Saving Power in your Home Office

cweditor writes "Rob Mitchell shows how he measured energy use of all his home office equipment, and then targeted the energy pigs for replacement. With better equipment choices, he'd save $90/year. If you've got more than a couple of computers and printers at home (and if you're a Slashdot reader, you probably do), the savings would be a lot higher. Includes detailed formulas as well as a spreadsheet on monitor energy usage."

I saved!

[monkeyboythom]

I unplugged that appliance that measured my electric usage. However, the power company didn't see the benefit the way I did.

Re:SETI@Home

[Anonymous Coward]

...until I realized that they use less power when the processors are idling as opposed to processing at full speed.

Woah woah woah, Skippy. Where did you get this crazy idea from?

Re:Saving elsewhere

[eln]

The average Slashdotter already saves energy in a variety of ways:

1.) Cutting showers to less than once a month greatly reduces both water and electricity (or gas) usage.
2.) Staying in Mom's basement not only drastically reduces greenhouse gas emissions from automobile usage, but also eliminates all the extra energy waste that maintaining a separate house would entail.
3.) Not dating ensures procreation will not occur, thereby eliminating the energy usage involved in having more people on the planet.

As usual, Slashdot is way ahead of the curve on this issue. Unfortunately, 90% of these savings are used up by the racks of ancient computer equipment still running in many of these basements, but every little bit counts.

The power company is going to owe me money

[tompaulco]

I've replaced a bunch of bulbs with compact fluorescents. If I believe the packaging, I will save more money in a year on my lighting costs than I normally spend in a year on ALL of my electrical needs.

I have another way of saving electricity

[ODD97]

I built a system that turns off my lights when I blink. My blinks last approximately 1/4 second, and I blink roughtly 20 times per minute, saving me 5 seconds per minute, or 20 seconds per hour. That makes 160 seconds (2 minutes) per workday. over the course of a year, that's 16 minutes of power waste that I am avoiding without changing any equipment significantly.

... of course, alligator-clipping the blink sensors to my eyelids stings for a little bit, but you get used to it really fast. It's a small price to pay to save the world.

Re:SETI@Home

[warrenb10]

And in the final scene, the aliens arrive just after humanity has wiped itself out fighting over the last barrel of oil (or rod of U-235, or whatever) and remark how if not for that one computer that was taken offline we would have gotten their message explaining how to extract limitless energy from vacuum (as well as old episodes of TV shows) in time to avoid that.

Re:90 whole dollars

[Tintivilus]

I really got the feeling that this article was just his way of convincing his wife to let him buy a new monitor.

Re:Only $90/year????

[Doctor Faustus]

Give me a break. Turn your house up 1 degree in the summer and down 1 degree in the winter and you will save more money than that!
When I suggest turning down the thermostat to my wife, she points out that she would have to put clothes on. That's usually where the discussion ends.

I suppose that tells you where energy conservation falls in my priorities...