[huskerlug] Re: A 100 watt laptop requires 960 lbs of coal per year!
- From: GreyGeek <jkreps@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: huskerlug@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2008 20:00:44 -0500
Excellent comments, Charles!
I went out to Amazon to see what a "Kill-a-watt" would cost and saw some
interesting comments. Here is one:
"If you are a "Miser," this device will be your best friend. I bought
the "Kill-A-Watt" because I suspected that our old Fridge was shooting
up the electric bill. I plugged the Fridge into the meter and left it
for 3 days. I was very surprised to find out the the fridge was only
burning about 1.5 KWH (Kilowatt Hours) per day, which is about what it
should.
Now I am going around the house and plugging other appliances in for a
couple days. The real shocker was that my "economical" eMachines PC
along with a CRT monitor was using more energy than the fridge! The
computer was burning almost 2 KWH per day. I made changes to the energy
saver software in Windows, so that the monitor automatically shuts off
in 10 minutes and the computer hibernates in 1 hour. This has brought
the daily consumption down to 1 KWH.
For those of you who don't understand KWH, its a measurement of electric
usage by the power company. To be simple, using a KWH is about .08¢ in
our area. So, if you save 1 KWH per day, you save .08¢ After a month's
time, it's about $2.48. After a year it's about $30 bucks. The savings
add up over time.
With the Kill-A-Watt, I've found out lots of interesting things:
My Mac Mini with a LCD monitor uses about 1/2 the power of my eMachines
Tower with CRT. That's 70 Watts vs. 140 Watts.
My Electric Blanket which I though was "economical" pulls 120 Watts
during operation. It actually uses 1 KWH per day. I even found out that
the blanket burns 10 Watts when the power switch is off!
I found many "power bandits" in my home. These are devices like
cellphones, scanners, routers, modems that have those little black power
blocks. Most of these devices use 5 to 10 watts with the power switch
off. With the Kill-A-Watt, I was able to find the biggest offenders and
plug them into a timer that shuts off each night when they are not in use.
If you are truly obsessive about your electrical bill like me, you can
make a nice Excel spreadsheet will all you appliances. You can enter
Watts, Kilowatt Hours, Price per hour and than figure if replacing a
device would pay for the purchase and how long it will take.
As everyone says in their reviews, "This device will pay for it's self."
"
Charles Leslie wrote:
> Actually turning off your laptop won't make a relevant difference, I
> would argue.
>
> Alternatively you could run your laptop off of a charge from a solar
> panel or other renewable energy source. But you'll see why it's a
> moot point here in a minute...
>
> Here's some more technical information on how much energy a laptop uses...
> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000562.html
>
> So as you can see, simply turning it off doesn't solve that problem if
> the battery is charging/discharging.
>
> But wait... In fact most consumer electronic devices consume power
> even when they are not powered on. Here's an interesting article on
> that...
> http://wcco.com/consumer/plug.in.appliances.2.372422.html
>
> So as you can see, you can't enjoy a modern lifestyle and still be
> 100% eco friendly unless you make some seriously drastic changes that
> most average people aren't affluent enough or willing to allocate the
> time or resources to.
>
> Most people that spend all their time sorting their garbage and
> protesting SUV fuel consumption usually would never think to turn
> their air conditioning up by 5 degrees in the summer time, or stop
> having babies.
>
> I don't think that our looming energy crisis is going to be helped by
> your personal efforts. It can only be solved macroscopically by
> economic force, or collective social policy. All turning off your
> lights (or unplugging your laptop) is going to do is help you save a
> few dimes on your electric bill.
>
> On Sat, Mar 22, 2008 at 2:27 PM, GreyGeek <jkreps@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal#World_coal_reserves[1]
>>
>>
>> Running one 100 watt computer for one year requires 876 kW·h (100 W
>> &tim24 h/day ×365 {days in a year} = 876000 W·h = 876
>> kW·h). Converting this power usage into physical coal consumption:
>>
>>
>> It takes 438 kg (966 pounds) of coal to power a computer for one full year.
>> One should also take into account transmission and distribution losses[2]
>> caused by resistance and heating in the power lines, which is in the order
>> of5–10%, depending on distance from the power station and other
>> factors.
>>
>>
>> It also generates about 800 lbs of CO2
>>
>>
>> Moral: Turn you laptop off when you are not using it.
>>
>>
>>
>> --- Links ---
>> 1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal#World_coal_reserves
>> 2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_line#Losses
>>
>> -- Binary/unsupported file stripped by Ecartis --
>> -- Type: image/png
>> -- File: 541a6f12f0b495022ce2949aea4a5057.png
>>
>>
>>
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