Reduce your workstation power consumption

We’ve all heard it before, turn off your computer when you’re leaving for the night.  This simple task can conserve power and save you money.  But there are further steps you can take to minimize your energy usage.  Click More for details.

Heard of the term Phantom Power?  Electrical devices may still draw small amounts of power after you’ve turned them “off”.  With all of the devices at home or work, 10 percent of your electrical usage could be coming from this phantom power.  So unplug what you can when not in use.  If it’s too hard to unplug them all, use power bars with on/off switches.  Although power bars do continue to draw small amounts of power, it prevents the larger devices from sucking more.  Read more in an article at planetgreen.com.

But to take it one step further, Windows allows you to setup custom power plans to automatically conserve power when not in use.  So when you step out for your morning coffee, it will automatically turn off the monitor and go into Sleep or Hibernate mode.  For more information about these options, here is a Windows FAQ page about the difference between Sleep and Hibernation.  You can change the power plans to shutdown different components after an amount of time of your choosing.  I have setup 3 power plans.  The standard plan for most of the time, a power saver plan for when my laptop is running on batteries, and a high performance plan for when I need it to remain on even when I’m away (running motion studies, rendering, etc).