How to make your pc use less power
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Is your PC a power hog that increases your monthly electricity bill? It doesn’t have to be, but high powered gaming desktops often consume more power than they really should. Here’s what you can do to make your PC use less power.
Disable your screensaver
Screensavers used to protect computer monitors, but modern LED screens don’t need such protection anymore. If you use a screensaver, then basically you just have your monitor on for longer than you need to. This results in your PC consuming extra energy. If you want to cut down power consumption, disable the screensaver and then go to power options and configure your PC to switch the monitor off after a few minutes of inactivity.
Take advantage of Sleep and Hibernate
The Sleep and Hibernate modes are the for a reason. Not using them and leaving your computer on all the time increases your PC’s power consumption. You can tell your computer to automatically go to Sleep mode after a certain time of inactivity, and you should make a habit of using Hibernate whenever you’re not planning to use your PC for a while. That way you will be able to get everything back a lot faster than if you shut down.
Get an SSD
Your hard driver ads to your electricity bill. That’s because it has mechanical parts (and that’s why it’s slow too). Upgrading to a modern SSD driver will not only help you reduce your electricity bill, but will also help you speed up your computer.
PCs don’t have to be power hogs, but they often are. High-powered desktops with gaming-focused dedicated graphics hardware are the most thirsty for energy, but older PCs are typically less energy-efficient than modern ones.
This is a particular concern if you want to re-purpose an old PC as a media centre PC or home server. Depending on the price of electricity in your area, you might actually save money by buying modern, low-power-usage hardware and retiring that old hardware.
Power-Saving Tweaks
There are a variety of power-saving tips you can use to make your current PC use less power:
Don’t Use Screensavers; Just Have Your Display Power Off: Screensavers just aren’t helpful anymore. Rather than having your PC start playing a screensaver and keep its monitor on, have it automatically put the monitor into suspend mode when you’re not using it. You can still move the mouse cursor 0r touch the keyboard and immediately get back to the desktop, but the display will use almost no power in this state.
Telling Windows to turn off the display in as few minutes as possible will also help. If you step away from your computer for a few minutes, the display will automatically power off. Set the display to an appropriate brightness level for your room — if it’s brighter than it needs to be, it’s using more power than necessary.
Use Sleep and Hibernate: You shouldn’t just leave your computer on all the time. But you don’t have to shut it down when you step away and boot it back up and launch your applications when you need to use it again. Instead, just have your computer sleep or hibernate when you’re not using it. You can have your computer sleep or hibernate instead of shut down from the Start menu, or tell your computer to automatically sleep when you’re not using it. In sleep mode, your computer will use almost no power, and can return to your desktop with all your open programs in a second or two. In hibernation mode, your computer will use absolutely no power, but it’ll take a bit longer to get back to the desktop. Either way, you won’t lose any of your work, and you won’t have to leave your computer on.
If you’re in the habit of leaving your computer on to perform a long-running task like a download, use software that can intelligently manage this. For example, BitTorrent clients and other file-downloading applications often have a button you can click to automatically suspend or hibernate your computer after a download finishes.
Upgrade to an SSD: If your computer still uses an older mechanical hard drive, that drive is both slower and uses much more power than a modern, faster solid-state drive. Considerupgrading your computer to a solid-state drive to cut down on its power usage and dramatically increase overall system performance.
Other Tips: All the standard tips for increasing a laptop’s battery life apply here, too. But you won’t typically want to micromanage all these settings on a desktop PC as you would to stretch the battery life on a laptop.
Windows already does a lot of this on its own, automatically throttling your CPU to keep it at the slowest speed possible while idle and performing other power-saving tweaks, including having your computer’s hard drives sleep while idle. You can modify your power plan and power-saving settings from the Power Options control panel in Windows.
You could also unplug peripherals you don’t use much — for example, if you have a printer plugged in but use it only rarely, leave it unplugged and powered off until you need to use it.
Buy Low-Power Usage Hardware
There’s really no way around it. If you want a really low-power-usage desktop PC — perhaps you want to use it as a lightweight desktop PC, home server, or media center system — you’ll want to seek out low-power-usage hardware. Most modern hardware has thankfully become more power-efficient — with the possible exception of high-end graphics hardware. Modern CPUs can throttle themselves and use less power at idle, solid-state drives are more power efficient than magnetic drives with spinning platters, and so on.
Avoid the high-end, high-power hardware if you’re doing this. You definitely don’t want an energy-guzzling high-end graphics card from NVIDIA or AMD. Onboard, integrated graphics are the way to go and will offer dramatic power savings. Even if you aren’t doing anything demanding, those dedicated graphics cards often use quite a bit of power just at idle, much more than integrated graphics would use.
Look for “low-wattage” and “low-power” components or prebuilt PCs, which will probably come in small form factors — a PC that fits into a tiny box or even an HDMI-stick PC that fits into the palm of your hand.
If you’re wondering just how much power your current hardware uses, you can get an energy-monitoring device like the Kill-a-Wattand use it to check how much power your current hardware is using and compare it to how much power new hardware will use. Check the cost of electricity in your area and you’ll see how much money you could save by switching.
You might even consider a Raspberry Pi to power a lightweight media center or server. These ARM-based systems aren’t as powerful, but they’re inexpensive, customizable, and use a very small amount of power.
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Every October is Energy Awareness Month.
Take these steps to help reduce your energy consumption.
1. Shutdown your computer
Computers are some of the biggest energy users in office buildings. Turn your monitor off at night and ditch the screensaver. Today’s computers can be turned on and off over 40,000 times. Opting to shut down over using a screensaver does not affect your computer’s lifespan. (EnergyStar). So power down!
2. Choose the right light
LED bulbs are the most energy efficient lighting option. LED bulbs use 75% less electricity than incandescent bulbs (Energy Star). The also have no mercury, and last about 25 times longer than traditional incandescent bulbs (DoE).
3. Eliminate vampire power: unplug idle electronics.
Devices like televisions, microwaves, scanners, and printers use standby power, even when off. Some chargers continue to pull small amounts of energy, even when plugged in (a good judge of this is if a charger feels warm to the touch). In the US, the total electricity consumed by idle electronics equals the annual output of 12 power plants (EPA).
4. Use a power strip to reduce your plug load.
To avoid paying for this “vampire power,” use a power strip to turn all devices off at once. Flipping the switch on your power strip has the same effect as unplugging each socket from the wall, preventing phantom energy loss.
Even as a massive fan of mobile everything, I still spend most of my day working on my good ol’ laptop—for trolling the web, writing, keeping up on social media. And, while it has been my most important tool for years, I’m always looking for ways to use my time more efficiently.
So, here are the best resources I’ve found—from apps to browser extensions to websites—to improve on the nine things you do almost daily while sitting at your desk.
1. If You Want to Make Your Home Screen More Exciting
Instead of a stock sunset, or worse, the operating system’s boring logo, turn your display into something that’s actually useful.
Why not try displaying a retro clock, your favorite webpage (great for following the news when you don’t have time to check it), or weather info and forecasts, complete with animations to match.
2. If You Want to Clean Up Your Desktop
Admit it—your desktop often turns into the “junk drawer” of your computer, both a temporary storage space and a place for things you might want to use soon (and maybe never do). I can’t even count the amount of screenshots I take that just stay there, forever.
If you just can’t seem to get it organized, try a desktop wallpaper organizer to put all your files in their proper place. It’s a custom desktop image for your computer that helps you neatly arrange your files. They come in all kinds of styles, so you can ick your favorite and at least it’ll look like you’ve got it all together.
3. If You Want to Get What You Want Faster
Stop clicking through menu after menu to perform the same actions over and over again, and instead, harness the power of keyboard shortcuts.
For Macs, you can create shortcuts for any app’s menu commands through the system preferences. And, for Windows, you can make shortcuts to open any app in a flash.
4. If You Want to Make Your Internet Browsing More Efficient
You probably spend a lot of your computer time on the internet. Whether you’re working (or not), you can make your web time more effective and even more generous, thanks to these tab extensions.
Limitless Chrome extension helps you focus on what’s important with a smart notepad for reminders, quick access to the sites you need most, and reminders about where you’re spending your time online—plus, gorgeous photo backgrounds and inspirational quotes.
Or, instead of helping yourself, help the world with Tab for a Cause. Each time you open a new tab with this extension, between 1/10 and 1/3 cents is donated to a charity you choose. Hooray for (almost) guilt-free surfing!
5. If You Want to Stay on Track
The beauty of computers is their limitless capabilities. But, this also means they’re full of limitless distractions (talk about rabbit holes).
When you need to keep on task, try Pocket for reading without ads or links to draw you away from the text. Or, use Calmly Writer for writing without fonts, formatting, and other word processing fluff that will get you off track. Or, to be hyper effective during your “off time” too, install Social Fixer in your browser to keep your Facebook feed focused.
6. If You Want to Keep All Your Messages in One Place
If you don’t want to be swiping through your phone all day, or you want to be able to respond to important texts while working, try bringing your messaging apps together on your desktop.
Franz consolidates services like Slack, HipChat, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Google Hangouts, and Skype (and is adding new ones all the time) into one place. You can even have multiple accounts for the same app so you can easily keep your personal and your work messages separate, but still send speedy replies.
7. If You Want to Make Your Battery Last Longer
Who couldn’t use more power (and less stress looking for outlets) when you’re away from your desk? With a battery manager for your laptop, you can get the maximum output from your machine.
Windows now has a built-in Battery Saver setting to automatically control push notifications and screen brightness, while Energy Saver has similar functions for Macs.
And, to get more advanced control of your power, download BatteryCare for Windows or FruitJuice for Mac. Both provide useful stats to keep an eye on your power, including my favorite FruitJuice feature of alerts to encourage you to optimize your battery life.
8. If You Want to Merge All Your Clouds
Gone are the days of USB sticks for storing and sharing files. The cloud has streamlined that for us—but now you’re stuck wrangling multiple storage accounts and wondering where the heck you put that file you need now.
Try a service like Otixo to access all your cloud storage in one place. You can connect to every source, from Amazon Cloud to Dropbox to Google Drive to OneDrive, and others, all in one convenient place. And, you can search them all at once, plus conveniently drag and drop to instantly move files between services.
9. If You Want to Stay Safe and Secure
I know I don’t need to tell you about security basics. (Hint: Use long and complex passwords and different ones for different sites.) But I also know that beefing up online safety beyond that can be really boring to talk about.
Authy, the two-factor authentication app, makes it easy to have safer sign-ins for your most-used services like Gmail, Lastpass, Facebook, and Amazon. And it syncs easily so you can secure all your devices.
These apps and tweaks to improve your life are almost all free or take just minutes to set up. So, make the effort today so you can save yourself tons of time in the future.
Here are several methods to help cool down your computer
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Your computer contains a lot of parts, almost all of which create heat when your computer is on. Some parts, like the CPU and graphics card, can get so hot you could cook on them.
In a properly configured desktop or laptop computer, much of this heat is moved out of the computer’s case by several fans. If your computer isn’t removing the hot air fast enough, the temperature can get so hot that you risk serious damage to your PC. Needless to say, keeping your computer cool should be a top priority.
Below are 11 computer cooling solutions that anyone can do. Many are free or very inexpensive, so there’s really no excuse to let your computer overheat and cause damage.
You can test your computer’s CPU temperature if you suspect that it’s overheating and that a PC cooler or other solution is something you should look into.
Allow for Air Flow
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The easiest thing you can do to help keep your computer cool is to give it a little breathing room by removing any obstacles to airflow.
Make sure there’s nothing sitting right against any side of the computer, especially the back. Most of the hot air flows out of the back end of the computer case. There should be at least 2–3 inches open on either side and the back should be completely open and unobstructed.
If your computer is hidden away inside a desk, make sure the door isn’t closed all the time. Cool air enters from the front and sometimes from the sides of the case. If the door is closed all day, hot air tends to recycle inside the desk, getting hotter and hotter the longer the computer is running.
Run Your PC With the Case Closed
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An urban legend about desktop computer cooling is that running your computer with the case open will keep it cooler. It does seem logical—if the case is open, there would be more airflow which would help keep the computer cooler.
The missing puzzle piece here is dirt. When the case is left open, dust and debris clog the cooling fans faster than when the case is closed. This causes the fans to slow down and fail much quicker than usual. A clogged up fan does a terrible job at cooling your expensive computer components.
It’s true that running your computer with the case open might provide a small benefit at first, but the increase in fan exposure to debris has a much greater impact on temperature over the long run.
Clean Your Computer
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Photo from Amazon
The fans inside your computer are there to keep it cool. Do you know what slows a fan down and then eventually makes it stop? Dirt—in the form of dust, pet hair, etc. It all finds a way into your computer and much of it gets stuck in the several fans.
One of the most effective ways to cool your PC is to clean the internal fans. There’s a fan on top the CPU, one inside the power supply, and usually one or more on the front and/or back of the case.
Just shut your computer off, open up the case, and use canned air to remove the dirt from each fan. If your computer is really dirty, take it outside to clean or all that dirt will just settle elsewhere in the room, eventually ending up back inside your PC!
Move Your Computer
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Caiaimage / Paul Viant / Getty Images
Is the area you’re using your computer just too hot or too dirty? Sometimes your only option is to move the computer. A cooler and cleaner area of the same room might be fine, but you may have to consider moving the computer somewhere else entirely.
If moving your computer just isn’t an option, keep reading for more tips.
Moving your computer can cause damage to the sensitive parts inside if you’re not careful. Be sure to unplug everything, don’t carry too much at once, and sit things down very carefully. Your main concern will be your computer’s case which holds all the important parts like your hard drive, motherboard, CPU, etc.
Chrome isn’t the minimal web browser it once was. Originally named Chrome because it was designed to get out of your way, Chrome is no longer just a minimal browser — it’s an entire application platform.
Google’s browser seems to eat quite a bit of battery life, particularly on Macs. It’s also very memory hungry, which can hurt PCs with low amounts of RAM. Here’s how to minimize the damage.
Don’t Continue Running Background Apps
Chrome normally continues running in the background, even after you close it. If you’re on Windows, you’ll see a little Chrome icon in your system tray — it may be buried behind that arrow icon. Close all your Chrome windows and Chrome itself will still be running in the background.
if you’re trying to free up memory on a PC with a limited amount of RAM, this is a problem. It also means that Chrome will continue having an impact on your system’s battery while it’s running in the background. To really close Chrome, you could right-click the Chrome icon and select Exit Chrome.
However, unless you’ve actually installed “Chrome apps” that run in the background and need them running 24/7, you may want to disable this feature. To do so, just right-click the Chrome system tray icon and uncheck “Let Google Chrome run in the background.” When you close your Chrome browser windows, Chrome itself will shut down.
Remove Browser Extensions
It can’t be said enough — browser extensions will slow down your browser, make it take up more memory, and drain system resources. On Chrome, you can see some of the impact browser extensions have by clicking the menu icon, pointing to More tools, and selecting Task Manager. Items beginning with “Extension:” are browser extensions Chrome is running.
For example, here we can see the official Google Hangouts extension is using over 100 MB of RAM. Not only that — it’s consistently using 1 to 2 percent of the computer’s CPU, so it’s unnecessarily draining battery power as well. Uninstalling an extension like this one is a good idea, unless you really do need it.
Not every browser extension will appear in this list. Some extensions don’t run as their own processes as well. Instead, they include scripts that run when you load web pages to provide their features. Running additional scripts on every web page you load will take more CPU and thus drain your battery more.
Visit your extensions page by clicking the menu button, selecting More tools, and clicking Extensions. Uninstall extensions to make Chrome more lightweight, paying particular attention to any extensions clearly hogging resources in the task manager.
Eliminate Background Pages
If you check your Chrome Task Manager, you may see something called a “Background Page.” This is different from an extension or app. Here, we see that there’s a “Background Page: Google Drive” process consuming memory and using a bit of CPU resources.
The Google Drive background page is caused by enabling offline access to your documents in Google Drive. This spawns a background page that stays running, even when you have all Google Drive tabs closed. The background process is responsible for syncing your offline cache with Google Drive.
If you don’t actually use the offline documents feature and would rather put Chrome on a diet, you can visit the Google Drive website. go into the Settings screen, and uncheck the Offline option. The background page will vanish, but you won’t have access to your Google Drive documents offline.
Enable Click to Play Plugins
Be sure to enable click-to-play plug-ins in Chrome, too. This will prevent Adobe Flash and other plug-ins from starting up and running in the background. Your battery won’t be killed because heavy Flash advertisements are running in the background — only Flash content you specifically allow will be able to run. The same goes for other plug-ins.
To do this, open Chrome’s Settings page, click “Show advanced settings,” click “Content settings,” and choose “Let me choose when to run plugin content” under Plug-ins.
Have Less Tabs Open at Once
It can be tempting to have twenty tabs open at once, but don’t run too many tabs at once if you want to save memory — close some tabs to prevent them from using a lot of memory.
When on battery power, try to regularly trim down the number of open tabs so you don’t have a bunch of web pages running in the background. As you can see in the Task Manager, web pages running in the background could potentially be using CPU resources and draining your battery, depending on what they’re doing.
You could always bookmark them or save them to a read-it-later service like Pocket so you can come back and read those interesting web pages later.
Try a Different Browser
If Chrome isn’t doing it for you, you may want to try running another browser — especially if you have simpler needs and don’t necessarily require Chrome’s browser extensions or powerful features.
For example, the included Safari browser seems much more battery-efficient on Macs. Mozilla’s Firefox uses less memory on Windows, so that’s helpful if you’re on a PC with a low amount of RAM. Microsoft has also trumpeted statistics that show their own Internet Explorer browser uses less battery power on Windows than Chrome does, so even IE may be a good option if you want to make your battery last longer.
Memory usage is kind of irrelevant on modern PCs, as long as you have enough memory. Unused memory is wasted memory. But Chrome’s impact on battery life is unfortunate. Hopefully Google will address this in the future.
by Power Efficiency December 14, 2018, 12:38 am 2.6k Views
1. Use Fewer Lights
One way you can reduce your energy consumption is to simply turn off lights you’re not using.
Think of how many lights you have on in the home when you are at home.
For example, you might have the kitchen garage lights or room lights on, and so on.
If you’re not going to be in these rooms considered turning off these lights when you’re not going to be there. This can add up to significant Energy savings because you’re using less lighting.
If you have any older bulbs in your home you should replace all of these with energy-efficient bulbs as they use less electricity. Most bulbs produce today are all energy efficient and although they do cost a little bit more money they tend to last longer than regular bulbs.
2. Energy Efficient Appliances
Most appliances that you buy today are now energy-efficient but you may have older appliances in your home. Consider replacing any older appliances with ones that are energy efficient as you’re going to use less electricity and overall be better for the environment. It may cost you a little bit of money to do this but you’re going to save money on your electricity in the long run.
3. Turn Off Heat When Not at Home
Before you leave for work or go out you should turn off the heat when you’re not going to be at home. This will also help you save electricity. If you have a smart heater you can always turn on the heat before you get home to warm up your residence before you arrive. It doesn’t make much sense to be burning electricity with heating when you’re not going to be at home.
4. Use Heat Only When Necessary
Many people turn on the heat in the morning because it is a habit. If you don’t need heat or it is only slightly chilly consider wearing an extra sweater or warmer clothing instead of turning on the heat all the time. You could also just turn the heat on for a couple of hours to warm up your home and then turn it off or reduce the heat to a lower level as this will also help you save energy.
5. Turn Off or Unplug Appliances When on Vacation
While certain appliances such as your refrigerator and your fridge need to be plugged in when you are away, most other ones do not. Consider unplugging television sets, turning off Wi-Fi, turning off your cable box, and so on. By unplugging or turning off all the electronics that you’re not using when you’re away, you’re going to save money on your electric bill. Many appliances that you leave on still have small lights that are displayed so in many cases you’ll have to unplug them from the wall.
6. Seal Windows and Leaks
You should check around your home for any leaks or window seals that might be poor. You are throwing money away if you are not heating your home efficiently. By sealing windows and removing other leaks you can drastically reduce your electric bill as you will be using heat in an efficient way.
7. Replace Old water and Other Heaters
You can also save money on your electric bill by replacing your old water heaters or other heaters in the home. These older appliances are probably not very energy efficient and by replacing them with standard modern ones, you’re going to be saving money on your electric bill. You should speak to companies that specialize in water heaters and other heaters to see what the various makes and models that they have as they can probably help you pick out the right one to meet your current needs.
8. Solar Option
In some cases, you might want to try solar panels. These panels can help you save a significant amount of money on your electric bill. It might cost you quite a bit in the beginning to install solar panels and batteries, but over time you’re going to save money. If you’re serious about reducing your electric bill, solar panels can be a good option for you.
9. Water Consumption
You should watch your water consumption. There are several ways that you can do this. For example, you can take shorter showers or eliminate baths. You can turn off the water when you are shaving or brushing your teeth. You can wash your clothing in cold water instead of using hot water all of the time.
10. Hang Laundry
We used to hang our laundry outside in the past and this is actually a great way to save money. Most items of clothing will dry fine on a clothesline and you can save energy by not using your dryer. While this might not be practical for some people that live in apartment buildings, it is perfectly fine if you own a home and it can be a great way to save money on your energy bill.
Summary
These are some of the ways that you can save energy and electricity in your home. All you need to do is take some added extra effort and you can reduce your electric bill by a wide margin. Make sure that you’re using smart appliances and that you take two steps to reduce energy consumption in your home.
Disclaimer: This site contains affiliate links from which we receive a compensation (like Amazon for example). But they do not affect the opinions and recommendations of the authors.
Wise Bread is an independent, award-winning consumer publication established in 2006. Our finance columns have been reprinted on MSN, Yahoo Finance, US News, Business Insider, Money Magazine, and Time Magazine.
Like many news outlets our publication is supported by ad revenue from companies whose products appear on our site. This revenue may affect the location and order in which products appear. But revenue considerations do not impact the objectivity of our content. While our team has dedicated thousands of hours to research, we aren’t able to cover every product in the marketplace.
For example, Wise Bread has partnerships with brands including, but not limited to, American Express, Bank of America, Capital One, Chase, Citi, Discover, and Amazon.
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Lurking within your office and home is a group of workaholics that are costing you money. Who are these offenders? They’re your computer system.
The average computer wastes roughly half the power it draws from its energy source. This power never reaches the processor or other components yet it creates heat that places extra demand on your cooling system. These energy vampires translate into higher bills and unnecessary greenhouse gas emissions. Here are 10 easy fixes to protect your wallet without reducing your computer’s capabilities.
1. Upgrade
Make energy efficiency job one when shopping for a new computer or peripherals. Look for the Energy Star labels or check out the Climate Savers Computing product catalog.
2. Downsize
Switch to a laptop when you don’t need the fuller capability of a desktop. Laptops typically consume less power and, hey, they can be used at a coffee house!
3. Take a Nap
Use computer and monitor sleep modes to save nearly half a ton of CO2 and more than $60 a year in energy costs.
4. Kill the Screen Saver
Screen savers make for pretty pictures but they aren’t necessary on modern monitors. Studies show they actually consume more energy than if you simply dimmed or turned the monitor off when not in use.
5. Dim the Screen
Turn down your monitor’s brightness setting. The brightest setting on a monitor consumes twice the power used by the dimmest setting.
6. Nix the Extras
Shut down such peripherals as printers, speakers and scanners when not in use.
7. Fight Phantom Power
Plug all your electronics into one power strip and switch it off when you’re finished. If you want to avoid rebooting, put processors on a separate strip.
8. Minimize
Close unused or infrequently used applications. Is it really necessary to keep Photoshop, Word, Outlook, Safari and Internet Explorer all open at the same time?
9. Monitor Energy Use
Give your system a once over with a power meter that displays how much energy you’re actually consuming.
10. Create a System
Establish multiple power schemes to address different usage models. For example, create a power scheme to play CDs that immediately shuts off your hard drive and monitor without putting your system into standby mode.
This is a guest post by the Coupon Sherpa, a source of reliable online, printable and grocery coupons. You can download the free Coupon Sherpa iPhone app with in-store mobile coupons, or check out more great tips from the Ask Coupon Sherpa blog.
Disclaimer: This site contains affiliate links from which we receive a compensation (like Amazon for example). But they do not affect the opinions and recommendations of the authors.
Wise Bread is an independent, award-winning consumer publication established in 2006. Our finance columns have been reprinted on MSN, Yahoo Finance, US News, Business Insider, Money Magazine, and Time Magazine.
Like many news outlets our publication is supported by ad revenue from companies whose products appear on our site. This revenue may affect the location and order in which products appear. But revenue considerations do not impact the objectivity of our content. While our team has dedicated thousands of hours to research, we aren’t able to cover every product in the marketplace.
For example, Wise Bread has partnerships with brands including, but not limited to, American Express, Bank of America, Capital One, Chase, Citi, Discover, and Amazon.
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Every October is Energy Awareness Month.
Take these steps to help reduce your energy consumption.
1. Shutdown your computer
Computers are some of the biggest energy users in office buildings. Turn your monitor off at night and ditch the screensaver. Today’s computers can be turned on and off over 40,000 times. Opting to shut down over using a screensaver does not affect your computer’s lifespan. (EnergyStar). So power down!
2. Choose the right light
LED bulbs are the most energy efficient lighting option. LED bulbs use 75% less electricity than incandescent bulbs (Energy Star). The also have no mercury, and last about 25 times longer than traditional incandescent bulbs (DoE).
3. Eliminate vampire power: unplug idle electronics.
Devices like televisions, microwaves, scanners, and printers use standby power, even when off. Some chargers continue to pull small amounts of energy, even when plugged in (a good judge of this is if a charger feels warm to the touch). In the US, the total electricity consumed by idle electronics equals the annual output of 12 power plants (EPA).
4. Use a power strip to reduce your plug load.
To avoid paying for this “vampire power,” use a power strip to turn all devices off at once. Flipping the switch on your power strip has the same effect as unplugging each socket from the wall, preventing phantom energy loss.
