Why? ... or "making the case for"

LCD monitors

On May 7, 2007, at 3:07 PM, gharris... wrote:

> <http://blackle.com/>

...at least if you have a CRT.

If you have a CRT and work in the tech industry, you can probably afford to upgrade to an LCD monitor (20" LCDs at Fry's right now for $220?!) which will save a heck of a lot more than a black vs. white screen on your CRT. That said, I have measured the difference and <http://energyconsumption.org/data.txt> shows a 15W difference between black and white on an older 17" CRT monitor. But it also shows that a ThinkPad screen takes only 10W at maximum brightness.

Similes

A CRT is basically an incandescent light bulb (as is your average desktop box). An LCD is basically a CFL (most of the energy is in fact being used by a fluorescent tube). The auto-reduce feature of some modern laptops does save a significant amount of power.

The most important thing to do with you monitor is to let the computer turn it off. Don't "leave the lights on" when you're not using the machine. There's great power saving technology in OS X (Windows power savings tends to depend on platform) ... and remote wakeup software / services that should remove the need for taking 

IMO, blackle.com would be of greater service if it pointed out its futility as compared to switching to CFLs or (if you can afford it), an LCD.

quick payback calculations for an LCD monitor:

8 hours / day x 30W x $.10/kWh = $.024 / day :P

vs

8 hours x 100W ...

70W difference makes for 560 Wh/day of savings is a bit over a nickel a day (assuming you're only paying $.10/kWh which is the base residential rate in CA; businesses generally pay more but have less variation as their usage goes up). That's about 10 years to pay back a $200 LCD. Unless, of course, you count air conditioning, which is a real cost at the office. I've heard that it takes a watt of A/C to disperse a watt of heat (would love a reference) which brings the payback to under 5 years, roughly the life of the monitor. So all air conditioned businesses should replace their CRTs with LCDs to save money ... or at least to break even. ;p