16 Sep 08 Going Green, PC Hibernation, Saving Money & Common Sense

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After receiving a rather large quarterly power bill for my flat about 4 months ago, I decided that it was time to look in to my careless power consumption.

I purchased a good power usage meter: http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=220934 as I wanted to find out exactly what was consuming what.

- TV’s and other standby-capable devices do use a large amount of power when in standby, almost close to what they use when fully active.
- Lights on dimmer switches usually use full power regardless of how bright they are set, when they’re dimmed, the remaining power is often just sunk into a large resistance coil.
- PC’s also use a ton of power on standby.
- AC to DC adapters found everywhere in the modern home, wireless access points, speakers, game consoles, phones, chargers, cameras, routers, switches, PC peripherals, laptops, the list goes on.. These all combined will consume a lot of power, just from being left on.

My solution:

- Don’t dim the lights, turn them off.
- If plug sockets for TV, Cable, DVD are easily accessible possibly on a single extension lead, turn them off when not in use.
- Enable HIBERNATE on your PCs which is a feature generally targeted toward laptops. Instead of leaving it active on a screensaver, or putting it into standby, hibernate it when not in use as this will actually turn it off and not require too long to restore your RAM image from disk when next booted.
- I put an 8 way extension on the peripherals, phone charger and phones in the study, which I could turn off easily when not in use.
- Turn off any unnecessary hardware (obviously!)
- Monitors also use a surprisingly large amount of power. Leaving them on screen saver will not only age the monitor, but will also cost money. Don’t leave them on standby either, turn them off.

The worst offenders are electric heaters, hair dryers, dish washers, washing machines and dryers while they are running, however just as important as these, are the devices that use a smaller amount of power, but are constantly active.

Next power bill just came in with a 63% saving