A few energy-saving tips

A day doesn’t go by at the moment with talk of the rising cost of living and in particular, the rising cost of energy that keeps your computer-related hardware running.

With this in mind, we wanted to give you some really simple energy-saving tips, that we have put in place ourselves, and might be useful for you as well.

Shutting down computers fully when you’re finished for the day

This is a big one. The amount of computers we see, which just get left on constantly, is very, very high. Not only will shutting it down completely save you some money in energy costs, but it will also improve the performance of your computer and give it a longer life. 

When you’re finished using your computer for the day, firstly shut it down completely via the Windows power button, and also turn off the plug it connects to (if it has a switch) or unplug it from the wall completely. This will stop any energy from being used overnight, and over the course of the year will help a little towards reducing your energy bill.

At our office, we turn the power socket switches off for pretty much everything which doesn’t need power or needs to be on standby overnight – such as printers, display screens and the radio.

Replacing really old computers

Now, I’m fully aware that replacing a computer means a high upfront cost, and clawing the cost of the computer via energy saving would take a long time… but it will still help in the long term.

If you’re using really old computers, and in particular here, I’m referring to desktop computers/towers, they might be using power supplies inside them which aren’t as efficient as today’s power supplies, and are drawing more energy from the grid than they actually need to.

Most new computers will have an element of energy saving/energy efficiency to them, in terms of the power supply – and this will could save you money on your energy bill in the long term. There is of course the added benefit of using a newer computer, which will increase your productivity through quicker performance. 

Use a smart plug to schedule power use

You can use a smart plug to turn the power on/off automatically, on a schedule for devices of your choosing. This might be the power through to an extension lead which has multiple devices connected to it, or it could be as simple as a heater.

The main use we have for a smart plug at the office is to turn the heaters on/off in the colder months (in summer they are physically unplugged completely whilst not in use).

In the winter months, we have the heater come on shortly before people arrive at the office, and they turn off again towards the end of the working day. They also have a ‘fail safe’ turn-off routine early evening as well, just in case someone was working over (why?) and manually turned the heater back on. This means it wouldn’t accidentally be running all night, or all weekend. 

So there we have it, some super simple tips to help you a little bit with your energy use, I hope this may have given you an idea or helped in some way.

Gavin Moorhouse is the owner of Lucid Computer Solutions, an IT Support and Computer Solutions based in Redditch. He produced this article using his laptop running on battery.