With the rising cost of modern hydro bills, many families are looking for new ways to conserve energy around the house. If you haven’t yet thought about saving energy by altering your computer habits, it’s time to start thinking about this often-overlooked area.
The easiest way to reduce your computer’s energy consumption is to adjust its sleep settings. With just a few clicks of the mouse, you can have your computer enter sleep mode after a set length of inactivity. Because of this feature’s “set it and forget it” qualities, the few extra minutes used setting it up now will end up saving you loads of energy without requiring any extra effort later on.
Depending on your particular computer’s capabilities, sleep mode should use anywhere from 20 to 50 times less power than it would during standard use.
Though sleep mode does help to reduce the total amount of energy used by your computer, even small amounts of energy can and will start to add up over time. Because of this, it is always best to do a complete computer shutdown when you have finished working for the day or when you plan to be away from your computer for several hours at a time. Despite popular belief, a computer shutdown and its later startup will not increase your computer’s energy consumption.
So, if you’ve been looking for a way to lower those rising hydro bills by conserving energy around the house, be sure to examine your computer habits and make changes wherever necessary. By making a couple of very minor adjustments, you can easily reduce your computer’s energy footprint, while saving a little money at the same time.
