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Give Your Computer a Rest Featured on Jan 18, 2008
Challenge
Unplug your computer every night for one month. Unless it's unplugged, your idle PC still uses electricity.
Individual Result
By unplugging your PC each night, you will reduce your CO2 emissions by a total of 51 lbs. for the month.
Rally Impact
2216 people have reduced CO2 emissions by 54.15 tons by completing this challenge so far. That's equal to turning off the electricity of 47 homes for about 1 month!
CHALLENGE SPONSOR
Challenge Details
Ta-da! We are proud to present the first Featured Challenge based on your suggestions in the Challenge Workshop. This first Rallyer-inspired Challenge is based on terrific electricity-saving suggestions from Bee and several others. Nice work Bee! You’ll be getting a set of our organic Carbonrally shopping totes as a token of our thanks. Now, get ready to stand up and power down… your computers.
The Carbon Connection
You’re reading this on a computer, aren’t you? As you sit there, basking in the glow of Carbonrally, are you thinking about how much carbon dioxide is being created to keep your PC running? Every time you power up your computer, you’re drawing electricity from the nearest power plant which is probably powered by coal, oil, or natural gas. And burning fossil fuels produces carbon dioxide.
So our first message is to turn off your computer when you won’t be using it for a long period of time. An average desktop computer with a 17-inch monitor needs between 150 and 350 watts of electricity while it is being activity used. If you were to leave that computer on 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, it would use over $200 of electricity and lead to the release of over 1.5 tons of CO2 into Earth’s atmosphere. Turning off your computer — even an inactive computer — for just 10 hours a day can lead to substantial carbon savings.
However, this Rallyer-inspired Challenge asks you to go the extra distance. Did you know that many of your household electronics and appliances use electricity even when they are turned off? This is known as standby or “phantom” power. For instance, your television uses standby power so that it can be ready to instantly turn on when you click the remote control. Your computer’s printer powers down, but isn’t really off unless you turn off its power switch or unplug it. Anything you own that has a transformer plugged into a socket is probably drawing electricity all the time, even when the gadget it’s connected to is not in use. Skeptical? Touch the transformer. If it is warm to the touch, then it’s wasting electricity.
At a few watts here and a few watts there, this loss of “phantom” power really begins to add up. In the United States, an estimated 5% of residential electricity is used as “phantom” power. According to the Department of Energy, that wasted 5% amounts to an annual energy loss of 64 million megawatt-hours of electricity — an amount of energy equivalent to the output of 18 typical power stations and at a cost of over $3 billion. If we could stop the use of all that “phantom” power, we could keep 100 billion pounds of CO2 out of Earth’s atmosphere each year.
So, for this Challenge, it isn’t enough to simply let your computer system hibernate overnight or even to turn it off. A computer and monitor that are both in “sleep mode” can still use anywhere between 8 and 28 watts of power. The only way to stop them from using any electricity at all is to cut the cord. Not literally, of course. Unplugging them will do.
Getting It Done
Need help meeting this Challenge? Here are a few simple suggestions:
- One easy way to make sure you’re not wasting energy is to plug your computer, monitor, printer, and any other computer peripherals you have into a single power strip. After you shut the computer down, you can effectively unplug it and all the other pieces by turning off the power strip. That’s a lot easier than unplugging everything individually and plugging them back in the next morning. Just turn the power strip back on and restart the computer.
- Better yet, you could buy a “Smart Strip” power strip for around $30. The “Smart Strip” essentially monitors electricity use in each plug and shuts off the ones that have been idle for a period of time.
- Even if you’ve decided to accept our Challenge and unplug your computer every night, you could still benefit from understanding your computer’s built-in power savings options. For instance, under Vista’s new hybrid sleep mode, you can put your computer to sleep while you’re out to lunch or in a meeting. While you’re away, your computer will only be using 2 or 3 watts of electricity. And, better yet, when you return, it will start back up in seconds with everything just as you left it. Read more about Vista and Mac power-saving options.
- There are a few common sense warnings to this Challenge. Be sure that your computer is set up to do important housekeeping chores (e.g., scanning for viruses or adware, downloading and installing critical updates, backing up your files) at a time when your computer is plugged in and turned on. Also, consider leaving your cable modem and network router plugged in. Sometimes they can be a little finicky about restarting, grabbing an IP address, and so on.
Do you have any other suggestions about how to make it easier for Rallyers and their friends to turn off and unplug their computers? If so, please share them in the Challenge forum section below.
Rules of the Challenge
The duration of this Challenge is one month and the Challenge is repeatable. If you accept this Challenge, you’ll see 1.7 lbs. of CO2 reduction added to your Rally account each day for the next month.
Are you someone who normally leaves his computer on all day? Does it run all night with a screensaver, or with the CPU running and the monitor turned off? We’ll make you a deal. For the first month of the Challenge, you can start with setting your computer up to hibernate or sleep at night. That will save 90% of the electricity you would have been wasting. And if, in that first month, you see that this isn’t such a big deal, then next month you can repeat this Challenge, buy a smart power strip, and shut your computer down completely overnight.
Learn More
Climate Savers: Computing Power Management Tips
Wikipedia: Standby Power
Grist: Smart Power Strips
When to Turn Off Personal Computers
Mr. Electricity: Saving Electricity
Estimating Appliance and Home Electronic Energy Use
See the Math
We know your computer is probably different from your brother’s or your professor’s or that girl with the Mac you met at the coffee shop. For the purposes of this Challenge, we are going to make the following assumptions to calculate an average value for your computer’s energy consumption:
- We assume that 60% of you are using a desktop computer and 40% are using laptops/notebooks. We also assume 50% of all computers are connected to laser or inkjet printers. For the purposes of simplicity, we are ignoring any other peripherals you may have attached to your computer (e.g., scanner, external hard drives, speakers). That doesn’t mean don’t unplug them! We’re just not including them in our calculations.
- For our desktop systems, we are imagining a desktop computer with a 17-inch external monitor. That system, including the computer and monitor, uses 200 watts when it is turned on and inactive.
- We assume a laptop/notebook without an external monitor uses only about 40 watts.
- We assume laser or inkjet printers consume an average of around 4 watts in standby mode.
- We assume that you are unplugging your computer for 10 hours per day. That should be a conservative number. If it isn’t, you need to get out more.
- The Challenge lasts for a month. Let’s call a month 30 days. So, taking this Challenge results in 300 hours of savings per month (30 days at 10 hours unplugged per day).
- A kilowatt is equal to 1000 watts. Using 1 kilowatt for 1 hour is what your electric company describes as 1 kilowatt-hour (kWh).
- So, let’s first look at just the electricity savings by our desktop users. Using the above numbers gives us:
Desktop users taking this Challenge reduce electricity used by 60 kWh per month. Using a similar formula, we find that laptop users save 12 kWh per month. Rallyers with printers save another 1.2 kWh per month. - Now we need to get to an average Rallyer’s savings. So we are going to apply the percentages of each type of user to the savings to get a weighted average. Desktop users (60% of you) save 60 kWh (60 kWh x 60% = 36 kWh). Laptop users (40% of you) save 12 kWh (12 kWh x 40% = 4.8 kWh). And users of printers (50%) save 1.2 kWh (1.2 kWh x 50% = 0.6 kWh). Add these numbers up to get an average impact:
- Ah, but wait! Some of you turn off your monitors at night. Some of you already have your computer set up to standby, hibernate, or sleep. So we’re putting in a “fudge factor” and reducing the kilowatt-hour savings by 20%:
- Still with us? Finally, we know that a fossil fuel burning power plant releases an average 1.55 pounds of CO2 for every kilowatt-hour it creates:
- Based on our assumptions, turning off your computer system at night for a month will result in an average carbon dioxide savings of 51.3 pounds, which we will credit at 1.7 lbs per day.
You get the idea. A sleeping computer is good, but an unplugged computer is even better. And the longer you can keep that computer powered off, the more electricity you save and the less carbon dioxide you’re responsible for creating. And don’t worry. When you turn the computer back on tomorrow, Carbon Rally will still be here. Go to sleep, Rallyers!
Discuss Give Your Computer a Rest:
I’ll leave my printer and laptop unplugged while I’m offline. I don;t like toasty computers, anyways :)
I have a good battery, so I can do this. I’ll charge it whenever I’m on it and leave it unplugged the rest of the time.
I am going to pick up one of those “smartstrips” asap!
I had no idea it was this simple, I deffinatly would have started doing this a long time ago. :)
Turn of screen savers! Screensaver=power waster. It takes a lot of power to display a simulated aquarium. Set the power management options so that your monitor is “turned off” (put into standby mode) after 10 or 15 minutes of disuse.
Screensavers had their use back in the days of old CRT monitors that did not have standby mode. CRTs would permanently “burn-in” an image if the same thing was displayed continuously and screensavers were devised to get around that problem. But they should now be seen as outdated, silly, and wasteful.
This will be a little difficult because my children are always on the computer late in the night but I will try.
I’ve already done this for over a year. I have a switch, next to my light, that turns off the power to every outlet in my room. My computer, TV, and Radio, are all power-less, when the switch is off, most of the time, when I leave my house, I turn off everything in my room, and house. Last year, when I had this function intigrated into my rooms, the electricity bill was over 300 a month, since then, it has been within 100 bucks a month, give or take 10 bucks. When you live off your income, you tend to find ways like this to save money, let alone the earth.
Challenge complete already.
Mariah, Hi. I have been struggling with this same problem. I want to find a way to turn off our cable box/DVR when not in use, but if I unplug it I have the same boot-up problem you are having. Ugh. the box just sits there warn day and night. There must be a better way. Any ideas? We are working on it with the Carbonrally team, and hopefulyl we’ll find a solution and post a challenge on this.
My only problem with turning off the power strip for my DVR/Cable box is that it will not record shows if there is no power. Also when the DVR/Cable box gets unplugged, thank you kitty, it take 10-15 mins to boot up. I guess I can switch it to a main plug and leave everything else in the entertainment center on the power strips and shut those off.
I do this already! lol
I currently have my TV/DVD/Cable box on a power strip and turn it off when not in use, keep the cd player unplugged so I just need to expand on that and turn off the power strip to the computer when I’m not using it. I’ll leave a post-it note so I don’t forget.
I have to unaccept this challenge, much to my regret, because I have to figure out a way to turn off all the things I don’t need while keeping ON the things that have to have power. Things are such a tangle! And we have two computer set-ups, too, both tangled and full of dust bunnies. :-P I did manage to unplug some things and to remember at least to shut down both computers every night. I have also not been powering them up in the morning and leaving them on all day. I do deserve some credit, but I’m not really following the rules so I have to quit for a bit until I get it figured out.
In fact, unplug everything that you can before going to bed to save more carbon.
this is so easy! i never knew how much i could help the enviroment by doing these simple tasks..
i could do this its really simple
This should be easy, seeing as where I’m living, the main computer is just a laptop. xD But it still uses electricity! (So do other appliances… I’ll unplug them, too.) =]
I started this process two nights ago—it’s takes little to no time at all and I feel like I’m doing my part.
Yes it applies to a MAC. They use about the same amount of power. So have fun and give it a try!
I wonder… it says “Idle PC” in the summary of the challenge, but will I still have the same impact on a Mac?
haha! well, I already do this anyways….
About 6 months-1 year ago, the phantom electricity phenomenon was really brought to MY foreground – this was something I really never thought too much about. When I kept hearing and reading stories about how much electricity these electronics that are plugged in and not used regularly take, I thought I would give it a shot and see if it would really help the electric bill (yes, selfish reason to start! haha). Boy, what a difference it does make! 95% of my electronics are unplugged unless I use them and then when I’m done, I unplug them again. I accepted this challenge because I want to keep up the good work and have the reminder of why I should REALLY keep it up :)
This one shouldn’t be too hard at home, but I’m gonna try to start doing it at work now too. Thanks for the suggestion Wildcat!
Wow, ok, this is new for me, I do power off the pc as opposed to powering down or putting it on standby, but I had no idea it needed to be unplugged. Wow. Ok. I can manage to unplug this puppy for more than one night, Ill unplug this puppy every night after I use it for the last time. First challenge Ive taken on soemthing I dont already do. Awesome.
I not only unplug all my gadgets at home (with a powerstrip) i do it at work too!
Okay, so I know that someone has probably already asked this, but I was too lazy to read through all the comments. I was wondering if, to complete this challlenge you actually have to unplug the computer. Can’t you just turn it off? I have a dell, and on the start menu you can find a button that says turn off computer which gives you a pop-up that says turn off. Is this really enough?
This one’ll be hard for me, but I will do it!
I always do that anyways! But yeah.. I meet people all the time who have about 3 computers in their house, and they leave every single one on all day and all night, and never ever turn them off! It really annoys me!
We’re in the process of eliminating vampirism throughout the house. There’s always a surprise waiting…I discovered that a tower fan we recently purchased was remote controlled…Another power vampire. Off it now goes at the plug. I just hope we can get ‘em all.
A few bucks for power strips and switchable plugs and you’re well on your way…
Idea needing developing: Internal rechargeable battery-powered remote sensors and flash memories for settings. While the TV/DVD, etc. is actually ‘on’, the battery for the remote sensor is charged. When the device is shut off, the entire system is shut off while the battery-powered remote sensor sits idly using minimal battery power rather than line electricity. The flash memory will keep the last setting stored with essentially no electricity usage.
WW
I started putting timers on my surge protectors to power down at night (11pm-7am). Problem is that somethings need to work when accessed such as DSL moden and WiFi router without me having to touch them everyday. Timers seem to be working well.
Will start pulling the plugs at work and placing the laptop in standby mode when I don’t take it with me.
This wasn’t too hard, but I could tell that it made a difference.
i turn off my computer evey night, and i thought that was enough. well now i know better.
wow..i didnt know that it still used electricity. im definitely up for the challenge considering we shut down the computer every night..and i have to do is unplug stuff..sounds good
Does this work with laptops? By the way I love how this site makes me feel like people are working to keep our Earth healthy!!
is turning off the computer not as good as unpugging?
wow, I love this website =)
This is great!!! I had no idea that my conputer could use so much electricity just overnight! I’m so glad to be doing this.
1. TV/DVD player are plugged into a power strip. We turn it off whenever we are not watching. No vampire power for us!
2. My main computer (laptop), monitor, docking station, etc. are all plugged into an outlet that is turned off by a switch. We shut the whole thing down every night.
3. All 3 laptops in our condo are set to hibernate after a certain period of inactivity.
4. Stereo is entirely unplugged unless we are listening to it.
5. All appliances are EnergyStar.
This is a great challenge, one that I plan to take to my entire company. Not only does it save on electricity, it saves money!! I have, like many who have posted previously, started to move many of my appliances to power strips. I have also become mindful of unplugging appliances when I leave for vacation or a business trip.
This challenge has inspired me to put all my electronics on power strips and turn the power strip off when the electronics are not in use…I’ve also been spreading the word and have inspired a few other folks to put their electronics on power strips too…thanks!
It takes less than a minute and is an easy habit to develop. Saves energy and saves on electric bill. pasiefert@optonline.net
violet, i just turn my strip off at the wall.
Don’t power strips still use power because they’re plugged into the wall (even if there turned off)? Can someone explain please?
It would be usefule to ask big companies / universities etc to not ask their employees to leave their computers on during their abscence. I teach at CSUF and I am supposed to do just that, so that the technical crew can do the work/updates they want ( I don’t obey).
i already turn off the printer, computer, and copier at work before i leave at night.
I have been turning my computer off at work since July 2007. My husband is buying me a laptop and turning it off will not be a hard challenge. I accept.
it might be worth upgrading your computer also!
interestingly the new 45 nanometer processes for upcoming chips make them run much cooler and use less power. Funny how that works…
Miko
The key for me getting this done was to just turn off the power strip to which my computer is connected. This sort of thinking has led me to consider walking around the house and adding a power strip to everything and turning them all off at night. I wonder if there is a “smart power strip” out there that will turn itself off when there power draw is below a certain threshold which would effectively do this unplugging for you.
Really good point about the heat. In our case we have stopped heating rooms which we do not use, so the heat would still be wasted since the room is not occupied when the heat is off.
Hey Rick. Great point about needing more seasonal challenges. In the case of PCs staying on all night, I’d love see the data about efficiency of PC “waste heat” vs dedicated heating systems. In our case the PC is in the office, which does not need heat… maybe we should move it into the bathroom :)
I love this site, and I love the challenges, but as an engineering geek, I’m not sure I buy into this particular one…
When you leave appliances on, the wasted energy is given off as heat. For most people in the U.S. in January, that heat is useful to keep their home or office warm. In effect, you are heating your home or office with electricity instead of oil or gas. It is probably less efficient to do it that way, but only by a certain percentage. Most of that “wasted” energy is actually used.
This challenge would be fantastic for the summer months, when generating additional heat requires more AC usage. For the winter months, I’d rather see a challenge that focuses on conserving heat (better insulation, etc.) In fact, maybe I’ll propose one!
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