Energy saving tips for PC users

Using power management features on your computer can save more than 600 KWh of electricity and more than $60 a year in energy costs. That equates to nearly half a ton of CO2 – more than lowering your home thermostat by two degrees Fahrenheit in the winter or replacing six standard light bulbs with compact fluorescents. Follow the steps below to ensure your computer is operating more efficiently.

When enabled, power management places your monitor, hard drives and computer into a low-power “sleep” mode after a period of inactivity. A simple touch of the mouse or keyboard “wakes” the computer, hard drive and monitor in seconds. Power management features are standard in Windows and Macintosh operating systems.

The use of power management can reduce energy consumption and cooling costs, reduce noise, and prolong the battery life of laptop PCs. And when your PC consumes less power, you reduce your impact on the environment.

To improve the power efficiency of your PC, the Climate Savers Computing Initiative recommends the following power management settings:

* Monitor/display sleep: Turn off after 15 minutes or less
* Turn off hard drives/hard disk sleep: 15 minutes or less
* System standby/sleep: After 30 minutes or less

Instructions for enabling power management vary by operating system. Click the links to the right for detailed instructions by operating system.

You can also download a printable PDF with instructions for enabling power management in all of the above operating systems.

10 ways to reduce energy while computing

1. Use computer and monitor power management. Doing so can save nearly half a ton of CO2 and more than $60 a year in energy costs.
2. Don’t use a screen saver. Screen savers are not necessary on modern monitors and studies show they actually consume more energy than allowing the monitor to dim when it’s not in use.
3. Buying a new computer? Make energy efficiency a priority while shopping for your PC and monitor. Look for the ENERGY STAR label or browse the Climate Savers Computing product catalog.
4. Turn down the brightness setting on your monitor. The brightest setting on a monitor consumes twice the power used by the dimmest setting.
5. Turn off peripherals such as printers, scanners and speakers when not in use.
6. Fight phantom power; plug all your electronics into one power strip and turn the strip off when you are finished using your computer.
7. Use a laptop instead of a desktop. Laptops typically consume less power than desktops.
8. Close unused applications and turn off your monitor when you’re not using it.
9. Use a power meter to find out how much energy your computer actually consumes and to calculate your actual savings.
10. Establish multiple power schemes to address different usage models. For example, you can create a power scheme for playing music CDs that shuts off your hard drive and monitor immediately, but never puts your system into standby mode.

Carbon footprint of chain mails.

Ever wondered, how over internet behavior affects the environment ?
Most of us love getting jokes and funny pictures over the mail, and then forward it to our friends. As a results there are millions of redundant emails which are circulating over the internet. More over there are billions of spam messages that are being created and sent to as many number of users around the world every single day. We have stopped bothering about these, and started dismissing them as mere nuisances that waste our time (Thanks to unlimited mail storage provided by email providers).But there is more to it. Have you ever thought about the Environmental impact of these forwards, chain mails and spams ? Well, you are in for a surprise!

All the email service providers use huge data centers to store and retrieve our emails. And these data centers consume a lot of energy and are thus a significant contributers to global CO2 emissions.

Data centres that require energy to run servers and provide cooling account for almost a quarter of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from information and communications technology (ICT), according to Gartner.

All the datacentres in the world in their totality, consume approximately 20GW (gigawatts) of power in our estimate (5000 datacentres world-wide requiring 2MW for powering the hardware and 2MW for cooling). This is 175 million metric tons of CO2 emission per annum and accounts for 2% of global CO2 emissions, placing it on a par with the aviation industry.

Moreover, with the number of internet users regstering double digit growth each years. These figure are set to rise faster.

Though the modern data centers are designed to consume lesser energy (lesser by 25-50%) than their older counterparts,but most of the companies are not in a position to effect a rapid switch over to new, greener machines. So, emissions from datacentres are set to grow for atleast the next 5- 10 years , with the increase in the number of internet users, and the increasing complexity of web 2.0 sites. Also The ever increasing numbers of sites, blogs on the internet and the exponential growth in information that the existing online databases are seeing will only make the matter worse.

So, next time, you are tempted to forward a chain mail to your friend, think twice. Chain mails not only waste time, but precious energy as well at the cost of our environment.

Solar AID: join hands to fight Poverty and Climate Change

Power to the people

Two of the biggest threats facing humanity today are climate change and global poverty. SolarAid helps to combat both, simply by bringing clean, renewable power to the poorest people in the world.

Cate Blanchett talks SolarAid:

Fighting poverty
Right now, two billion people have no access to electricity. They rely on burning fuels such as kerosene and wood for light and heat, which is highly toxic and expensive. Having solar power improves people's health, income and education. That's because solar power can enable poor people to cook food, pump clean water, run fridges, light homes, schools and hospitals, farm more effectively, and much more.

Fighting climate change
Climate change is mainly due to the massive and continuing use of burning fossil fuels for energy. This has pumped vast amounts of greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere. At the same time, we have destroyed vast tracts of forest, which has released billions of tonnes of carbon.

By replacing carbon-emitting products with solar power, and reducing our dependency on fossil fuels, particularly wood, we can alleviate global warming.

Fact:
The average kerosene lamp, used widely across the developing world, creates around a tonne of carbon over seven years. Replacing these lamps with solar lanterns will lead to significant reductions in carbon emissions.

World's Largest Solar Farm in California to Power 190,000 Homes

FROM BLOG: Thoughts on Global Warming - News, opinion and analysis of global warming, alternative energy and the green movement.

California (TGW) – OptiSolar has announced plans to build the world’s largest solar photovoltaic farm 100 miles north of Los Angeles.

The planned farm would create 550 megawatts of power, about the same as a coal fired power plant, and enough electricity for the equivalent of 190,000 homes.

OptiSolar's thin-film silicon photovoltaics can be placed close to the ground without needing a dramatic tilt, according to the company. OptiSolar says it uses about 1 percent of the silicon of competing crystalline systems, with nontoxic and recyclable equipment made largely of glass, metal, and concrete.

If the project is approved, construction will start in 2010.

Via :: Press Release (PDF)