Greening Our Gadgets
Can gadgets be green?
Can gadgets be good?
After reading Joel Hruska's article, Five ways to keep your PC cool on a hot summer day, I was inspired to check out our computers and gadgets to see what was gobbling up power. Here's what I found out when I measured the energy used.
Our Current Gadgets & Their Energy Consumption
| Configuration | Standby (switched off, plugged in) | On |
| Computer, monitor, speakers (circa 2003) Windows XP | 25 watts | 200 watts |
| Dell Desktop Computer with monitor (circa 2003) | 6 watts | 100 watts |
| HP Desktop with monitor, printer, external hard drive and webcam - circa 2006 | 21 watts | 90 watts |
| ASUS EEE PC, 9 inch laptop running XP, just purchased | 2.5 watts | 18 watts |
| OLPC laptop | 0 | 10 |
| Shaw Digital Cable Modem for Digital TV | 24 watts | 25 watts |
| Pioneer DVR | 20 watts | 20 watts |
| Sony 27 inch TV | 4 watts | 105 watts |
| iPod Clock Radio - Timex | 5 watts | 6.5 watts |
| Sony Regular Clock Radio | 2 watts | 2 watts |
| Cell phone charger for LG phone | 0 watts | 4 watts |
| Panasonic Cordless Phone, 2005 | 3 watts, empty cradle | 4 watts |
| Pansonic Cordless Phone, 2007 | 2 watt | 3 watt |
| PS2 | 1 watt | 30 watt |
| Chest Freezer, medium (circa 1992) for comparison | variable | average 40 watts |
Just as I suspected - the older computers are the worst.
Our electricity cost is about 100 watts x 24 hours x 365 days = $91.25 per year so a rough estimate of our electronic stuff (phone, ipod, computers, PS2, DVR, TVs) cost is about $220.
We currently shutdown the oldest computers when not in use and leave the main desktop on full-time as it backups up overnight. We turn off all monitors. However, we're not unplugging or turning any of these computers off at the power bar so even in the "off state" some of these are sucking down significant watts.
Stay tuned for part 2 where we explore options for cost savings.
