To reduce the power consumption of optical network units (ONUs), we propose a dual buffer architecture and control schemes for short-time shaping and frame loss prevention. The dual-buffer architecture uses a small-capacity buffer to shut down a large capacity buffer, which is always active in a conventional architecture. The short-time shaping scheme minimizes the architecture overhead by cooperative operation with the optical line terminal (OLT). The frame-loss-prevention scheme is a fail-safe scheme for the cooperative operation. Simulations and experiments show that our proposed approach reduces ONU power consumption without frame loss even while the ONU continuously receives traffic such as video. © 2011 IEEE.