The concept of energy saving and efficiency in South Africa has been the cause of contentious debates over the last decade. While the economy has made rapid strides since the dawn of the ‘new South Africa’, and the subsequent role of the country being named amongst one of the most developed nations in Africa, South Africa’s energy woes are still a thorny subject. Since the dawn of the new South Africa, the energy sector has played a critical role to the country’s economic stability.
This fact was further cemented when the country faced its “darkest” period in history, load shedding! It was in January 2008 when the South African electricity public utility, Eskom, introduced “load shedding”, a series of rolling blackouts based on a rotating schedule, in periods where short supply threatens the integrity of the grid. This came about as a result of the constrained electricity system due to the margin between peak demand and available electricity supply being very small. Load shedding was amongst the numerous measures employed to alleviate pressure on an already weakened system.
Lowering the demand for energy is only but a single action consumers can take in order to reduce the risk. Another way is to simply make smarter choices when purchasing household appliances, particularly when it comes to television sets. TVs are considered one of the costliest items in any home especially because many households own more than one. According to Statistics South Africa’s General Household Survey of 2014, more than eight-tenths of South African households owned television sets. This equates to a staggering 81.,5% ownership.* The situation is further worsened by the fact that consumers aren’t equally conversant to the factors which affect energy usage and what it means to own a certain type of TV set in their homes.
LG Electronics, the leading innovator of Home Entertainment products, is at the forefront of the energy saving drive. LG strives to produce quality products to best meet the needs and wants of consumers. Not only does LG deliver innovative products, the company is also dedicated to delivering industry leading energy efficient products dedicated to cutting running costs and lessening the strain on energy resources.
In early October, The Guardian published a scathing article related to the testing and certification of consumer products for energy efficiency. The article touched on recent independent lab tests which found that some industry competitor’s TVs in Europe appear to use less energy during official testing conditions than they do during real-world use. In essence, what this means is that the feature found on these TV sets is designed to fool official energy efficiency tests.
This has raised doubts over the credibility of energy efficiency tests across the board. While many consumer product manufacturers may be unmoved by such assumptions, LG, as a leading consumer electronics manufacturer is dedicated to the continued certification and testing of its products. The Korean giant is undoubtedly a top-class advocate in ensuring that the products offered under the LG stable to the market are compliant with performance and quality assurance standards.
All of LG products undergo a series of stringent product testing on a global level before releasing to the retail market. From a local perspective, LG also ensures that all products manufactured locally undergo similar stringent testing thereby retaining the much-needed balance. By ensuring its products pass these rigorous tests set by energy efficient governing bodies, LG is in a better position to relish applause from its customer base which is more likely to lead to unrelenting customer loyalty.
The benefits of testing a product before it is ready to enter the consumer market are extensive. Of grave importance, a product needs to be acceptable for its target market, not to mention that it has to meet quality expectations in order to sell at all. Not only that, to achieve customer satisfaction and to make sales, products need to be able to fulfil their intended purpose and deliver on all of its promises. This forms the foundation of LG’s commitment to ensuring that features highlighted and claimed to support energy saving initiatives are not only true but are backed by independently certified tests.
Recent tests done on all of LG’s models show that at every series, LG TVs unsurpassed picture quality, attractive design, and convenient features and have successively passed all related technical compliance tests.
LG is renowned for offering cutting edge design and supreme innovation and this is evidenced by the Eco Display/Eco Mode feature found on all of LG TVs. This key setting is a permanent feature of LG TVs and not loaded onto the TVs during the product testing phase. LG’s tireless devotion to bring consumers the latest, most exciting technology on the market is evident in the brand’s meteoric rise over the last couple of years and if anything, the company is only going to enjoy an influential space in the technology space.