Easily saving 100 Gigawatt-hour every day, worldwide

הרוב המכריע מתוך מיליארד המחשבים שברחבי העולם, רחוק מאוד מלהיות יעיל אנרגטית. באופן אבסורדי, רובם מצויידים במנגנוני חסכון באנרגיה אשר פשוט לא מופעלים, או לא בנויים כראוי. The vast majority of the 1 billion computers of the world are far from being efficient. Absurdly, most of them DO have energy saving mechanisms which are either turned off or badly implemented. <strong>THE PROBLEM</strong> <ol> <li>Many desktop computers are wasting energy, by working 24h a day on full power, monitors on with a funky screensaver, and as a side effect heating the room and requiring more air conditioning.</li> <li>Mobile, battery-based devices are way more efficient, because longer battery time is a business interest, unlike devices which are connected directly to the power grid..</li> <li>Typical desktop computer consumes (very roughly) 100 Watt, Typical LCD Monitor: 40 Watt. </li> </ol> <strong>SOLUTIONS</strong> <ul> <li>There are many power-saving technologies inside our very own computers: <ol> <li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VESA_Display_Power_Management_Signaling">DPMS</a> (or: <strong><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screensaver#Considerations">BOYCOTT SCREENSAVERS!</a>)</strong>: computer can turn off (standby to be precise) the monitor. Consumption goes down from 40Watt with a screensaver, to less than 2Watt. Screensavers are a silly wasteful thing that ought to be abolished.</li> <li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_mode#Computers">Sleep mode</a>: just as laptops can go quickly into and out of standby mode, modern desktop computers can do that too. When a computer is idle, why not send it to sleep? This can reduce consumption from ~100Watt to less than 2Watts at nights, where people leave their computers on 24/7</li> <li>Other internal components of the computer that can be switched to standby or power-saving modes when not in use: Audio device, WiFi device, Hard disks, CPU.</li> <li>Measuring: ACPI allows monitoring the power usage, at least on some cases. I think this area needs some improvements though, I'm not sure it's possible to measure the power consumption when on AC power (as opposed to battery's DC).</li> <li>Central power policy enforcement and control: I've briefly checked, and it seems that Microsoft has <a href="http://www.gilham.org/Blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?List=aab85845-88d2-4091-8088-a6bbce0a4304&ID=204">some solutions</a>, but I'm not sure how mature this market is. Maybe there's a room for initiatives here</li> </ol> </li> <li>In many many cases, hardware supports cool power-saving features, but the operating system is not using these features (e.g. default configuration is on "energy waste" mode).</li> <li>This is getting better: new operating systems provide better power saving features by default. But there is more room for improvement, and there are still many millions of computers with Windows XP..</li> </ul> <strong>INITIATIVES</strong> <ul> <li><a href="http://climatesaverscomputing.org">Climate Savers Computing</a> [<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_Savers_Computing_Initiative">wikipedia</a>]: an initiative of many market leading software+hardware companies, that aims to cut computer power usage by 50%. Sounds good!</li> <li><a href="http://www.80plus.org">80PLUS</a> [<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/80_PLUS">wikipedia</a>]: an standard to make all new Power Supply Units work at 80% efficiency.</li> <li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Configuration_and_Power_Interface">ACPI</a>: the standard for controlling and monitoring hardware's power data.</li> <li><a href="http://www.energystar.gov/">EnergyStar</a> [<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Star">wikipedia</a>]: worldwide initiative for cutting power consumption of electric appliances. Deals with computers also.</li> </ul> <strong>SUMMARY</strong> <ul> <li>The technology is already everywhere! But still not in use in many cases.</li> <li>Why doesn't windows popup a friendly window of "would you like to enable power-saving features"?</li> <li>Future seem pink (green?) primarily due to the above-mentioned initiatives, the increasing awareness, and probably regulations. Recent operating systems (e.g. Windows 7) are much better at power management.</li> <li>It's really amazing that Microsoft, Apple and Ubuntu can send an update to all world's computers, that enforces (or even suggests) all power-saving features. It's possible to cut the world's power consumption TOMORROW, very easily. In my (very!) rough calculation that I've made, a typical desktop computer can save 50 Watt-Hour (based on Climate Savers info) * 24h per day. Multiply that by 100 million badly power-configured computers (a low estimation, 10% of all computers) - <strong>we get 100GigaWatt Hours saved per day!</strong></li> </ul> <strong>OKAY, SO HOW TO BETTER CONFIGURE MY COMPUTER?</strong> <ul><li>Windows XP: <a href="http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=power_mgt.pr_power_mgt_manual_act_winXP">EnergyStar info</a></li> <li>Windows Vista: <a href="http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=power_mgt.pr_power_mgt_manual_act_winVista">EnergyStar info</a></li> <li>Windows 7: <a href="http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=power_mgt.pr_power_mgt_manual_act_win7">EnergyStar info</a>, <a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/01/06/windows-7-energy-efficiency.aspx">Microsoft info</a> see the "Operating system" paragraph <li>Linux: gnome-power-preferences, <a href="http://www.lesswatts.org/projects/powertop/">powertop</a> - an amazing tool that reports the processes that consume most power, and also gives tips on how to switch computer components (e.g. wifi) to power-saving mode. Is there a windows/mac equivalent?</li> <li>MAC: <a href="http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=power_mgt.pr_power_mgt_manual_act_mac">EnergyStar info</a></li> </ul> <strong>See also</strong> <ul> <li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_computing">Green Computing</a></li> </ul>