Greenjobs Blog

To avoid greenhouse gases emissions, pollution and energy waste, some countries in Europe are banning incandescent bulbs from stores. Current stock will be sold, and shops won’t be allowed to import or buy more incandescent bulbs. We will be forced to gradually switch to energy efficient illumination.

In the next three years, up to 27 countries in Europe will ban incandescent bulbs. We have already talked about this topic in our blog, explaining different types of light bulbs and lamps, but now we can only support this initiative.

However, as always, there are people who dislike this. For example, some people say this is being implemented because of the market interests of large corporations. Other people claim this is not the way to go, as CFL lamps contain mercury. Anyway, we will save energy no matter what, compared to the current situation.

The problem is that we’ll need to change sockets in some cases, and people seem to be worried about this, as some retailers in Germany have reported sales increases of about 600%.

The amount of energy saved will scale up to 40 Terawatt hours per year, enough to provide energy to a small country.

Another IT post focused on energy saving. These tips will be useful for both laptop and desktop computer users, but you will really notice their effects on laptop battery life. However, if you have many computers (for example in your company) and you apply these tips, the difference should be widely noticeable, making you save valuable energy and money. You already know how to make a energy efficient desktop computer, now let’s go for some tricks to save more energy.

1. Turn the computer off when you don’t use it.

It may be obvious but there are people who leave their computer turned on for hours, even when idle. A medium-end computer uses up to 80W when it’s idle. That’s a lot of energy that can be saved just by turning the computer off. If you are leaving your computer alone and idle longer than 30 minutes, consider switching it off.

2. Set an automatic turn-off for your screen.

Set your software configuration so that the screen automatically turns off, instead of using a screensaver. A good period is 3 minutes before switching off.

3. Reduce the brightness

Computer screens use more energy when high brightness values are set. Reduce it in order to narrow the energy use. Some people report battery life increases about half an hour when they lowered their brightness level. For desktop computers, you can still apply the same. Screens use a reasonable amount of energy, so it’ll be good if you can lower it in any way.

4. Disconnect external peripherals

In a laptop, use the touchpad instead of a mouse. That won’t make a really large difference but it will help. Plug off everything you are not using at the moment: USB devices also drain energy from your computer in order to work. This can be also applied to printers and other hardware.

5. Use HDD, not CD/DVD

Don’t leave any disk in the CD tray in laptops as it will do unnecessary spins which will shorten the battery life. If you have to use a ISO image file, consider using some software like DAEMON Tools, which allows you to mount it from the hard disk. It’ll make you save some energy as well.

6. Defrag your disks

The more fragmented that your disk is, the more energy it needs to get data ready. So defrag your hard disk when possible, especially when you are using the plug adaptor.

7. Turn off wireless and other devices

If you are not using them, turn off WiFi adaptor and Bluetooth, and the same with the sound. Why keep it on if you don’t need it?

8. Update your software and drivers

This won’t make a real difference, but sometimes latest the latest driver updates can improve the amount of energy used. Latest versions of some programs also bring optimizations so they use less CPU to get the job done, which means less energy used. It’s also useful to avoid compatibility and stability issues.

9. Reduce process list

Try to use some startup program manager software such as Ccleaner, which will allow you to decide which processes to start when the OS boots. You can reduce disk operation and CPU and RAM use this way. That will make you save energy, of course.

10. Deactivate fancy effects

Windows Vista Aero interface is serious eye candy, such as Mac OS or Linux with KDE desktops, but they drain more energy than “ugly” settings because of a higher CPU and graphic card use. By deactivating them or just lowering their “visual quality” settings you can save valuable energy, and also increase your system speed.

Please consider applying these tips to your computer - especially if you have more computers at home or in your office.

Illumination is one of the topics we still need to greatly improve. Most houses are still using the worst possible type of bulb, wasting a lot of energy, and some myths about energy efficient bulbs are still promoted.

Coming to talk about this, I recently read an article dismantling ten popular myths of efficient light bulbs. But… do you know the different types of light bulbs? Do you know which one is the best choice? We’ll show you.

Incandescent bulbs

Incandescent bulb: least energy efficient bulb

These bulbs produce light when an electrical current passes through a filament, usually tungsten, heating it up to about 3000 °K and making it emit light. The inside of the bulb is empty, or filled with gas, which prevents the filament to suffer oxidation. 90% of the energy taken by the bulb (usually 20 to 120 W) is irradiated as heat, instead of visible light. They produce up to 15 lumens/W.

Their useful life lasts no longer than 1000 hours in most cases. However, they are the cheapest to buy, and no lamp socket change is required in order to use them.

Still most used at households, but you must avoid them: the illumination cost with incandescent is the highest.

They are the least energy efficient bulbs and they produce a lot of heat.

Halogen lamps

Halogen lamps: slightly better than incandescent

Halogen lamps are similar to incandescent. They also use a tungsten filament but they have the bulb filled with an halogen gas which chemically reacts with the evaporated tungsten. When the electricity current passes through tungsten, a small amount of it becomes gas. The halogen reacts with it and produces light.

They have slightly better efficiency than non-halogen bulbs (up to 24 lumens/W, usually taking 20 to 60 W), but produce more heat too: their operation temperature is higher, and that can sometimes burn the paint on your ceiling! Most halogen lamps also focus the light in a certain area, and they don’t spread it room wide.

I was surprised when reading some of the safety issues halogens can cause, such as high UV radiation, bulbs exploding because of your fingerprints, etc. Please read the content of the link and take care.

Sometimes halogens stop working suddenly, so you have to replace them and it can be expensive to do this.

Fluorescent lamps

Fluorescent lamps: reaching efficiency?

Fluorescent are a further step in illumination efficiency, we are talking about 22% used energy is turned into visible light, with efficiencies from 50 lumens/W in worst case to 100 lumens/W, usually taking from 15 to 35 W.

Fluorescent lamps contain mercury vapour and phosphor. Electricity is used to excite the mercury vapour, so it produces ultraviolet light. This light itself is not visible, but when illuminating some materials with this kind of light, they emit visible light. So the ultraviolet light hits phosphor and it emits visible light.

Useful life spans of fluorescent tubes are much longer than incandescent: more than 25000 hours. But with that age, a fluorescent lamp would have lost 50% of its original brightness. Remember an incandescent bulb lasts no more than 1000 hours.

Fluorescent tubes have something interesting: they are usually long, so you can illuminate big rooms with few tubes. You must use a lot of incandescent, or even more halogens, but just few fluorescents. Light emitted by them is whiter than light from incandescent or halogen, and it’s spread room wide. However their initial cost  is higher than for incandescent bulbs.

There is another variety of these fluorescent lamps, the CFL (compact fluorescent lamp), with efficiency from 60 to 72 lumens/W (50 to 100 lumens/W for standard fluorescents). They have a small problem, if you turn them on and off quickly, their lifespan can be reduced by upto 85% . Some of these CFL’s can replace incandescent bulbs because they use the same socket. They are more expensive, but much more energy efficient.

I would recommend this kind of lamps/bulbs, as the illumination cost is lower with CFL or fluorescent tubes.

LED lamps

LED lamps: new technology for great efficiency?

These are not widely used at the moment but LED technology promises very long life spans (more than 50000 hours), high efficiency (up to 150 lumens/W), and a small size.

The problem for LED technology is they are still very expensive.

Now you know the different kinds of lamps and bulbs you can choose, consider which one fits your requirements. I would recommend fluorescent or CFL, and always try to avoid both incandescent and halogen lamps. The first ones because they are the least efficient and the energy cost is the highest with them, and the second one because of their flaws, such as focused light, high temperature, etc.

According to my experience, fluorescent tubes quickly offset their initial cost, so consider acquiring some if you plan on change your house illumination.

Maybe we’ve arrive late with this post, but it can be useful for next summer. When the temperature increases and you feel hot at home or in the office everyone wants to use the air conditioner for a cooler temperature. But, of course, that’s energy expensive, and there are several ways to keep your house a bit cooler without using an air conditioner.

1. Shut the curtains and close the windows during day. If you open them, heat will come inside.
2. Turn off your lights the longer you can, they produce heat.
3. Avoid the use of oven and other stuff which produces a lot of heat. Make a salad and eat some cold food instead.
4. Use a laptop instead of a desktop computer. They save energy, and they produce less heat too: rooms will be up to 4 degrees cooler.
5. Make a fan blow over a block of ice, and you will have a cold breeze.
6. Create a “wind tunnel”: use a fan to take cold air from the outside (at night), and other fan to exhaust hot air to the outside.
7. Use less clothes and wet your skin often. You can also put a fan close to you.

If you liked this, you can read more tricks to keep cool without air conditioner here, blog from which we have made this small list.

10:10 is a campaign which aims to make people join together to lower their energy bills and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, in the UK. 10:10 has just been launched today, did you know about it?

This independent campaign also aims to make us save some money, encouraging us to reduce our energy bills and greenhouse gas emissions by 10%, and some major energy suppliers have decided to help by labeling their customers utility bills to show how much people have saved. People can sign up today via the website - 10:10 official website.

Some celebrities have already signed to support the campaign, such as actor Colin Firth, fashion designer Vivienne Westwood. But that’s not all, because 10:10 will also try to get schools, universities, banks, shops, football clubs and more groups to sign up to support this energy-saving idea.

“10:10 is a fantastically simple but effective idea. I wholeheartedly urge Londoners to get involved”, Boris Johnson said. “We are already bringing in measures in the capital to slash energy use over the coming year – boosting electric vehicles usage, launching a public bike hire scheme, cutting home energy consumption and installing energy efficiency devices into public buildings”.

A non profit organisation runs the 10:10 initiative, formed by more than 60 people from 20 organisations providing time and effort to get the ball rolling.

10:10 is a great idea which is also supported by GreenJobs. If you want to sign you can do so from the 10:10 official website.

If you want to save energy (and save money too!) with a new computer you are about to purchase, we will give you some steps to follow. They will help you to buy an energy efficient computer so you can save energy when using it. By saving energy you can also save money because of a lower energy bill.

1. Do you really need a desktop computer?

Laptop use less than half of the energy a desktop computer use, and they produce less heat too. So your room will be up to 4 degrees cooler while you save valuable energy. A laptop must be enough for office, Internet and middle requirement work, so if you don’t need serious horsepower consider buying a laptop.

2. Buy an energy saving processor

One of the components which use most energy in a computer is its processor. i7 and Phenom II quad core processors are very nice and very powerful, but they use too much energy (more than 120W). Try to buy a processor which suits your requirements with the lowest energy consumption possible. Two processors which use very few energy are the Core 2 Duo E7200 from Intel and the Athlon 64 X2 5050e from AMD.

3. Can I save energy with RAM, Motherboard and hard disk?

Well, not really, these components won’t make a big difference, but you can follow some guidelines. First, less RAM modules = less energy use, so buy just 2 (to enable dual channel) and no more. Motherboard won’t give you more than 1 or 2 watt saving.

Hard Disks; I would seriously recommend Seagate 7200.12 series, which offer great performance with very good energy consumption. There are some “eco” and “green” models out there, but sometimes they have poor performance and they don’t make a big difference from other hard disks. SSD may help you to save some energy (sometimes they use less than 1W, regular hard disks use up to 5W), but they are very expensive.

4. Graphic card for low energy consumption gaming

Graphic card is the other component which drains a lot of energy in your computer among the processor. Let’s see some tips to choose the most efficient one for you.

First, if you are going to use your computer to play games, the most powerful model I would go for is the Radeon HD 4770 (78W peak), which has a great performance per watt. If you want to play but not too serious, I’d go for the GeForce 9500 GT (with DDR3 memory, 38W peak). If you need dedicated graphic card but won’t use it for playing at all, I’d go for the Radeon HD 4350 (15W peak). If you don’t want to play games, just buy a motherboard with integrated graphics card.

You can check graphic card energy consumption here.

5. Energy efficient power supply

Now you have a general idea about which pieces to buy for your next computer to save some energy, you must choose a very important part, the power supply. Always look for efficient ones (80+ certification).

There are some brands and models you can trust, they are not just efficient, but very good quality PSUs: Corsair (VX 550, HX 750), OCZ (Stealthstream 500), Seasonic… For an efficient computer, 550W must be more than enough. You may want a list of efficient PSUs. Check it and look for PSUs with 90% efficiency if possible.

In two years you will have saved the cost of a good PSU in energy saving and lower energy bills. Consider avoiding bad quality or cheap PSUs as they have very poor efficiency (70% or less).

Now you have an idea about what to buy to get an energy efficient computer. Coming soon, how to save energy by optimizing your laptop and enhancing its battery life. Also valid for desktop computers.