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Baby polar bear says: "Thanks for cutting your carbon footprint!"

So what has been the result of conducting this audit? Let’s look back over some previous posts:

• Introduction
  • We looked at power meters, and how to interpret the results.
• Should I Unplug My Telly?
  • We discovered that leaving your gadgets on standby could be costing a lot of money
• Battery-Powered Devices
  • It’s all about rechargeable batteries. There’s really no sane reason to be using disposables.
• Green Computing
  • Some solutions: use a laptop/netbook/nettop, avoid torrenting with desktop PCs, use the power management features, and if you build your own, opt for efficient components.
• Technological Solutions
  • Low energy lighbulbs, green electricity, home power meters, and micro power generation.

As a result of conducting this audit i’ve now got a better idea of where my electricity is going to waste. I’ve been able to make some simple changes in behaviour, combined with some automated methods, and have already cut my home power usage.

It’s a pretty simple process, it saves you money, and it helps fight climate change. So what are you waiting for?

Adobe bring out some useful stuff (Flash, Air, etc) but for some mad reason they only seem to release them as 32-bit. Linux uptake of 64-bit is really high, and even Windows users are installing 64-bit a lot these days, so this is a bit weird.

Fear not though, installing Air on your amd64 version of Ubuntu is actually pretty straightforward. Check the link below for instructons, including a script that’ll sort out the dependencies with having to faff about with getlibs:

Install Adobe Air on 64-bit Ubuntu

Enjoy!

There’s two main ways to save electricity: change your behaviour, or change your technology. Since most people are a bit lazy, what tech is there that can make being green easy?

Saves power, saves money, saves hassle. Sounds good!

Low-energy lightbulbs

Looking at the results of my own audit, it’s pretty easy to see which rooms are using low-energy lighting, and which aren’t. Installing low-energy bulbs can knock hundreds of watts off your energy use in one simple stroke. As an added bonus, low-energy bulbs last many times long than old-fashioned incandescent bulbs.

There are some limitations though. Most low-energy CFL bulbs can’t be used on a dimmer switch, and they have to be disposed of as electronics because they contain small amounts of heavy metals. As long as your local authorities have set up proper disposal systems for waste electrical goods that isn’t an issue environmentally

Switch to green energy

Probably the single greenest thing you can do, and one of the easiest. Switching to an electricity supplier that buys their energy from 100% renewable resources slashes your electrical carbon footprint to zero. Most green electricity is slightly more expensive than dirty power, but if you conduct your own power audit you should be able to easily find a way to economise that will pay for the difference.

This meter has been set to show cost of the power being used in real time

Home power meters

Installing a real-time power usage meter on the wall can lead to real savings. It sounds too simple to work, but showing you how much juice you’re wasting at any time can be a great motivator. These devices are cheap and clip safely onto your existing wiring.

Home micro power generation

Depending on your budget and where you live, installing a small wind turbine, solar power generation or solar water heating can be economical. The exact details of break-even points for this kind of heavy-tech solution vary depending on a lot of factors, so it’s best to consult a supplier in your area.

Buy efficient gadgets

Start looking at power usage when you consider buying new toys. For large appliances this is now displayed prominently in the form of energy star ratings. Let the vendors know that energy ratings will influence your decision to buy.

Your computers are probably sucking a lot more power than you realise.

Take my audit results (PDF). My desktop PC can quite happily sit there sucking 100W, more than i’d be using to light the whole house some nights. Coupled with the fact that PCs are routinely left on for hours (or even continuously) and it adds up to a moderately shocking amount of wasteage.

Use a laptop

Laptops use a fraction of the power of desktops, and often have similar performance. From my audit results you can see that my laptop uses about 80% less power than my desktop.

Use a netbook or nettop

Don’t believe the hype from computer manufacturers. If (like most people) you spend most of your time on the computer using the internet, you don’t need a powerful desktop machine.

Netbooks are small super-efficient laptops designed for low-power use and long battery life. They’ll happily run a browser, office apps and internet goodies like Skype. As a bonus, most come preinstalled with Linux, so you won’t need to worry about viruses and malware.

The Asus Eeebox is so small you can mount it on the back of your monitor

A nettop is a similar animal, but for desktop use. Most desktop machines are hugely overpowered for browsing, but a nettop with a fast connection will give you 100% of the online experience without the overkill.

They’re built from laptop components and special efficient chipsets. You won’t be able to play the latest games on them, but if that doesn’t bother you, then they’re a really good option. As well as being more efficient than regular desktops they’re also quieter, cheaper and a lot smaller.

Examples include the Mac Mini, Asus EeeBox and the Linutop ( aka Viglen MPC-L)

Never torrent with your desktop

Torrents are great. The trouble is you need to leave the machine running for ages.

A NAS like the Qnap TS-209 will save power and money while protecting your data

In my case, leaving my desktop running 24/7 at 85W is not an attractive option. I’ve shifted all my torrent work over to a small efficient home file server from Qnap. Their range of home NAS (Network Attached Storage) devices will store all your movies and music on your home network, and download torrents at a measely 12W. Electricity costs for 24/7 use come to about £10.51 per year, compared to £70 for an 80W desktop machine. So the NAS totally pays for itself in electricity savings alone after about three years. Since I use one of the two-disk versions in a RAID1 setup, i’m also protected against data loss from hard drive failure, and the box is capable of a lot more. I’d recommend a similar device to anyone.

Use sleep/suspend

Modern PCs have more options than on and off. They can seamlessly move into low-powered standby states when they’re not being used.

Called sleep on Win/Mac and suspend on Linux, the machine shuts down all the hungry componants like processors, fans and hard drives, leaving your open apps in memory. At a moments notice they can be restarted. While in suspend my desktop only uses 1W more than it does when “off”!

I’d recommend setting your OS to suspend the machine whenever it’s idle for a few minutes. Most desktop keyboards and all laptops also have a hot key to suspend manually if you have to step away from the machine momentarily.

Use power-efficient components

If you build or modify your own machines then take a moment to look into efficient components.

Power supplies are a good place to start. Look for a model rated as “80Plus”, meaning it converts greater than 80% of the input power into usable power.

There are also some highly efficient CPUs on the market. For example the Athlon 4850e is a respectable 2.5GHz dual-core chip that’s rated at an amazing 45W, meaning it uses about half the power of similarly powerful CPUs.

Also, make sure your motherboard and CPU are compatible with the power-saving features built into modern chips. In a correctly matched motherboard a modern chip will reduce it’s voltage or even shut down whole cores depending on the demands on it. This can lead to large power savings.

Graphics cards are also a huge power consumer. In general, for machines that don’t do a lot of gaming, rendering or video work i’d suggest using the lowest-spec GPU that you can. For many people onboard graphics is perfectly usable.

Summary

It’s easy to be wasteful when it comes to powering your IT gear. But there’s also a ton of things you can do to give you a powerful, flexible setup that won’t eat the planet or your wallet.

Conducting an audit will show you where the problems are, and where a change in behaviour or hardware could bring about savings.