How Much Power Does Your Computer Waste?

I know many computer users who only shut down their systems only when yelled at. They claim that powering up again in the morning when they return to work is a nuisance, as they have to wait for the operating systems, network services and so on. So they simply leave their computer systems online, in full power mode just about 24/7 and that while a recent report estimated that American businesses could save about $1.72 billion each year merely by getting their employees to power down or at least to send their systems into an energy saving stand-by mode.

In order to calculate the potential energy savings and the sure energy waste, the London based software company 1E used numbers on average energy consumption, about 129W, from a study conducted almost seven years ago, according to Sarah Hammond Creighton, Tufts University's sustainability coordinator, from which the study originated. "One major change is the increasing number of laptops and flat-screen computers (both use significantly less power when compared to desktops and CRT [monitors]) since we issued our study," she said. There are several reasons - cited by this study - hy more and more people do not shut down their PCs at the end of the work day. Sometimes, they assume the IT departments will perform maintenance tasks on them or deploy patches or that the IT people will close them. Others believe that the sleep or hibernation mode automatically kicks in, while some said that they simply do not care about wasted energy.

"A mid-sized company wastes more than $165,000 a year in electricity costs for computers that have been left on overnight. By turning these computers off, an employer can keep more than 1,381 tons of carbon dioxide (C02) out of the atmosphere.", says the report. While the report was made in the days of power hungry CRT monitors and low efficiency power supply units, those figures still apply to present day facts as the number of computer systems, desktop and laptops alike, raised very much.