Google is doing amazing things when it comes to energy. They are working to promote plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs). They are the centerpiece for Climate Savers smart computing, targeting a 50% reduction in computer electricity usage by 2010. They custom design/build highly efficient power supplies. They … they …
Well, do you realize that switching from color to black & white Googling could save 750 megawatts per year?
Earlier this year, EcoIron calculated that shifting from color to black and white Googling could cut worldwide energy demand by 250 megawatts per year.
an all white web page uses about 74 watts to display, while an all black page uses only 59 watts … [source: Energy Star]
That is pretty impressive, a roughly 20 percent reduction in energy demand. (Are you, as I did, thinking about this with the glaringly white Daily Kos screen scorching your eyes?) (Please note that this calculation is for a CRT monitor, which burns (MUCH) more power than a LCD screen. Don’t know the figures for an LCD.)
Hmmm … should we all go “black”? What are paths for going “black”? How about a big central source?
Take at look at Google, who gets about 200 million queries a day. Let’s assume each query is displayed for about 10 seconds; that means Google is running for about 550,000 hours every day on some desktop.
Let us stop and consider this (which is already, almost certainly, outdated with growth in internet use and Google’s market share). Google owns, according to this, roughly 200 million hours of computer screen time worldwide, per year. Impressive … depressing?
Assuming that users run Google in full screen mode,
Hmmm, assumptions. Is Google full screen for you? For me, maybe half the time.
the shift to a black background will save a total of 15 (74-59) watts. That turns into a global savings of 8.3 Megawatt-hours per day, or about 3000 Megawatt-hours a year.
Three gigawatt hours. Basically, the equivalent of a few hours output from a big coal plant.
Now take into account that about 25 percent of the monitors in the world are CRTs, and at 10 cents a kilowatt-hour, that’s $75,000, a goodly amount of energy and dollars for changing a few color codes.
Okay, this won’t get us into the category of a Silver BB toward solving Global Warming and all our energy challenges, but an amusing comment about how we can be doing so many things different to be more efficient in power use.
Now, read this months ago but thanks to Luis de Sousa over at EuroTribune, I found out that there is something to about this. Something amusing that I, for one, find to be Energy COOL.
HeapMedia seems to have had read EcoIron. They have come out with Blackle, which is a black screen version of Google’s search. And, the searches provide Google results, solely you will see results as white on black.
To me, this is simply Enegy COOL.
A simple adjustment, that could help save your eyes and watt hours at the same time.
A good (great?) example of the incremental benefits of technology, innovative ideas, individual action that can combine (holistically) to have positive impact that will, we hope, be met from the top down with systems of ever greater enregy efficiency.
Ask yourself: Are you doing your part to ENERGIZE AMERICA?
NOTES
- HeapMedia has a number of “brands” of potential interest beyond Blackle: such as Mikibo (free health / fitness tracking/advice); Calorifica (calorie search by food); anonomi (spam-free public email); etc …