Shut Down Your Computer
Want to save some energy and reduce your electric bill? Shut down your computer when you're not sitting in front of it. Pretty basic notion ... but apparently a lot of people leave their computers turned on overnight - especially their work computer. The Wall Street Journal is reporting:
A recent report estimated that American businesses could save $1.72 billion each year merely by getting more employees to shut off their computers at night or allow the machines to enter an energy-saving mode.
I never leave my laptop at home powered up overnight or when I'm not using it, but I do leave my work computer turned on when I leave for the day. (On Friday afternoons, I usually shut down for the weekend.) Not sure why I leave it turned on overnight ... I think it basically boils down to laziness and the fact that I'm not responsible for paying for the electricity I consume at work. There must be a creative way for companies to incentivize employees to shut down every night. Maybe a conservation drive. Compare year over year energy use and if it is lower in the current year, everyone gets a Starbucks gift certificate or some other small token. Just a thought.
And if there are concerns about the wear and tear associated with lots of shut-downs & power-ups, those can be put to rest:
Several commenters on blogs and the Register suggested another possible reason to leave computers on: Switching them on and off drains energy, and may cause damage. Several energy experts told me that doesn’t apply to today’s machines, for which the amount of energy saved by switching off dwarfs the amount consumed during the booting process. “PCs are not hurt by turning them on and off a few times a day,” said Jonathan Koomey, a project scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. “Economic obsolescence is much more dangerous to PCs than turning them on and off.”
Shut down your work computer before you call it a day. It can't hurt.
