The other day, I was talking to my bro-in-law about my blog and why I have a black background. He asked if it was for saving energy. I had a vague idea that white uses more power, but discussions with him made me do some research on this topic. Turns out that black does save energy.
Wow, I was saving energy from day one on my blog :)).
Here's a link to the black screen info: http://ecoiron.blogspot.com/2007/07/facts-and-fallacies-on-black-google.html. Info about this was there since January of 2007. This blog here by Mark Ontkush gives a lot of information (a FAQ too... that's good) and related web-links about it.
I'll summarize a little bit about it in here:
They say that a white screen on a computer monitor comsumes about 74 watts to display while the black one comsumes 59 watts. So, if Google (to start with, as it has a white homepage and it has almost around 200 million queries a day) turns it's page to black, we can save around 1500 MWh of energy per annum. I am really not sure about the numbers and will have to do more homework-research on this and I'll update the information as I find it, but till then, let's assume that these numbers are true.
So, HeapMedia, founded in Sydney, Australia, has come up with their own version of Black Google - Blackle, which is powered by Google search engines but to the contrary, have a black background. If you go to thier homepage, they have a counter saying how much energy saved till now.
There is some math involved in getting these numbers and I am not getting into the details, but they say that LCDs do not show any significant difference to the screen color (Scientific Reason: LCDs use a backlight for their display which, no matter what color on the screen, uses almost the same energy). So, the numbers should be going down by the day as more and more people are switching to LCD monitors, right? Wrong. There are some web-sites/blogs (Mark's Blog above is one of them) which give info that the number of CRTs has increased over the years worldwide. So, the energy number has also increased significantly. (From 750 to 1500, almost double). But the question remains, are these CRTs displaying Google that much. And have people using CRTs switched to Black screens? Options: Blackle, for one.
I use a laptop, the screen is LCD. So, I can't help much here. But I urge CRT monitor users to think about this. You will be saving a lot of energy by just changing colors. If you can contruibute a little bit, why not? Afterall, बूँद बूँद करके बनता हैं सागर: literal meaning -> Ocean is formed drop-by-drop: non-literal meaning :D -> No matter how small, each contribution matters OR as my friend explains: Start saving, you would not know when you have saved enough (enough like the Ocean).
Another link that I found on Mark's blog: http://www.risingphoenixdesign.com/blackback.html
1 comment:
Thanks. I'd always wondered about that. I think Google, being just about the most visited home page ever, should have a preference button so we can choose an energy saving background. On the go Web surfers would also appreciate longer battery life on their lap tops.
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