Easily, one of the largest consumers of energy use in the home is the family PC. Some people may be thinking that the real energy consumer is a major appliance or the air and heating unit for the home. Try a test. Turn off your computer and unplug it every night for a month when you go to bed. Compare that electrical bill to previous months. You’ll see a drastic difference. Especially since it is one of the few high energy consuming devices in the home that can be turned off for long period of times as well as unplugged. For instance, does your refrigerator use a lot of energy? Yes, however you can not simply unplug it at night now can you? So, your first stopping point on the road to energy consumption in your home is the computer. Here are four simple ways that you can reduce the energy use of the computer, save on your energy bill and make a step to going a little bit greener.
Unplug It
You will see this option time and again within our blogs here at GoGreen. If your computer is turned off but all the components are plugged in, then it is still using energy. If you simply unplug your computer or the power strip the computer and its components are linked to, you will see a drastic difference in your energy bill.
Power It with the Sun
An increasing number of companies are offering solar power options for computer components. Solar keyboards and solar chargers for laptops are just two components available for computer users. For less than $100 you can purchase a few small components that are solar powered, reduce the amount of energy flowing into the computer when you are using it and reduce the energy consumption of your household.
Heat Sources
Now, this one was something that had to be tested by our writing staff. It turned out to work. A few weeks ago one of our writers said that during the winter his computer at home heated his entire home office. Now, his computer is primarly build for gaming at home so the graphics card and other components are larger. The concept is still the same. Depending on the heat output of your computer you could reduce your heating bills during the summer by placing your computer tower in a suitable location for it to push exhaust from the fan out into the room but allowing the heat of the push to warm the room. This may not work with all computer set-ups but it is an option.
Turn it Off
We understand that a lot of computer users do not want to go through the hassle of unplugging and re-plugging their computer every day. You may forget or you may just not want to. We understand. At least turn the computer off. This will reduce the amount of energy being used, reduce your energy bill and it will let the computer rest while not in use.
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