Lax Government smart meter rules could waste over 20MW through in-home displays.
That is the continuous output of seven or more wind turbines, and ignores additional wastage from the electricity meter and in-home communication hub.
At the heart of the issue lies requirements in a document published by Ofgem and the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC).
Appendix 1.43 of Smart Metering Implementation Programme: Statement of Design Requirements, states that "The IHD shall support mains power operation", and that: "The average IHD power consumption shall be less than 0.6W."
0.6W average power dissipation is an over-generous allowance for equipment that will be installed by the million and may run for 20 years.
This could be cut to 100mW and still be generous, providing manufacturers use today's technology, rather than that of two years ago.
Mains power no-longer needs to squander energy.
Next year, following an EU code of conduct signed by Nokia and Samsung amongst others, mains chargers for most phones will dissipate less than 30mW no-load to win five stars.
"In our experience the market is fully signing up for five star designs, not only for higher end products but as the new standard for the volume market," v-p marketing at mains power chip firm CamSemi Mark Muegge told Electronics Weekly. "Within the next year we would expect <30mW to become the norm."
And these deliver several Watts of power to the load.
From 100mW, even at a conservative 70% efficiency, a five star power supply will still deliver 50mW.
Surely 50mW is more than enough for the IHD microcontroller, crypto engine, LCD, and home area network interface, as well as occasional backlight use.
A saving of 500mW across 40 million IHDs is 20MW average.
And these back-of-an envelope calculations ignore the rest of the power DECC/Ofgem has allocated for each smart meter installation.
"We propose a functional requirement to limit the average power consumption of any mandated equipment in the consumer premise to 2.6W total," said the statement of design requirements. "This has been set in line with the values used in the updated impact assessment and is intended to ensure that the energy savings attributable to the installation of smart meters are not outweighed by the additional 'smart' burden."
There could be 1-2W of saving there - up to 80MW worth of carbon not going up chimneys every second.
Smart meter systems installed in the next few years are going to be there for many years.
Rather than give hardware designers easy targets now, and sign-up for at two decades of multi-MW extravagance; why not challenge them now and reap the benefits later.