An IT friend of mine offered up an energy-saving suggestion the other day that left me slapping my forehead with a Homer Simpson-like “Doh!” for its simplicity. “When you go home for the night are you turning off your computer monitor?” she asked. After a brief moment of puzzlement, I recognized that while I conscientiously shut down my computer each night before heading to my downtown Seattle bus stop, I had not punched the off button on the monitor after it went dark. That left the monitor in sleep mode, but not off – the classic energy vampire.
Image courtesy lecasio via flickr.

Now that I had been roused from my lack of awareness, I started to check out how much savings a change in my habits might create.

At first I was a bit disappointed because the simple step did not produce significant results, but the search did lead me to a more promising tip.

You see, a computer monitor in sleep mode doesn’t use much energy. An old, bulky CRT uses about 3 watts in sleep mode while a new Energy Star flat screen uses about 2 watts.

Turning off that old CRT box model doe nine hours at night will save you about 83 cents over the course of a year. Shutting off the Energy Star model only save you about 42 cents.

Now being known to stretch a buck or two, I still decided even that small savings was worth the tiny effort of hitting the off button at the end of the day, whether I was at home or at work. If we all did that, even those little steps would add up.

But then I got clued in to the power of energy management controls, which has greater potential for cutting energy use, which avoids the need to build more power plants that create greenhouse gasses tied to climate change.

Modern computer models have features – typically found on the settings panel – that allow you to decide how long the computer will keep running in its normal operations after your last key stroke before shifting into sleep mode.

Consider that a typical monitor can use up to 45 watts when its operating. The central processing unit can use 60 to 100 watts depending on its use.

If your energy management settings have a 30 minute wait before shifting into sleep mode, your computer and monitor could be burning up about 50 watt-hours of electricity just waiting to see if you were coming back.

Cutting that setting back to 15 minutes would save you 25 watt-hours. That’s a 39 percent increase in savings compared to shutting off the monitor all night. That means dollars, which makes a lot of sense.

John Schott, an analyst for the Cadmus Group in Massachusetts who consults with Energy Star, tells me that’s why his organization spends nearly all its time working with companies to power manage their computers. Sadly, his company estimates that only 10 percent of the computers in use in offices and homes are power managed.

So in keeping with the purpose of THIS SPACE, the one thing you can do today to conserve a little energy and save yourself some money is to check the power settings on your computer(s). Set the sleep mode for the CPU and the monitor so you cut down on your energy use but still have a reasonable amount of time to type your next response to Starting Now before the screen goes dark.

Your wallet and your planet will be better off.