Technology Update

September 15, 2008

Green week (turn off your monitors)

Today kicks off Purdue's "Green Week" effort, designed to bring attention to all of the little (and big) things we can do to help reduce the negative environmental impact we have. You can read more, and get a list of the events, at http://www.purdue.edu/sustainability/.

As part of the department's contribution, we are encouraging everyone to shut off their monitors when not in use. The most common monitor in use in EAS draws 3 Watts when in standby mode. If it were turned off for 16 hours a day, we'd save 48 Watt-hours. If all 200 monitors in the department were turned off for 16 hours a day, we estimate that in a single day the department would save 9600 Wh (and even more on weekends!). This is enough to run my house for about 10 hours, or to run a large window-unit air conditioner for over 6 hours non-stop. In dollar terms, that's over $1 per day at Duke Energy's current rate.