Power consumption of chip on glass display

[Aggressive_Doughnut]

I was thinking about putting together a little project that would include a custom cog display in the neighborhood of 8cm x 16cm.  I want it to be battery powered, which I thought wouldn't be a problem.  With the mcu design I have I am seeing a very low average current consumption, less than 10uA (not a very intensive project).  However I saw an estimate for custom displays that said to expect ~2uA per cm^2, which would be around .3mA.  At four AA batteries (two series in parallel) you would be hard pressed to get a full year of service out of that.  The thing is, I have a desk clock with similar dimensions that has been running for over two years now on the same amount of battery.

So is that estimate right and my desk clock just happens to have the best batteries in the batch?

[amyk]

Per cm^2... of active electrode area.