. 17

MR. B ROOKMAN: Yes, Noah. 18

MR. HOROWITZ: Noah, NRDC. One thing that 19

hasn’t come up and will affect these calculations 20

is what is the assumed lifetime of the box? I 21

would hope industry could provide data. Rule of 22

thumb is five, six years. I don’t know if t hat’s 23

still accurate. That will impact things. Also, in 24

some cases the box is leased for a cost, could be 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 194 eight, ten, $12.00 a month for a DVR plus HD. If 1

that box lasts six years, there could be over $600 2

in revenue, which could be more than the cost o f 3

the box, and hopefully that will be considered in 4

these calculations. 5

MR. BROOKMAN: Okay. Additional comments 6

on these kinds of pricing issues. Paul. 7

MR. GLIST: I would just say it’s even 8

more complicated than you’ve indicated in that I’m 9

not qu ite sure, thinking of it as a markup over the 10

materials is right in industries that in some 11

cases, where they’re not under the same rate 12

regulation that cable is, it’s rolled into the 13

service price. What are you doing to identify 14

what’s flowed through? W hat does markup mean in 15

that context. And for cable, what does the 16

customer pay for in the lease over years? Are they 17

paying for the materials? Are they paying for 18

their repair? Are they paying for insurance 19

against obsolescence of the box, because the y can 20

turn it in for the next model? You know, what is 21

it that you’re trying to measure? I actually don’t 22

have answers to this, but I’m just sensitizing you 23

to the fact that it’s even more unique than the 24

slide shows. 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 195 MR. BROOKMAN: And it’s tied to yo ur 1

distinctive business models, correct? 2

MR. GLIST: Well, partly business models, 3

partly regulatory constraints that cable is under a 4

regulatory regime that satellite is not when it 5

comes to box pricing. 6

MR. BROOKMAN: I’m asking the question 7

because in order for DOE to take a good run at 8

this, I guess they’re going to be asking you for 9

some kind of sensitive information. 10

MR. GLIST: Well, in many cases for cable, 11

it’s public. There are forms that lay out box 12

pricing. But if you step back for a mom ent and you 13

try to account for, oh, but the FCC makes me give 14

away free boxes in these situations, or satellite 15

doesn’t have to price it separately on the invoice , 16

it’s just, in the end the consumer pays for every 17

cost that is imposed on service providers. All I’m 18

saying is that it may not be as easy to track as 19

you’re hoping for. 20

MR. BROOKMAN: Neal, go ahead. 21

MR. N. GOLDBERG: Let me just add that by 22

statute, cable operators are allowed to aggregate 23

their equipment in different equipment pools so 24

tha t the price that the consumer pays, even with 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 196 whatever markups, does not necessarily reflect the 1

cost of that particular box, because it’s an 2

average price out of a pool. 3

MR. BROOKMAN: Thank you. Yes, Gary. 4

MR. LANGILLE: I was also just going to 5

comment that one of the key measures, financial 6

measures for most service providers is what’s 7

called SAC or subscriber acquisition costs, and 8

it’s often reported as part of their financial 9

statements and basically what that summarizes is 10

what the service prov ider has invested up front to 11

bring

-- to allow that customer to receive the 12

service. So, as Noah had indicated, when you’re 13
looking at like, you know, $5.00 a month to pay for 14

the cable box, you first have to pay back the 15

subscriber acquisition cost befo re the company 16

actually starts making any money. 17

MR. BROOKMAN: And where is that now? 18

MR. LANGILLE: Lots of times it’s reported 19

as part of financial information. The industry 20

tends to

-- financial analysts, when they look at 21

service provider industr ies, look at how much does 22

it cost to obtain a subscriber, and those numbers 23

are usually published. Then they also list R pool 24

-- average revenue per user. That’s another 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 197 measure that is published information and you may 1

be able to assemble those from al l of the different 2

players and draw some rough conclusions as to cost 3

to allow a subscriber to gain access to service. 4

MR. BROOKMAN: Okay. Thank you. 5

Additional comments on these costs and ways that 6

you might think about the markups or whatever the 7

wo rd would be? Nothing additional? Okay. 8

MR. BENOIT

- DESROCHES: So we’ve already 9

discussed this quite a bit, but DOE does recognize 10

that there are network infrastructure issues with 11

Set

- Top Boxes, and on one of the

-- for the markups 12

question, one of t he issues is how these costs end 13

up being passed to consumers. And we’ve discussed 14

this quite a bit already today, but we’d like to 15

emphasize again that DOE seeks feedback and any 16

data that would help us identify how these network 17

infrastructure issues an d these costs are passed on 18

to consumers. 19

MR. BROOKMAN: Additional comments on 20

that? Okay. 21

**Life Cycle Cost Analysis** 22

MR. BENOIT

- DESROCHES: So the next stage 23

of the analysis is the life cycle cost analysis and 24

payback period analysis. This is one o f the two 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 198 main economic outputs of the whole analysis, along 1

with the National Impact Analysis. The life cycle 2

cost assesses the impact on individual consumers, 3

and the payback period is the period after which 4

consumers gain in annual operating savings th e 5

increased cost of the more efficient boxes. 6

The life cycle cost in this case is the 7

first cost or any cost of obtaining the device, 8

plus the sum of all the annual operating cost for 9

running the device over the lifetime. And all of 10

these values are dis counted to a particular year, 11

and the present value. The analysis models the 12

uncertainty and the variability and all of the 13

inputs, and I’ll go into some detail with all the 14

inputs, but the main thing I want to stress here is 15

this is an analysis that’s do ne with input 16

distributions and uses Monte Carol simulation to 17

assess the full range of variability in the market. 18

DOE typically conducts this analysis using 19

Excel spreadsheets, along with Crystal Ball, which 20

is a commercially available add

- on which allo ws us 21

to use Monte Carlo simulations. This flow chart is 22

again a typical example of a life cycle cost 23

analysis. All the yellow boxes are inputs, the 24

green boxes are intermediate outputs, and the blue 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 199 boxes are the two main outputs. So at the top left 1

th ere are the results from an engineering analysis, 2

so these are the baseline, and the higher 3

efficiency prices for all the devices. There are 4

then markups, or however we characterize it, some 5

kind of additional costs that are added to those 6

materials cost to arrive at equipment prices. 7

There is a question right now. 8

MR. BROOKMAN: Yes, please. 9

MR. A. GOLDBERG: I’m sort of curious that 10

the total installed

-- how does this sort of 11

analysis deal with subscription costs. Some boxes 12

are sold wi th a monthl y subscription which, I mean 13

it’s sort of arbitrary whether the cost of the box 14

is in the cost of the box or a monthly service 15

charge. 16

MR. BENOIT

- DESROCHES: So the LCC is 17

conducted over the full life

- time of the device, so 18

if the equipment price is annu alized over several 19

years, then it’ll just be added as part of that 20

analysis. 21

MR. A. GOLDBERG: So TiVo sells a box for 22

a price with a monthly subscription cost. I 23

suppose I could sell that box for $100 less and 24

charge a dollar more a month. I could se ll it for 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 200 $200 more and charge $2.00 less a month or 1

something. Where does that fit in

-- because the 2

monthly cost is a service charge and includes a lot 3

more than just the box, right. So how can you 4

account for that in this sort of analysis. It’s 5

not

- - the monthly fee is not anything that I can 6

easily put into one of those boxes. 7

MR. BENOIT

- DESROCHES: So that goes back 8

to what we were talking before about the markups 9

and how the costs are passed on to consumers. DOE 10

is interested in the equipment c ost, and so if 11

that’s folded into a monthly charge that includes 12

both, you know, partially annualized equipment 13

cost, but also content cost, as part of this 14

analysis we’re interested in the equipment cost, 15

and so we would need to look at some data to show 16

what percentage of that monthly charge is for the 17

equipment. 18

MR. BROOKMAN: Charlie Stephens. 19

MR. STEPHENS: Charlie Stephens. I’ll try 20

and explain that a little differently and that is, 21

you would have to make a case that the more 22

efficient box would require a different monthly 23

subscription cost than the less efficient box, or 24

would it be the same regardless of how you charge 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 201 it. So the real key is agreeing what the cost of 1

the box is in the base case, and then looking at 2

how that changes with each ef ficiency level and 3

unless you can make a case that this new box, 4

because it’s more efficient comes with a different 5

monthly service cost, I presume that DOE might 6

assume that the subscription cost stays the same 7

and the box price changes. 8

MR. A. GOLDBE RG: I’m sorry, so I’m being 9

required to supply some information of some sort? 10

MR. STEPHENS: Not necessarily. They’ll 11

guess at it, I guess, if you don’t. I mean they 12

have to come up with some estimate of what the box 13

cost is at the base case. That’s t he engineering 14

analysis that we discussed before lunch. 15

MR. A. GOLDBERG: Good luck. 16

MR. BENOIT

- DESROCHES: So just to wrap up 17

this slide, again, at the bottom there, there are 18

other inputs including the energy use 19

characterization which is described l ater. It’s 20

also described by an input distribution. We also 21

model energy prices and that’s

-- I’ll discuss that 22

in a bit more detail afterwards. 23

If applicable, the LCC analysis will 24

include any kind of repair or maintenance cost over 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 202 the lifetime of th e Set

- Top Box, and you get 1

intermediate output, which is the annual operating 2

expense, and I’ll discuss in a bit more detail the 3

lifetime assumptions that are used. There is a 4

discount rate that’s applied to all future costs 5

and savings, and there’s also an incorporation of 6

future energy price trends. And all of those 7

inputs give a lifetime operating expense for the 8

device. And the combination of the equipment cost 9

and lifetime operating expenses discounted to a 10

given year, is the life cycle cost of the device. 11

And the comparison between the base case and any 12

standards case gives the changes that would

-- the 13

potential economic impact from an energy 14

conservation standard. 15

So just a quick word on some of these 16

inputs. The energy prices, we use electric ity 17

prices developed by the Energy Information 18

Administration’s annual energy outlook that 19

characterizes all the electricity costs. The costs 20

are available for 13 regions, so as part of the 21

full Monte Carlo simulation and description of all 22

the variabilit y in the general user population, we 23

use a variety of electricity rates to characterize 24

this. 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 203 At this time, DOE welcomes any comment on 1

the proposed methodology of using energy prices 2

from the A EO

. 3

MR. BROOKMAN: Any additional inputs, 4

comments on ener gy prices? I see none. 5

MR. BENOIT

- DESROCHES: And also just the 6

clarify, the AEO provides future electricity 7

prices, so we use their forecasts. 8

The life cycle cost analysis includes 9

discount rates to determine the present value of 10

all future costs and savings to a given year. DOE 11

typically uses a distribution, again, of discount 12

rates in the residential sector. These 13

distributions are developed by estimating the 14

weighted average cost of capital for the 15

residential consumers and as is interpreted in t his 16

analysis, the discount here represents the 17

financial cost, but the as to manufacturing 18

represents the financial cost of any debt that is 19

incurred to purchase products with an increased 20

price as a result of the standard. It also 21

represents the opportun ity cost of any equity used 22

to purchase products that have an increased price 23

as a result of an energy conservation standard. 24

DOE typically uses, from the Federal 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 204 Reserve Board, the survey of consumer finances to 1

determine what the full range of debt in asset 2

classes is for residential consumers, as well as 3

the distribution of

-- and the shares of those debt 4

and asset classes in the residential sector. It 5

also determines the appropriate interest rates to 6

use for all of those. And so at the end of the da y 7

there’s a full distribution of discount rates that 8

are used to characterize the residential sector. 9

At this time DOE welcomes any comments and 10

proposed approaches for estimating discount rates. 11

MR. BROOKMAN: Paul. 12

MR. GLIST: You recognize that th is is 13

designed for purchase by a consumer of a durable 14

and so how would you adjust it for application to a 15

service provider’s pricing on a lease plus service 16

basis? 17

MR. BENOIT

- DESROCHES: That is an 18

excellent question. That has not been fully 19

developed. 20

MR. N. GOLDBERG: Where the box can be 21

returned. 22

MR. BROOKMAN: Neal. 23

MR. N. GOLDBERG: And substituted. 24

MR. BROOKMAN: Yes, Neal. 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 205 MR. N. GOLDBERG: Where the box can be 1

returned if there’s a newer model or it breaks and 2

substituted by the servi ce provider at no cost, at 3

least for the swap. 4

MR. BROOKMAN: Can either of you say how a 5

discount rate model would be adapted or morphed 6

into something that would work for those 7

applications? 8

MR. GLIST: I don’t know at this time. 9

MR. BROOKMAN: Oka y. Thank you. Andrew 10

DeLaski. 11

MR. DeLASKI: If the owner of the box is 12

the cable company, use the cable company’s cost of 13

capital. I mean it’s different for TiVo , the TiVo 14

box is owned by the customer, as Adam described for 15

us. The question is who ow ns the box. It’s their 16

cost of capital. That’s what you want, so again, 17

this is a generic spot where I think how things are 18

typically done. In this case, as you’ve heard 19

before, is different and you need to find the cost 20

of capital of the owner of the b ox. 21

MR. BROOKMAN: Okay. Let’s keep going. 22

MR. BENOIT

- DESROCHES: DOE also takes into 23

account any installation, maintenance and repair 24

costs as part of this life cycle cost analysis. 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 206 DOE currently does not have any information that 1

installation, main tenance or repair costs are 2

different for more efficient Set

- Top Boxes, so we’d 3

appreciate any comment and data submitted on that. 4

There has been a question about Set

- Top 5

Box lifetimes. That is an input to this life cycle 6

cost analysis. DOE typically u ses information from 7

manufacturer literature

-- back up

-- 8

MR. BROOKMAN: Okay. Adam, please. Go 9

ahead. 10

MR. A. GOLDBERG: Sorry. The cost of a 11

box is partially hardware, partially allocated NRE, 12

and partially a whole bunch of licenses. I assume 13

tha t’s accounted for in some fashion? 14

MR. BENOIT

- DESROCHES: It can be, yeah. 15

MR. A. GOLDBERG: Well, okay, I recommend 16

that it seriously be, because I suspect you’ll find 17

that it’s a significant portion of the price of the 18

device. Thank you. 19

MR. BROOK MAN: Adam, I’m sure you realize 20

and everyone else in the room realizes that, 21

especially since this is a product that’s different 22

from many other standard

- setting products, that 23

your describing these things in considerable detail 24

in your written comments w ill help them and 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 2 07 ultimately get the Department closer to something 1

that you will find sensible. Right? 2

MR. A. GOLDBERG: I understand. 3

MR. BROOKMAN: Okay. Just want to be 4

clear. Keep going. 5

MR. BENOIT

- DESROCHES: So, as I was 6

saying, DOE typical ly uses information from 7

manufacturer literature or technical reports, 8

conference proceedings, expert opinion, inputs from 9

manufacturers and all interested parties on what 10

Set

- Top Box lifetimes are. Again, DOE uses a 11

distribution of lifetimes based on the available 12

data. As was mentioned already, DOE is aware that 13

the lifetime of a Set

- Top Box can be influenced by 14

equipment returns and refurbishments, and that will 15

need to be incorporated into estimating the 16

appropriate Set

- Top Box lifetime. 17

So at thi s time DOE welcomes any comment 18

on Set

- Top Box lifetimes and how returns and 19

refurbishments should be handled. 20

MR. BROOKMAN: Gary. 21

MR. LANGILLE: Just a comment that it’s to 22

my knowledge that most service providers have a 23

fairly large return rate, mea ning, you know, people 24

switch providers often, return rates of one to two 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 208 percent per month are common, so a lot of equipment 1

comes back to the service provider, gets cleaned 2

up. I guess the term remanufactured is used 3

sometimes, although that may be an e xaggeration, 4

and sent out to a new subscriber. So I just want 5

to make sure that DOE is aware that that’s the way 6

that the industry works, and in certain times, 7

depending on your performance of adding subscribers 8

or losing subscribers, you can have quite a bit of 9

remanufactured equipment. So it should be 10

considered. 11

MR. BROOKMAN: Jeremy. 12

MR. DOMMU: Absolutely, and again, please 13

provide information that could help us with that 14

analysis in terms of what those turn rates are and 15

what the retirements are , and the useful life, and 16

we’ll be able to build it into our analysis. 17

MR. BROOKMAN: Yes, Noah. 18

MR. HOROWITZ: I’ll be very quick. And 19

then it would be good for DOE to make explicitly 20

clear if those boxes that are redeployed, whether 21

they’re tweaked a little bit or a lot, if and when 22

that might constitute a new box that would be 23

covered by the regulation or not. 24

MR. BENOIT

- DESROCHES: I’m sorry, I didn’t 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 209 have the thing on. 1

MR. DOMMU: For the record, the question 2

was would redeployed boxes and whether they’re 3

modified a little bit or a lot, subject them to 4

regulation. 5

MR. BROOKMAN: Thank you. Okay. 6

**Shipments Analysis** 7

MR. BENOIT

- DESROCHES: So the next stage 8

of the analysis is the shipments analysis. The 9

purpose of the shipments analysis i s to estimate 10

future shipments for both a base case and the 11

standards case. The shipment model typically 12

relies on a variety of data sources, and more is 13

better. DOE typically uses manufacturer or 14

industry data to do a shipments analysis. It also 15

uses n ational market research reports, and any 16

national energy use surveys, and any other data 17

that can be used to determine future shipments. 18

DOE typically uses an accounting 19

methodology, whereby new shipments are generally 20

driven by one of three effects, new installations 21

or the construction of new homes, and so in this 22

case it would be Set

- Top Boxes that are installed 23

in new homes, and there’s a housing projection out 24

of the Energy Information Administration’s annual 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 210 energy outlook that is used for this purp ose. And 1

also replacements when devices fail and the devices 2

are replaced in the field, and also retrofits or 3

early replacements of devices that are replaced 4

before they have failed. 5

We recognize, again, that this is a unique 6

product, and so there’s a nother option that DOE can 7

use, which is an option

-- a model that is driven 8

by total forecasting growth. This shipments model 9

is much more of a top

- down model. It’s not 10

primarily driven by new construction, but it’s just 11

based on total shipments and is just an overall 12

industry analysis. The total shipments can then be 13

correlated to any kind of housing projections or 14

any kind of population projections and this may be 15

a more suitable methodology if the penetration of 16

Set

- Top Boxes in homes is changing rap idly. 17

And so there’s a base case shipments 18

forecast as conducted, and this is the basis for of 19

the comparisons to all of the standards scenarios. 20

This is a situation that depicts no energy 21

conservation standards. It includes the current 22

and forecasted mix of all Set

- Top Box efficiencies 23

that are in the market, in the absence of new 24

regulation, and if the market share by efficiency 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 211 is projected to change without the adoption of 1

energy conservation standards, that is included in 2

the base case. And DOE, a gain, typically will rely 3

on the best available data and market trends to 4

determine these market share efficiencies. 5

The data requirements obviously are 6

historical shipments that need to be broken down by 7

the product classes, and the particular market 8

sh are efficiency data are required in order to 9

properly analyze any trends in efficiency. 10

DOE then does a standards case for Set

- Top 11

Box shipments, and it’s very similar to the base 12

case and it uses the same data. The standards 13

forecast can include two ef fects. One is a non

14

interactive effect in which, for example, if 15

increased device costs cause an overall reduction 16

in shipments, that can be included as part of the 17

standards case analysis. And similarly, if 18

increased device cost cause a shift in the pro duct 19

class market shares, that is also included in the 20

shipments analysis, and that’s known as an 21

interactive effect. And DOE also considers any 22

impact from market pool programs. 23

So at this time DOE welcomes any 24

recommendations on data sources for the s hipments 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 212 analysis by product class. And DOE also welcomes 1

comment on the methodologies for conducting the 2

shipments analysis and how

-- any how any potential 3

standard for Set

- Top Boxes might impact these 4

shipments or the relative market share between 5

prod uct classes. 6

MR. BROOKMAN: Comments? Data sources, 7

shipment forecasts, methodologies? How any can 8

affect shipments

-- please. Your name. 9

MS. SANFORD: Jen Sanford with Cisco. I 10

have a clarification question about what’s included 11

in your base case. You were saying that if there 12

were existing efficiencies that are in the market 13

that would be included in the base case. So, for 14

example, Energy Star compliant boxes will be 15

included in the base case, is that correct? 16

MR. BENOIT

- DESROCHES: Yes, that’ s 17

correct. Any existing programs that are known to 18

be coming into effect will be included in the base 19

case, and any trends in the market based on 20

efficiency will be included in the base case. 21

MS. SANFORD: And can you give an example 22

of what a market pu ll program is? 23

MR. BENOIT

- DESROCHES: Like Energy Star. 24

MS. SANFORD: Okay. Thanks. 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 213 MR. BROOKMAN: Additional comments on 1

issue 38, 39, and 40? Okay. 2

**National Impact Analysis** 3

MR. BENOIT

- DESROCHES: The national impact 4

analysis is the second maj or analysis that is 5

conducted in support of energy conservation 6

standards, and the two main outputs of the national 7

impacts analysis are the total national energy 8

savings that are projected, and the net present 9

value of the economic benefits of those savin gs. 10

The national impact analysis is an 11

assessment of the aggregate national impacts of any 12

potential energy conservation standard on each of 13

the different product classes. And it’s the total 14

impact on consumers. And so the national impact 15

analysis uses LCC results as an input and scales it 16

to include the entire nation. The difference 17

between base case scenarios and standard case 18

scenarios give rise to a difference in increased 19

equipment expenditures and annual bill savings, and 20

the difference between t hose two is the net present 21

value. 22

This is just a flow diagram of calculation 23

of the national energy savings and the shipments 24

analysis feeds into both the base case scenario and 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 214 all the standards case scenarios. DOE typically 1

uses a 30 year period to do its analysis and that 2

has been constant for all the rulemakings, and 30 3

years is used to help compare across different 4

rulemakings. And so why the year is indicated here 5

from 2 019 and 2048. 6

And so in both cases the annual energy 7

consumption is calcu lated and estimated for all the 8

years and then a cumulative energy use is 9

calculated for both the base case and the standards 10

case. This energy use is a site electricity use, 11

so it’s energy use in the home. DOE then converts 12

this site electricity use int o a source, primary 13

energy use, so this is the energy that is used by 14

the utilities to generate that electricity, and 15

furthermore, full fuel cycle effects are considered 16

as well. And so these are all the extra energy 17

costs that are needed to extract the p rimary fuel 18

for the utilities. And so that gives a total 19

primary energy use calculation for both the 20

standards case and the base case. And the 21

difference between those is the national energy 22

savings of any potential energy conservation 23

standard. 24

This i s a flow diagram of the consumer 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 215 economic impacts to calculate the net present 1

value. So again, the shipments analysis feeds into 2

both the base case scenarios and all the standards 3

case scenarios, and then there are equipment costs, 4

maintenance and repair costs, and energy costs. 5

And so on the one side you will have over the 20 6

year period, a cumulative operating savings as a 7

result of potential energy conservation standards, 8

but you also have a cumulative equipment cost, 9

increases as a result of potentia l energy 10

conservation standards. And then both of those are 11

discounted to the present year, and the difference 12

is the net present value. And in this case a 13

positive value indicates a net consumer benefit. 14

So as I’ve said before, DOE typically uses 15

a 30 year period to conduct the national impact 16

analysis, and there are several examples of these 17

calculations on the DOE website, and the 18

spreadsheets are made. 19

MR. BROOKMAN: Comment, Tom. 20

MR. ECKMAN: Yeah, given the expected 21

lifetime of these and the r egularity of an update 22

cycle going forward, even if they enter the market 23

-- say they’re something on the order of a five to 24

seven year product, I don’t know what it is, but 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 216 something on that order, to go forward 30 years, 1

you go through multiple cycles of this. It seems 2

that’s a pretty extended period to look at the 3

impacts of this, given that there’s another 4

regulatory impact five to six years after that that 5

might change the standard, so even maybe 10 to 20 6

years might be the outside of the impact of th is 7

particular regulation. 8

MR. BROOKMAN: Thank you. Yeah, John. 9

MR. HERRICK: Yes, could you explain the 10

national energy savings spreadsheet for standard 11

rulemakings, what that consists of? 12

MR. BROOKMAN: Which slide are you on, 13

John? 14

MR. HERRICK: Number 41. 15

MR. BENOIT

- DESROCHES: Yeah, this one. 16

Yes, that is

-- should be rewritten. DOE uses a 17

national impact analysis spreadsheet that is 18

typically fairly similar for all the different 19

products, and that’s what that comment is referring 20

to. And so you can go to the DOE website to see 21

examples of such spreadsheets. 22

MR. BROOKMAN: Adam. 23

MR. A. GOLDBERG: If I’m going to go 24

searching for the spreadsheet, what do I search 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 217 for? Where do I find it? 1

MR. DOMMU: This is Jeremy. You could e

2

mail me and I’ll be happy to provide you examples. 3

MR. BROOKMAN: Yes. John. 4

MR. HERRICK: John Herrick, again. But 5

what does that spreadsheet

-- does that

-- what 6

does it do? 7

MR. BENOIT

- DESROCHES: It is the full 30 8

year analysis, and so it’ll have a s tandards 9

scenario and then it’ll have a base scenario, and 10

it’ll include all the shipments inputs and things 11

like that to that spreadsheet, and have all the 12

costs, annualized costs, and savings, and so you’ll 13

see the effect over three years. 14

MR. BROOKMAN : Neal. 15

MR. N. GOLDBERG: Is it Set

- Top Box 16

specific, or is this just your general spreadsheet? 17

MR. BENOIT

- DESROCHES: This will be Set

18

Top Box specific. It’s just that the format tends 19

to be used for all the different rulemakings. 20

MR. BROOKMAN: G o ahead, John. 21

MR. HERRICK: Yes, I think a theme coming 22

out of this meeting is, this isn’t just a garden 23

variety type of product. It’s kind of unique, and 24

I’m wondering, is there formulas in that 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 218 spreadsheet that are universal across all 1

appliances and that may not be

-- have a 2

relationship to Set

- Top Box. 3

MR. BENOIT

- DESROCHES: So these 4

spreadsheets are built from scratch, there’s no 5

template that’s

-- you know, we’re just putting 6

things in. But all I’m saying is they tend to 7

follow a similar format in terms of presenting the 8

results and doing this sort of 30 year aggregate 9

analysis. But it will be built specifically for 10

Set

- Top Boxes. 11

MR. BROOKMAN: Tom

-- excuse me. You’re 12

first. 13

MR. ECKMAN: Again

-- oh. 14

MS. SANFORD: Jen Sanford with Cisc o. A 15

question about whether a use of the Set

- Top Box 16

might be

-- would be taken into account in this at 17

all. For example, certain Set

- Top Boxes are being 18

used to manage energy in the home, which could 19

lower greenhouse gas emissions. Is that taken into 20

a ccount or are we just looking at the life cycle 21

cost and impacts of the device itself, but not how 22

it’s used, per se? 23

MR. BENOIT

- DESROCHES: Are you referring 24

to like home energy management systems? 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 219 MS. SANFORD: Correct, yeah. Set

- Top 1

Boxes are start ing to be used in such a way in the 2

home by the consumer. 3

MR. BENOIT

- DESROCHES: My guess is that 4

would have to be addressed specifically in that 5

product class. If there is an appreciable market 6

share for such Set

- Top Boxes, that will have to be 7

address ed in that product class only. I’m not sure 8

how we would address. 9

MR. DOMMU: I would

-- this is Jeremy. I 10

would certainly suggest that you provide 11

information or comment on if we should create a 12

specific product class for Set

- Top Boxes that also 13

integ rate energy management systems in the home. 14

MS. SANFORD: Okay. Thank you. 15

MR. BROOKMAN: We reference the comment 16

box 41. Tom Eckman. 17

MR. ECKMAN: As I recall from prior 18

rulemakings, typically what you try and deal with 19

here is one product cycle a nd track it through its 20

full lifetime. So in the last year of the life of 21

this product cycle, you extend those products 22

entering that to the end of their lifetime, and 23

then that’s the

-- 24

MR. BROOKMAN: With a decline rate. 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 220 MR. ECKMAN: With a decline rate, and once 1

they’ve left, that’s the end of the analysis, 2

because you’re looking at the impact of this 3

particular rulemaking. So that might be ten years 4

to 14 or 15 years, as opposed to 30. But that’s 5

more likely

-- I think that’s been the analytical 6

framework, that it’s one product cycle. 7

MR. BROOKMAN: Okay. For those of you 8

that are looking ahead to slide 89, the many 9

chevrons that you see at the bottom of that slide, 10

life cycle, manufacturer impact, utility impact, 11

employment impact, emissions a nalysis, monetization 12

of emissions and regulatory impact analysis

-- we 13

can go through these rather rapidly, so don’t be 14

discouraged. We’re nearing the end here, right. 15

MR. BENOIT

- DESROCHES: We are, yes. 16

MR. BROOKMAN: Okay. So press on. 17

MR. BENOI T

- DESROCHES: So again, so the 18

life cycle cost and the national impact analysis

-- 19

those are the two main analysis outputs and the 20

national energy savings and the national net 21

present value are two key metrics that are used as 22

part of those

-- those seven factors that Jeremy 23

described in the very beginning, the seven factors 24

that the Secretary must consider. 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 221 **Downstream Analyses** 1

These at the bottom here are generally 2

referred to as the downstream analyses and they 3

attempt to look at impacts of very speci fic 4

subgroups or to assess very specific effects from 5

potential energy conservation standards. 6

The life cycle subgroup analysis is an 7

analysis on subgroups of consumers and these are 8

subgroups that may be disproportionately affected 9

by a potential ener gy conservation standard as 10

compared with the general user population. So 11

examples of such subgroups may include low income 12

households or seniors. The methodology is 13

basically to extend the LCC analysis but just to 14

vary the initial inputs and make them more 15

representative of these subgroups. 16

Then there’s the manufacturing impact 17

analysis. This is an analysis that assesses the 18

impacts of potential energy conservation standard 19

on manufacturers. And if you recall from the very 20

beginning, this is one of the key factors that must 21

be considered as part of any energy conservation 22

standard. 23

PARTICIPANT: You need an acronym. 24

MR. BENOIT

- DESROCHES: Yeah. It will also 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 222 consider impacts on any manufacturer subgroups that 1

may be disproportionately affected. It also 2

examines the impact of cumulative regulatory 3

burden. DOE typically uses a model to analyze 4

industry cash flow and net present value, and this 5

model is known as the government regulatory impact 6

model. And there’s also, as we’ve discussed 7

earlier, manufacturer interviews that are used to 8

refine and push this model, and to assess any 9

qualitative or other issues that are important to 10

manufacturers. 11

And the main outputs here are industry net 12

present value, impacts, subgroup impacts, and 13

direct employ ment impacts, where direct employment 14

here refers to employment impacts at manufacturers 15

directly affected by energy conservation standards. 16

The utility impact analysis assesses the 17

impact on utilities as a result of potential energy 18

conservation standar ds. DOE typically uses a model 19

known as the national energy modeling system, which 20

is developed by the Energy Information 21

Administration, and DOE uses a slightly tweaked 22

version known as NEMS

- BT, which allows it to 23

analyze and generate forecasts that devi ate from 24

the annual energy outlook reference case. And this 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 223 allows DOE to assess the impact on utility and 1

their forecast electricity generation and avoid a 2

capacity as a result of new standards. 3

There’s also an employment impact 4

analysis, and this asse sses the overall impact on 5

national employment as a result of energy 6

conservation standards. Includes both direct and 7

indirect, and as I just mentioned, the direct 8

employment impact is assessed as part of the 9

manufacturing impact analysis. Indirect impac ts 10

includes two main effects. One is the substitution 11

effect. If the cost of a device is going up, then a 12

consumer’s overall household expenses may be 13

shifting from different goods and services. That 14

may result in some indirect employment impacts, 15

that’s considered. And there’s also an overall 16

income effect, if, over the life cycle of the 17

devices the consumer is saving money, then they’re 18

income level is changing and that effect is 19

analyzed. DOE typically uses this model known as 20

the impact of sector en ergy’s model to model the 21

evaluation of indirect employment impacts. 22

The emission analysis looks at the 23

environmental impacts of potential standards, and 24

in particular the emissions of several key gases. 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 224 DOE uses outputs from the utility impact analysis 1

in the same model, the NEMS

- BT model, and these are 2

the primary emissions that are analyzed. So there 3

are CO2 emissions, mercury emissions, nitrogen 4

oxide emissions. And in certain states there is 5

existing legislation for nitrogen oxide emissions 6

in some states as well as sulfur dioxide, and at 7

this time DOE does not

-- DOE assumes that any 8

impact from new energy conservation standards from 9

those emissions are zero because of existing 10

legislation and caps. So the primary focus here is 11

on carbon dioxide a nd nitrogen oxide in those 12

states that are not covered. 13

This is a

-- this will be a full fuel 14

cycle analysis, and the emissions analysis here 15

will also include a monetization of these 16

emissions. The monetization values are based on an 17

interagency review process that has been ongoing 18

for several years now, and it includes a panel of 19

technical experts and participants from many 20

different agencies. It reviews the current, most 21

up to date technical and scientific literature to 22

obtain the best values that ar e associated with 23

emissions of these gases. DOE recognizes that 24

there’s considerable uncertainty and so the 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 225 monetization values

-- there’s a range of 1

monetization values that are used as part of this 2

analysis. 3

MR. BROOKMAN: John. 4

MR. HERRICK: Does D OE consider this the 5

compliance with the NEPA, the National 6

Environmental Policy Act compliance? This is the 7

analysis for that particular regulatory scheme? 8

MR. BENOIT

- DESROCHES: Do you know the 9

answer to that? 10

MS. SHER: I don’t. I don’t know the 11

a nswer to that. 12

MR. BROOKMAN: Thank you, Celia. Okay. 13

MR. BENOIT

- DESROCHES: And then finally, 14

there’s a regulatory impact analysis. This is to 15

investigate the impacts of any non

- regulatory 16

alternatives to reducing energy, and improving 17

energy effi ciency. And so examples of such non

18

regulatory alternatives include rebates, tax 19

credits, voluntary efficiency targets, any kind of 20

early replacement or bulk procurement. The 21

methodology is just to revise the national impact 22

analysis spreadsheet and to c hange the inputs. And 23

the output is, again, the national energy savings, 24

and the net present value of all these non

- 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 226 regulatory alternatives. 1

And so, at this time, DOE welcomes 2

feedback on any of these downstream analyses. 3

MR. BROOKMAN: Any comments o n the 4

downstream analyses? With no comments, now is 5

another time when any individual that wishes to do 6

so can make closing remarks, raise any additional 7

issues that you think have not been vetted 8

sufficiently appropriate with this stage of the 9

meeting pro cess. Any closing final remarks? 10

Nothing additional at this time? Then back to 11

Jeremy Dommu. 12

MR. DOMMU: I would just make one point 13

that the goal here is to model as accurately as 14

possible what the impacts of a potential energy 15

conservation standard would be, both on energy 16

consumption, and on the economy. So as we went 17

through, I think it was very helpful for us to hear 18

impacts that a standard could potentially have so 19

we could include it in the model. So the more

-- 20

again, the more information you provide us on what 21

potential impacts could be, the more we could 22

include it in our model so as accurately as 23

possible we could analyze what those impacts would 24

be as we consider conservation standards. So I 25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 227 appreciate all of the input that we’ve had at 1

t oday’s meeting, and I welcome you to continue to 2

provide the written comments in this comment period 3

in response to the RFI, provide us the data that 4

we’re requesting, and we are available to answer 5

any questions that you may have. So thank you all 6

very m uch. 7

MR. BENOIT

- DESROCHES: There’s that slide 8

there. 9

MR. DOMMU: Yes. And here is the 10

information to provide us that feedback. 11

MR. BROOKMAN: So for my part, I thank you 12

all. We had a very productive meeting, really 13

covered a lot of ground, and yo u all are both smart 14

and patient, appreciate that. I’ve handed out the 15

evaluation form, and thanks for coming and now this 16

meeting is officially adjourned. 17

(Whereupon, at 3 :3 0 p.m., the meet ing in 18

the above captioned matter was adjourned .) 19

20

21

22

23

24

25Executive Court Reporters (301) 565

- 0064 228 **REP ORTER'S CERTIFICATE** 

This is to certify that the attached proceedings

before:

**U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY**

In the Matter of:

**FRAMEWORK PUBLIC MEETING**  **ON SET**  **- TOP BOXES AND NETWORK EQUIPMENT** 
Were held as herein appears and that this is the

orig inal transcript thereof for the file of the

Department, Commission, Board, Administrative Law

Judge or the Agency.

Further, I am neither counsel for or related to

any party to the above proceedings.

Official Reporter 

### Wendy Greene

Da ted: February 1, 2012