Set up Windows so that it automatically shuts down every night.

Every other night or so, I used to leave my computer on after I went to bed and I wouldn’t notice it until the next evening after I got home from work. That is, until I told it to shut down automatically at two in the morning each night. Here’s how to do it on a Windows PC (it’s really easy):

1. Click Start, and then click Control Panel.
2. Click Performance and Maintenance, and then click Scheduled Tasks.
3. Double-click Add Scheduled Task. The Scheduled Task Wizard starts.
4. Click Next.
5. Under Click the program you want Windows to run, click Browse.
6. In the Select Program to Schedule dialog box, locate the C:\WINDOWS\System32 folder, locate and click the Shutdown.exe file, and then click Open.
7. Under Perform this task, specify a name for the task and how frequently you want this task to run, and then click Next.
8. Under Select the time and day you want this task to start, specify a start time and date for the task, and then click Next.
9. Type the user name and password to run this task under, and then click Next, and then click Finish.
10. In the Scheduled Tasks window, right click on your new task and choose Properties. Select the Settings tab, then check the box that says “Wake the computer to run this task,” then click OK.

That’s it. It’s done. So what do you get out of that? Let’s say your computer uses 80 watts per hour, and your monitor when receiving no signal eats 5 watts an hour (these are rough average estimates). So, every hour your computer is off when it would have just been sitting idle saves 75 watts or so. Now, let’s say that every other night, you forget to turn off your computer and you don’t notice it until you come home from work the next day. That’s about 20 hours of unused energy, or an average of 10 hours a day. Over a year, that’s 3650 hours unused – a lot of time.

Multiplying 3650 hours by 75 watts gets you a big number, about 273.75 kilowatt-hours. An average eletric bill charges about $0.10 per kilowatt-hour, so multiplying $0.10 by 273.75 gets you the amount of money you put right in your pocket just for doing this simple task once and forgetting about it. Thus, over a given year, this tactic can save you about $27.

Even better, this tactic combines very well with a SmartStrip as described in the first tip. If your computer automatically shuts down at 2 AM, so will everything else plugged into the SmartStrip.