Black Google Saves Energy

If this is really going to save energy, why isn't the treehugger.com background black?

So, when is treehugger going to be going black?

great!

so when is tree hugger going to switch to a black background?

it may save energy, but from a user friendly stand point websites with black backgrounds and white text are very hard on the eyes. For those with eye problems blackle may not be the best fit.

I agree that every little bit helps, and it would be nice if Google made that an option in its user prefs. But note that Blackle's cited study found that "...display color is a significant determinant of on power for CRTs, but not for LCDs." (PDF pg 19). So not only do LCDs use 1/3rd to 1/2 the power of CRTs, users iof LCDs can view white webpages without added watts.

I think a similar study should be done regarding animated graphics on webpages (Flash ads, YouTube, etc.). I bet all that animation requires more CPU use, which requires more CPU and GPU (graphics) power consumption. So people should run ad-blocking software to save power. :-)

Somebody didn't think too hard about this one.
Most everybody these days are using LCD screens instead of the big clunky CRT monitors. The backlight design of an LCD means that it's actually using no energy to display a white pixel, and a small voltage is applied to each of three sub-pixels to display a black pixel. Might have been a good idea ten years ago, but not anymore.

How about a black Treehugger.com?

Keep in mind that, as the comments on the original post say, the power savings are only realized on CRTs, which make up only 25% (and dropping) of displays worldwide.

Awful lot of white space on Treehugger. Awful lot of data on any given Treehugger page.

On a mac, you can invert the colors of your screen by pressing Cmd+Option+Control+8. One way for Mac users to save energy.

When will treehugger fade to black?

significant energy savings will only be for CRT monitors which are falling out of favor in the pc market. few current-generation LCD monitors support localized dimming so they use virtually the same amount of power regardless of the color displayed. still though, it's nice to see google provide a simple change to their service that helps save energy.

and let's not forget

there Google Black

http://google-black.blogspot.com/

Trek Black

http://www.trek3d.com/black/

Spanish Black Google

http://www.negroogle.com

and German Black Google

http://www.schwarzoogle.com

According to Blackle’s homepage at publication time, 4,408.917 Watt hours have been saved

4.4 kWh? That's it? That's about 1/8 of the average daily electricity consumption of just one US household.

Cool. How soon before we get a Blackle widget?

Only if you're using a cathode-ray display... it makes no difference on an LCD.

black pixels actually take more energy to display on LCD screens than white pixels do.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_crystal_display

with no electricity passing through the polarized filters, a subpixel will allow all the backlight to shine through to the front of the screen. blacking out a subpixel requires an additional charge.

the third and fourth paragraphs in this wikipedia entry, focused on 'twisted nematic devices', the most common type of LCD display, explain this in more detail.

thanks for the effort tho...

To put this in further context, the total theoretical savings from this are equivalent to about 1.5 seconds of world electricity consumption, or around 1/7 the output of a utility-scale wind turbine with a blade length of 71 meters.

Drop in the bucket, to say the least, and it's never going to happen in any case.

I find it interesting that this topic has been here several times but Treehugger is still using a primarily light colored layout. Shouldn't we practice what we preach?

It should be stressed that this *only* saves energy if you're using a CRT screen. LCD screens are backlit, so you're always pumping out the same amount of light. And if you're using a CRT, you're using WAY more power than an LCD anyway.

This assumes everyone uses CRT monitors. LCD uses the same amount of power regardless. Just turn down the brightness on your monitor.

If you are on a Mac (OS X) you can use a powersaving (usually) shortcut key combination which displayes in reverse video.

CMD + CTRL + Option + 8

Use this combination again to go back.

Lets not forget, this only applies to people using CRT monitors.

An LCD display should not require a different amount of energy to display different colors, the technology is completely different.
It doesn't make sense to assume every person is using a CRT, most people now use LCD displays.

interesting concept, but their numbers aren't valid at all.

first off, if we're talking about CRTs, theyre powered by electron cannons firing at a phosphorus sheet. the power taken is a function of the efficiency of the electron gun. different monitors consume different amounts of power.

in an LCD, on the other hand, i dont think there is a power difference at all.

while this is well-intentioned, it is inherently misleading for them to post 4k megawatts saved so far, and such claims. what we need to be doing is worrying about where our power comes from, not how much we consume.

Incidentally, if such a shift of color scheme would make any kind of significant difference, they should be pushing to have people switch their entire windows themes to the way i used to have my boxes set up. black on black, with grey or white text. then every application would consume less power at all times.

I believe that Blackle will save energy on any CRT display, but I fear that it saves none on an LCD display.

The energy consumed by a monitor is from transforming electrical energy into light energy. In a CRT, a electron beam is modulated to excite phosphors: the beam is turned on full to produce a bright pixel, and turned off to produce a black pixel, so a black screen consumes less energy.

However, an LCD display has a constantly-lit backlight. The individual pixels are like masks that simply keep light from the backlight -- which is always on -- from being transmitted to the viewer. So the amount of energy is constantly the amount consumed by the backlight.

A few other points that have come up.

Generally, yes, CRT use is declining, but they are still in widespread use, particularly in China (50% of all monitors) and Latin America (75% of all monitors)

Also, plasma and OLED use is rising. These follow the same idea, white is expensive.

Finally, it's not just Google. If every high volume site did this I'm sure is would really add up; 1000 comparable sites and we have 75 million dollars saved in electricity. and you get double points for converted sites in China, and triple points for converting sites in Latin America.

mark

The amount of computing power used to create these black pages, and even discuss them, likely negates any supposed savings. Please TH, for the sake of readability, cut this silliness and don't darken your own site.

Someone above suggested we worry about what type of power we use instead of how much. I just wanted to point out that the focus should of course be first on how much power we use. End-use energy efficiency is the best way to take a big bite out of the energy problem. Any inefficiencies in transmitting source power to power we use at home are multiplied up the distribution chain. For example, if we save 1 Watt of power at home, that might translate into savings of 3 Watts of source power due to inefficiencies. Not only are we not needing to create this power (through a dirty or clean method), but we no longer have to pay for it either, so we actually save money. Cleaner and cheaper - that's why we should all be worrying about energy efficiency first!

1000 comparable sites and we have 75 million dollars

There aren't 1,000 comparable sites to Google. There probably aren't 10 comparable sites to Google.

Go back to my simple example. The amount of energy that could be saved (in theory) by turning Google black (which will never happen) is the same as 1/7 the power of 1 utiliity-scale wind turbine. How about you ask thousands of people to donate a dollar and we can all buy a windmill. The income from it could fund some sort of environmental project (eg, getting rid of all or most of the ads on Treehugger). And you'd end up saving 7 times the energy of trying to force Google to go black the world over (which would surely cost them boatloads of money and market cap, as well as frying millions of human eyeballs).

wow.. don't people at least skim the existing comments before posting to avoid repeating the same point? If we all did that, the energy saved from less time spent at the computer might be significant.

I think that would be really distracting to have an all black background, although it is a good concept.

I haven't seen Blackle (it appears to be down) but ninja.com looks like a very nice black version of Google.

Um - if you REALLY think this is important - change your browser text color to white and background to white and disable other site's overriding your color selection.

Now EVERY page you view is black, regardless of design. If EVERY browser on the planet mas mostly black and black actually saved energy it would be orders of magnitude more energy saving than any given page.

Go for a black desktop while you're at it.

Actually Blackle is owned by Heap Media. It has NOTHING to do with google! It is a sham.
As someone else already pointed out the energy saved by saved by a CRT monitor is very little, and that is off set by a LCD which needs more power to re-create black since a LCD display does not naturally do black colors.

I know I'm designing my sites with dark backgrounds from now on - and revamping the old ones to dark colors.

Hope treehugger joins on soon.

Drop in the bucket??
Drop-schmop, 31% reduction in energy use is substantial, even if the overall numbers are low.

Are there bigger fish to fry?
Hell yeah, but why not do everything we can?

Looks like many have jumped on the "Blackle Bash" bangwagon....and I agree that many of the arguments, with respect to CTR v LCD monitors etc, have been valid.

However its't it worth considering the bigger picture. Of course sites such as blackle do not result in huge savings to the environment, on the contrary, the savings are very small. However isn't that besides the point. Surely the environmental awarness created far more valuable..Take the Live8 concerts a couple of years ago as an example. These concerts were not staged to raise money and immediately fix world poverty. They were staged to create 'awareness'. Now, as a result of the concerts, political leaders have been forced by their constituents to act.

So before we jump on the "blackle bash" bandwagon I think we should all take a step back and appreciate that we are all fighting the same battle - saving our environment. Sites like blackle and tree hugger and all the others are only a drop in the ocean, but at least they are fostering important environmental awareness!

Drop-schmop, 31% reduction in energy use is substantial, even if the overall numbers are low.

31% of nothing is nothing.

Are there bigger fish to fry Hell yeah, but why not do everything we can?

Because humans have a finite amount of time and energy and there's countless more important things to address, and which are actually amenable to change. If you try to do everything, you end up doing nothing.

Why do think binary?
if black is too hard for people to read and white consumes too much energy, let take the middle way.
Lets use the grey color!

At least it would save some energy.
Every small drop makes a sea!

yea, what a pity that site is obscured from today:

Forbidden
You don't have permission to access / on this server.

Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
Apache/1.3.33 Server at AppStuff Port 80

P.S. Does anyone know what happened to Blackle?
It went Forbidden yesterday.

:o

4 whole kWh, huh? I poop four kWh.

Right on Picasso!

If you have an LCD stick to the white screen it uses less energy.
When an LCD pixel is turned on (high power mode) it twists and blocks the light. When it is off it lets the light through.
You can still save energy by turning down the backlight especially when the ambient light is low.

If you are still using a CRT and are concerned about energy - recycle it right away. An LCD only uses a few watts while CRTs use 100 - 250W.

What's up with Blackle? Been using it since the post, and now it's down . . . . ?

I was using blackle but now it's "forbidden by my server"?

Why? I'm using my local home network connection..

Told you guys blackle is just the main page of http://www.searchincolor which has offered web search in many colors since like, forever....

Sanjay

this is cool/?

I think there might be some justification in the logic behind making google all black. But lets not divert our attention from things which can really make a change (like switching off lights when we do not need it, using less of plastics and so forth) unlike the small benefit which can come from making google site black.

The blackle site however looks like a clever attempt to gather business in the web search space, capitalizing on people's gullibility.

This is very inacurate, i'll explain:

In CRT's you Might have a quite good power reduction, because in a CRT the colors are generated trough a cannon that works at an high voltage.
Now since "black" means "no bombarding phosforus" at all, it also means that i wont need energy to genrate a 100% black page. (or i would need less energy) in the other hand, a white page would require much more energy.
Now here's the twist, CRT's are disapearing, i'm one of the few who has a professional 21 inch CRT.
LCD's on the other hand work the other way arround, they are white (bright back light) the only thing that keeps them black is the big transistors array that makes the color when polarizes the liquid cristals hence de name LCD...,
So to make black you would have to instigate energy to those transistors so it would be more expensive to have a black page than a white page (by 4 or 5 watts :p)

it's not by any change that those old gameboys have a contrast dial and you were able to save energy by keeping the contrast to a minimum

Ps i'm sorry about my English

Practice what you preach treehugger !!!!

Sorry to add more skepticism, but a white on black design is well understood to be harder and slower to read. I expect this means Web site users on a site using such a "low energy" design would end up needing to spend more time at the site reading the text. In another treegugger thread on black google it's noted that in one study 12 of 15 subjects took longer to read white on black text.

The math incidentally in that other thread seems very wrong. I calculate from their assumptions a potential $208,000.00 savings on 2.098 megawatt hours, not $75,000.00 on 750 megatwatt hours.