One subtle move you can make is adjusting your monitor’s brightness by playing with the levels until you find the minimal acceptable brightness for your work. The Saving Energy blog found that reducing a flat panel monitor’s brightness from 100 to 0 shaved 12 watts off of the energy use, with an almost identical reduction with CRT monitors.
My monitor, by default, had brightness set at 80, so I started playing around with it until I found a brightness level that worked for me – 25 (this took a lot of experimentation over a number of days). Assuming this relationship is correct, this saves me 7 watts per active hour of use. If I use my monitor nine hours a day with this new setting, I’m saving 23 kilowatt hours each year, or $2.30 per year, for an adjustment I’m completely comfortable with. Even a reduction in brightness of 8, which would save 1 watt, would save 3.285 kilowatt hours per year, or $0.33.
These really add up.
Using these adjustments (at least, the ones that applied best to my situation), I spent about $100 on equipment but shaved about $70 per year of electrical use off of my computer. Over five years, that’s a net gain of $250 – and it’s for changes I basically don’t notice.
How green is it? That $350 in energy savings represents 3,500 kilowatt-hours. Each kilowatt-hour, on average, produces about 2 pounds of CO2 (averaging the numbers I found from a pile of different sources). Thus, these moves not only saved me a net of $350, it also prevented three and a half tons of CO2 emissions. That’s change I can definitely appreciate.
Bonus Tip: Read a book.
For those of you who get most of your information online, why not take a night or two a week, leave the computer off, and instead read a book? You can check one out for free at your local library and there’s absolutely no energy use involved other than a light bulb over your head (which you’d likely have on anyway). There are so many amazing fiction and nonfiction works out there that there’s guaranteed to be something out there that will engross your mind. Take advantage of it. If you can’t think of anything else to read, try The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami – it’s sublime, fun, and will make you think.
My monitor, by default, had brightness set at 80, so I started playing around with it until I found a brightness level that worked for me – 25 (this took a lot of experimentation over a number of days). Assuming this relationship is correct, this saves me 7 watts per active hour of use. If I use my monitor nine hours a day with this new setting, I’m saving 23 kilowatt hours each year, or $2.30 per year, for an adjustment I’m completely comfortable with. Even a reduction in brightness of 8, which would save 1 watt, would save 3.285 kilowatt hours per year, or $0.33.
These really add up.
Using these adjustments (at least, the ones that applied best to my situation), I spent about $100 on equipment but shaved about $70 per year of electrical use off of my computer. Over five years, that’s a net gain of $250 – and it’s for changes I basically don’t notice.
How green is it? That $350 in energy savings represents 3,500 kilowatt-hours. Each kilowatt-hour, on average, produces about 2 pounds of CO2 (averaging the numbers I found from a pile of different sources). Thus, these moves not only saved me a net of $350, it also prevented three and a half tons of CO2 emissions. That’s change I can definitely appreciate.
Bonus Tip: Read a book.
For those of you who get most of your information online, why not take a night or two a week, leave the computer off, and instead read a book? You can check one out for free at your local library and there’s absolutely no energy use involved other than a light bulb over your head (which you’d likely have on anyway). There are so many amazing fiction and nonfiction works out there that there’s guaranteed to be something out there that will engross your mind. Take advantage of it. If you can’t think of anything else to read, try The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami – it’s sublime, fun, and will make you think.
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