By Brian Holzheuer on May 14th, 2009
A common problem that I run into is that people think that it costs a lot of money to go green. In some cases this may be true, but there are a lot of small things we all can do to save a little energy. I’ve put together a list of things that cost under $30 that will save you energy.
1. Programmable Thermostat: Using a programmable thermostat can save you hundreds of dollars over the course of a year. The basic idea is to not heat or cool your home when you are not there. These can easily be purchased at your local hardware store and are fairly simple to install.
2. Caulk: It’s amazing what a $4 tube of caulk can do! Fill in all those leaky cracks around windows, doors and foundations and you can really cut down on your energy usage.
3. Furnace Filter: If your home is heated using a forced air furnace, than you need to replace your furnace filter on a regular basis. When they become clogged up this will cause your furnace to work harder, which uses more energy. Also choose your filter carefully, as a thicker filter may make your furnace work harder!
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By Simon Leufstedt on March 2nd, 2008
Yesterday we got this email from Matt Bentley:
Changing Microsoft XP power scheme settings determines whether or not power-saving CPU features are activated in a machine when idle.
All modern desktop CPU’s past the AMD Athlon XP and the Intel Pentium 4 (ie. AMD A64 & Intel Core and upwards) have some kind of speed-stepping feature built into them, which is utilised via Windows XP’s power management settings as per Orthogonal Thought’s blog.
What does this mean? Well, basically, if we all switch our desktop computer’s power scheme to ‘Laptop/Portable’, our computers will drop the cpu voltage and frequency when idle (provided the motherboard supports it, and most do), saving 30w (on average) – it’s like switching to an energy-saver lightbulb, essentially – and has absolutely no performance impact when not running idle.
Learn more: Intel SpeedStep, Windows XP, and confusing Power Profiles
By Simon Leufstedt on February 15th, 2008
It’s time to clear this up folks. Hopefully you already know that surfing with a black background (on your computer screen) will not always save energy. If not, let me explain why black backgrounds aren’t that green.
Black backgrounds can save some energy if you use a CRT screen (CRT screens are those huge and big screens). If you, like the majority, uses an LCD screen (the flat ones) a white background instead of a black will save energy.
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