The following are Computing & Information Technology (C&IT) recommended "best practices" for realizing energy savings from office computers.
Computers with energy saving features started proliferating about 10 years ago. The objective was to curb the energy use of computers and related equipment that were growing in numbers and increasing in complexity. In a common office computing environment the devices largely responsible for energy consumption are desktop computers and laser printers. Energy is saved by switching the device into a low power consumption mode, often called "sleep mode," after a specified idle period. When activity is detected it only takes a few seconds for the device to power back up from sleep mode.
The following practices apply to the computers that usually sit on your desk and you normally use for your day-to-day work. More often than not these computers are Windows or Macintosh systems.
Over the course of a year, these simple steps will result in significant power savings for your computer only. Given the fact that there are several thousand computers deployed in offices around campus, an institution of the size of WSU can end up with annual savings of $250,000 in electrical costs for computers alone. And that is a conservative estimate.
There have been claims that turning your computer on and off ultimately shortens its lifetime. The truth is, computers are designed to be powered up and down as needed. You will not harm your computer by switching it on and off just once per day.
Several years ago, when energy-saving features were newly implemented on computers, there were some problems. Many times computers would “freeze” after coming out of sleep mode or they would simply refuse to "wake up." Thankfully, in the past few years great progress has been made in that area and today energy saver features on new computers and printers are reliable and quite transparent to the end user.
While modifying power options on your computer is trivial you should generally let IT staff from your department/division do it instead. Your specific computer model may have problems with particular settings, or something could go wrong. Trying to maximize energy savings on your computer, beyond the simple steps outlined in the previous section, can never be worth lost data or productivity suffered if your computer crashes. Even so, IT staff will only change the setting that allows the monitor to go to sleep. We do not recommend allowing the computer itself to go into power saving mode.
Switching your computer, or even just the monitor off also saves power indirectly: The computer equipment generates a considerable amount of heat. In buildings with lots of computers the climate control system has to work harder to compensate. Especially in the summer, cooling costs can increase significantly.
If your department/division has local IT staff, consult with them for other computer use practices that may apply to your local environment and may contribute to this energy saving initiative. They can also configure your computers so that monitors go into power-saving mode automatically after a period of inactivity.
...visit the U.S Government Energy Star website: http://www.energystar.gov/
Christos Demos, C&IT Departmental
Computing Services
