Power EnergyCourtesy of art.TeX
By leaving your computer on you may be saving you a couple of minutes so you don’t have to wait for it to boot up everytime, but it could be costing you in the long run.

How Much Does Leaving Your PC On Cost?

A high performance gaming rig that is left on all the time can cost you up to $405 a year at $0.14 per killowatt hour. On the other hand if you have a more modest PC like an iMac G5, and use it only 2 hours a day for 5 days, it’d end up costing you only $5.50 a year. It’s quite a difference, and it’s not something you have to live with by leaving your computer on all the time.

Save Energy With Power Options

You can cut down your $405 a year by using Windows power options. In Windows they have handy settings that you can use so everytime you leave your computer, or after a certain amount of inactivity it will go into standby, hibernate, and even sleep mode.

Standby simply puts your computer into a lower power state and allows you wake it up in a matter of seconds. This lowers computer usage to 1-6 watts.

Hibernate saves all of your work to RAM, and then puts the computer into a hibernation mode so that way you can continue working on what you were doing when the computer wakes up. This takes anywhere from 30 seconds to 2 minutes to wake up your computer, but when your computer is in hibernate is uses as much energy as it does being turned off.

To adjust the power options go to the Control Panel -> Power Options. The best solution is to set your computer to hibernate, or go on standby after 15 minutes of inactivity. You can ensure that the least amount of energy is wasted that way if you don’t want to power off your computer. Also be sure to shutoff your computer monitor as well when you’re not using it, you can set that in the power options too, but it’s just as easy to push the power button. A CRT monitor uses up to 80 watts, while an LCD monitor uses around 40 watts. And screensavers don’t make a different either. They use up just as much energy as when a monitor is being actively used.

Reducing Your Power Draw

There are several ways you can reduce your computer’s power draw:

  • Use standby or hibernate when not using it
  • Power off the monitor when it’s not in use
  • Flip the switch on your power strip to conserve the energy that is used while the computer is off
  • Use an energy efficient processor, AMD is generally known for making efficient processors, though Intel has recently been making strides in the processor power conservation area lately.
  • Use a good quality power supply that converts most of the A/C into D/C
  • Get rid of your power-hungry CRT monitor and use a more eco-friendly LCD monitor
  • Use a laptop instead of a desktop, laptops use so much less energy than your average desktop pc does
  • Turn your desktop into a solar power machine

Saving energy with your computer doesn’t have to be hard, in fact, it’s quite easy and it just takes a little bit of your time to ensure that your computer powers off when it’s not in use, or that you shut off your computer monitor when you leave the room. All those little steps you strive for to save energy can and will add up in the long run.

If you have another tip for conserving energy, or you have a unique method for saving your computer’s energy be sure to let me know about it with a comment.