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I was interested to hear the following information in a presentation by Microsoft UK’s James O’Neill this afternoon:
- A single personal computer PC draws 125W of power each hour (but 5W when in sleep mode).
- Running that PC for 50 hours a week (instead of 24×7) saves 120W (0.12KW) x 6160 hours = 740 KWh per year.
- Generating 740KWh of electricity represents 1/3 tonne of carbon dioxide (CO2) per PC per year.
Maybe if we all turned off our PCs at night we wouldn’t need to fill the English countryside with wind turbines…
Oh yes – in case you don’t care about global warming, 740KWh of electricity costs around £45 a year [source: my domestic electricity bill from Powergen].
James O’Neill has written two more posts on this subject (part 1 and part 2).