Can my laptop make me more green?
Category Laptop Green
I was thinking last night, can I use my laptop to become more green? I don't know if this will work, but someone out there might have already done this experiment. I was thinking I could put my laptop on a simple timer, so that it runs from the battery for one hour then charges for one hour, switching back and forth between mains power and battery power.
So the questions become, does the laptop consume more power when it is charging the battery or is it consuming the same? If it consumes more when charging the battery, does the difference still justify turning the power supply off for an hour? Has anybody ever seen any information on something like this? Can anyone recommend a good cheap power usage monitor? If there were savings in power usage, if enough people did this, then total energy saved could really add up.
Thanks
I was thinking last night, can I use my laptop to become more green? I don't know if this will work, but someone out there might have already done this experiment. I was thinking I could put my laptop on a simple timer, so that it runs from the battery for one hour then charges for one hour, switching back and forth between mains power and battery power.
So the questions become, does the laptop consume more power when it is charging the battery or is it consuming the same? If it consumes more when charging the battery, does the difference still justify turning the power supply off for an hour? Has anybody ever seen any information on something like this? Can anyone recommend a good cheap power usage monitor? If there were savings in power usage, if enough people did this, then total energy saved could really add up.
Thanks
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Comments
It's just a guess, but I'd imagine batteries are much less than 100% efficient, ie you get less out than you put in. So, the less you actually run it from batteries, the more power you'll save.
Though if you went the whole hog and took out your battery it would fully discharge, loose capacity then need recycling to get rid of all the lithium.
Maybe we need fuel cell batteries?
Posted by Warren Elsmore At 05:00:33 PM On 05/07/2008 | - Website - |
Posted by Tony Palmer At 07:05:41 PM On 05/07/2008 | - Website - |