How much power does my phone consume?

Posted by BA on Jul 19, 2010 in Green Computing, Mobile, Smartphones, Technology, Telecommunication | 17 comments

Did you ever think how much power does your cell phone consume? Yes, we know it will be negligible but once the number of consumers has grown to a very high number all around the world, the power being consumed as a whole may be significant?

Let’s do some simple maths and we are not getting into any fancy tools here. It’s simple arithmetic. You will need to find three numbers about your phone before you start this calculation. The numbers are:

1. The battery capacity in mAh (milli-Ampere-hour)
2. The voltage output of the battery ( volts )
3. Total Talk time
4. Total Standby Time (optional)

One water bottle can power your whole house

Posted by BA on Mar 13, 2010 in Uncategorized | 6 comments

Remember electrolysis from the chemistry class? Yes, the process of separating oxygen and hydrogen by decomposing water. Dan Nocera, an M.I.T chemist claims that he has found a way of using sun-light to perform a photosynthesis like process to generate energy. Nocera’s method will use carbon-dioxide, water and sunlight to convert it into oxygen and energy. The amount of energy generated from one bottle of drinking water is expected to power a whole house.

Watch this video uploaded by US department of energy and hear Dan Nocera himself expliaining this process:

If things actually start working this way, the day is not far when every house will generate its own power and the concept of power grids will be found in the books of history only.

Source
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-03/video-artificial-photosynthesis-produces-enough-energy-power-house-one-bottle-water

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How much power does my computer consume?

Posted by BA on Feb 12, 2010 in Uncategorized | 46 comments

This is a typical question every eco friendly minded person asks himself. I cannot tell you exactly but here are a few general guidelines that will tell you how much power your computer generally consumes.
Keeping it very simple, there are two main components of a computer that take most of the power. A screen and the CPU box (that contains most of the electronics of your computer).  So we will have different power consumption ranges for these two components.

Power consumption for Computer Screens

In general, the power consumption is higher for CRT monitors. The older fat monitors and TVs are all CRTs. You can read more about the CRT here. The flatter, thinner and lighter monitors take lesser power and are eventually more green and eco friendly. These could be LCD, TFT, LED or Plasma monitors and have their own different properties, but in general they consume power lesser than a CRT. Following is a very general comparison:

So an obvious option is to ditch your CRT and move on with a lower power variant, most popular are the LCD monitors.

Power Consumption for CPU

If you have a desktop computer, your CPU will comprise of several parts and all these parts will determine how much power your PC will consume. Moreover, what operation you are performing on the computer will also determine the power consumption. As a rule of thumb, a typical desktop computer consumes around 300 Watts. If you want to know about your desktop, try to find the power supply inside your CPU box and the sticker will show the total power of the machine as shown in the image below.

Following is an example of a typical 300 Watts desktop power-supply side sticker:

In case you have a laptop, the power consumption is much lowe. I’ll be posting something about it in my next post.

Power saving for green computing

Posted by BA on Feb 10, 2010 in Uncategorized | 0 comments

Green computing is about environment friendly ways of computing including materials used in construction, ways of use to improve power efficiency and conserve resources and once the divce has reached the end of useful life, dispose It off or recycle it in an environment friendly manner.

While we will discuss other aspects on the blog as well, we will continue to emphasize on power saving for home computing and computing in small to medium enterprise. In larger organizations, the power conservation is based on the similar principals but will need different equipment.

We will keep a close eye on power consumption of different electronic equipments around you especially equipment related to home computing including monitors, CPU boxes, network equipment, speakers etc.

So stay tuned for power efficient computing and other related posts on basitali.com