The US Environmental Protection Agency has blamed PCs for wasting $2.8billion a year in electricity. That's not the cost of running the computers, it's the electricity consumed when they are left switched on but unused. The damage to the environment, it claims, is equivalent to an extra 4 million cars on the road.
But hold on, let's back up a minute. The electricity "wasted" by idling computers is emitted as heat. Unless your computer is emitting x-rays or neutrinos or some other exotic particle that can pass through the walls of your house, that heat is trapped by the building. Provided that your PC runs hotter than the ambient temperature of the room, it is helping to warm that room. If the heating in your house is thermostatically controlled, then the energy used to power an idling PC should be exactly balanced by the energy saved by the central heating.
In the summer, when the central heating is off, that energy will be wasted (and if you have air conditioning, it will be wasted twice over because you'll need to use extra energy to extract the waste heat). But for autumn, winter, spring and all but four weeks of the summer in the UK, all that extra heat is perfectly recycled.
In fact, it's even better than that. Coal-fired power stations make up about 40 per cent of power generation in the UK. And these need to run day and night, regardless of demand. In order to be able to cope with the daytime peak load, the national grid produces more energy at night than the nation needs. That carbon dioxide goes into the atmosphere, whether you plug in an appliance to use the electricity or not. Leaving your computer switched on just moves some of that waste heat away from the power station and into your home.
Don't get me wrong - you'll still be billed for that electricity your idling desktop uses. The EPA estimates it at about £25 per PC per year. But some of it can be offset against your lower gas bill and (at night anyway) it's not increasing your carbon footprint. So you can sleep easy.
Provided the drone of the fans doesn't keep you awake.
Your comments (5) Click to add a new comment
tasukete
October 31st
5. @mrstillwater, I think you are missing his point. Luis is exaggerating slightly ("perfectly recycled") but the fact is that heat generated by appliances is NOT waste heat except in the summer. You say, "It's not the heat coming out of the PCs that's the problem, it's the generation of the electricity itself." That is exactly the idea. The building you're in WILL be heated, and either the PC will do it or the gas furnace will do it. EVERY WATT USED by the PC is EXACTLY ONE WATT SAVED from the furnace; and every watt saved by the PC is exactly one watt drawn from the furnace. Now, you point out that gas heat is often more efficient than electric heat, but you should be aware that it often isn't; just Google it and see. But even supposing that gas heat is more efficient, the difference is more like 20% than 20x. So it is incorrect to say that idle computers waste $2.8B/year; in temperate climes, it would be 20% of that figure at most, and probably less. You see, this is NOT an attempt to avoid environmental responsibility; it is an attempt to BE responsible by pointing out practices that don't work. Switching off the computer does nothing unless you turn down the thermostat.
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drool
March 29th
4. Apples and oranges. The report is mainly about company PC's in office buildings etc. and yet the author of this article is really talking about home PC's - it just isn't a valid comparison. No amount of insulation is 100% efficient (and few buildings come close), so you can't claim energy isn't wasted, it is. It particularly matters if people don't hang around in the building at night to benefit from this heat-waste.
Coal power stations now account for 33% of UK energy, it was 40% five years ago. A mixture of different types and size of power station should allow some to output less and even go idle while energy/fuel savings are made, as demand decreases. That's why we have a national grid, and why we sometimes borrow electricity from abroad during peak moments (TV soap ad breaks).
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mrstillwater
March 29th
3. Yes, and by doing so he's missed the point of what the *Environmental Protection* Agency was saying, which was that the electricity being generated for no purpose was causing damage to the environment. Suggesting that the electricity isn't wasted because it generates heat is also pretty silly as heating a room via a PC is an extremely inefficient way of doing it, and that electricity could have been used on something more useful. It's not like the heat can be turned back into electricity again.
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sgtheadhole
March 27th
2. I believe the writer was arguing this point:
(The US Environmental Protection Agency has blamed PCs for wasting $2.8billion a year in electricity)
not intending to write about pollution all together.
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mrstillwater
March 27th
1. How did I know that this article would be written by Luis before I even read it? As usual, you've completely missed the point. It's not the heat coming out of the PCs that is the problem, it's the generation of the electricity itself that causes massive pollution and damage to the environment. And saying that the power stations have to produce it anyway to account for the massive daytime load is just ridiculous - the whole point of switching things off when not in use is to try to reduce that load. It may not solve the problem by itself but we need to realise that electricity has a much higher cost behind it than just the bill we receive, and that managing our usage more effectively is just one way to help reduce the damage we're doing to the planet.
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