Game consoles really suck up the electricity. And in 2010 most of that electricity was used by consoles when they were in idle states. 68% in fact. It turns out simple firmware updates could cut these energy costs dramatically. That would save you a ton of money in energy costs.
Energy wastage in 2010 was around 10.8 terawatt hours, or $1.24 billion. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University who have been analyzing the 2010 data suggest that auto-off or auto-standby features should be standardized to help save power. If standardized, it could make a big difference.
The Xbox 360 received an update back in May of 2011 that enabled auto-standby by default, but it’s still up to PS3 users to do it themselves. The researchers say that individually it wouldn’t mean much, but as a whole it would make a large impact.
Source Geekosystem