Running an information systems departement, I certianly understand how much power computers eat up over time.

One item not talked about here is for ultra low power use I use my Wi-Fi Palm PDA which draws miniscule amounts of power compared to even an energy efficient desktop. My only problem is that many web sites do not have formatting for mobile screens making some sites unreadable. Even treehugger.com.. How about talking to the developers for a PDA/Mobile friendly Trehugger site?

Let's think for a moment about something we never notice - our screen savers. Around the world, right now, complex geometric shapes and patterns are bouncing around screens in empty offices and quiet suburban basements. Even when you're gone for lunch, your screen saver labors on.

If electricity were free, this wouldn't be worth thinking about. But then again, if electricity were free, the world would look very different. Very different.

The fact is, we are scrambling to find new sources of power and new efficiencies. We're spending billions to do it. And at the same time, we're using computers that quietly drain the grid.

Does this sound like an exaggeration? Let's put it this way. It takes about 100 watts an hour to run a screen saver on a graphics card. (Obviously, that's the same as keeping a 100W light bulb turned on.) Some systems will use a bit less, some a bit more. But let's say 100 watts.

Now, there are over 600 million computers in the world, many of which never get turned off. For the sake of argument, let's say their screen savers are running around the clock.

That's 60,000 Megawatts an hour. Just to keep shapes bouncing around a screen.

Just to put that in perspective, the largest wind turbines out there are rated at 10 MW.

A large coal-fired plant generates about 300 MW.

Even China's Three Gorges hydroelectric dam, which is so huge that filling its reservoir actually made the Earth wobble on its axis, is rated at 30,000 MW.

Imagine - it takes twice as much power as a generator of this monstrous scale can produce, just to avoid letting our screens go dark. It's absurd.

No one would leave a 100W light bulb on all day for no good reason. And no one would leave a screen saver on if they thought for a moment about what a waste of electricity it represents. We need to start thinking about these things. And Zerofootprint proposes getting us started.

The fact is that the sheer ubiquity of computers, and the scale of their electricity demand, amplifies every efficiency we find. If we can save millions of MW just by setting our desktops to let their screens go dark imagine what we could achieve if we looked at the whole system the same way.

Zerofootprint is putting together an open-source software prject to develop downloadable programming that will maximize your computer's electricity use, and we're looking for programmers. Please email us at info@zerofootprint.net if you're interested in contributing, and check out http://www.zerofootprint.net/green_stories/green_stories_item.asp?type_=53&ID=14973 (from which much of the above was taken) and http://www.zerofootprint.net/green_stories/green_stories_item.asp?type_=53&ID=15080

Nick Garrison
Director of Communications
Zerofootprint

Simple addition to your list: Get a laptop instead of a desktop. Aside from all of the wonderful extra capabilities (you can carry it around with you! you can have a power failure and not lose your work!) it takes a lot less power. Mine takes 75 watts peak power (i.e. burning a CD) -- closer to 30 in normal use.

You can use an external kbd, mouse, and monitor if you want that "desktop feel". Unless you are a super-heavy-duty-power-user, you'll never know the difference.

Zerofootprint

Your numbers are a worse case scenario. I highly doubt that all the computers in the world are on at the same time. Also just turning your screen saver to blank will do little to save energy, the monitor is still on. Windows default is to put monitors in standby after 45 minutes or an hour. Users can change this and should be taught to.

Hello JiltedCitizen,

Absolutely--those numbers are offered only as a way of representing the scale of the problem. Even if we assume that half of these computers are turned off, we're still talking about 30,000 MW, or the generating capacity of about 100 average-sized coal-fired plants.

You're absolutely right to say that a going into your settings to optimize the time it takes to put your monitor to sleep is a great step. That is part of what our software will do for you. An LCD monitor in standby uses about a third of the electricity it otherwise would have. Add to that the work the graphics card is not doing (arounf 100W right there, more in Vista), and the savings begin to pile up. Ethernet connections are another opportunity for massive electricity savings. Aggregate all these savings across millions of machines, and the planet gets a little cooler.

"Aggregate all these savings across millions of machines, and the planet gets a little cooler."

I admire your goals, but please don't over-exaggerate your claims. The planet would not get a little cooler, it would get warmer at a slightly reduced pace.

75W is low-power PC? I guess that includes the monitor.

For true low power, consider the Via EPIA motherboard with their C7 CPU's: total power use: 14W !!!!

I use an earlier, 800 MHz version as my Linux desktop. It's fine for everyday computing.

They're impossible to find in stores, unfortunately.

I always turn my screensaver off. Your point is a good one and I knew you meant the planet gets a little cooler as as expression not literal like some people. :)

i've been bad about this. i now vow to shut the whole thing off as often as i can.

My big question is, how do you integrate backup and virus scan strategies into a "green" shutdown strategy?

I haven't seen anything address this issue. Everything just says "turn off your computer when your not using it", as if I needed someone to tell me that, but the problem is that I have a nightly scheduled backup and a weekly scheduled virus/sypware scan that runs at night.

So, how do I continue these practices, which are essential, and still conserve as much power as possible for my computer?

What I need is a backup and virus scan system that shuts down the computer after doing these things. I suppose that I could work something like that out with a variety of different tools, but it wouldn't be sure fire (the backup could go long and the PC could turn off in mid backup, etc.

Also, if my computer is in "System standby" will that prevent scheduled tasks from running? (I think so)

Thus by using things like standby, which are otherwise good things to do, you eliminate the ability to perform scheduled tasks.