My esteemed tech-savvy colleague beat me to the punch Wednesday on the National Resources Defense Council report saying video game consoles burn huge holes in consumers’ electric bills, even when they sit idle.

According to the report, gamers could save themselves about $100 a year in utility costs by turning off their consoles when not in use. Particularly power-hungry are Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s PlayStation 3.

But not all consoles are idle when they’re sitting alone. PlayStation 3s are capable of joining Stanford University’s Folding@home project, a massive research effort into molecular dynamics that instead of employing a supercomputer utilizes the combined CPU energy from thousands of remote computers and PS3s to crunch numbers and perform analysis.

With Folding@home, researchers are working to find cures for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, as well as several types of cancer.

Just register for Folding@home on PlayStation 3’s main interface and say “yes” when asked to download a small processing program that runs in the background when the console is being used — and even when it’s not. Folding@home even reports back to contributors, telling them how much their system has helped contribute to the research.

Currently, only PS3s are capable of working with Folding@home. So, if you must leave the console plugged in when not gaming, sign up now and put all that unused processing power to good use.

And as for the Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii, you probably should just unplug those — until both of them find something better to do with their idle time.