Over the past year, prices of energy and food have skyrocketed, resulting in a decline in the purchasing power of millions of people. Additionally, the increase in Euribor has contributed to variable-interest mortgages becoming considerably more expensive. While knowing the energy prices during certain times of the day helps us to use high-consumption devices when electricity is cheaper, what happens when our primary work tool is a computer?
For those who work or study from home, the number of hours spent in front of the computer throughout the day is substantial, and we cannot always be mindful of the time slots to use it, especially when it comes to work-related tasks. Fortunately, we can follow some tricks to prevent our computer’s energy consumption from becoming a problem with the electricity bill at the end of the month.
- One way to prevent excessive power consumption on our computer is to put it in standby mode when we are not using it. This is especially helpful when we know that we will not be using the PC for more than 10 minutes. Activating standby mode will allow the device to stop working entirely, as if it were turned off, but it will keep our applications in the same state in which we left them before activating this mode. This process only takes a few seconds for most modern computers equipped with SSDs. To activate this function, we can use the power options available in the control panel to set the computer to go to sleep after a certain period of inactivity.
- Choosing the right power plan can also help reduce electricity consumption. While Windows power plans are designed mainly for laptops to save battery power, they can also be used on desktop computers. Windows offers three power plans: Energy Saver, Balanced, and High Performance. The Energy Saver plan minimizes the use of the processor, resulting in lower electricity consumption. On the other hand, the High Performance plan utilizes the computer’s full capacity, which increases power consumption. If we want a power plan that balances task completion time with power consumption, the best option is to choose the Balanced plan.
- Lowering the screen brightness is an effective way to reduce energy consumption and avoid visual fatigue. While it’s important to have enough brightness to work comfortably, using the maximum brightness level is unnecessary and wasteful. By adjusting the brightness to the appropriate level, we can still see the screen clearly while reducing our electricity consumption. This is especially important for laptops since they run on battery power and conserving energy is crucial for longer battery life.
- An SSD drive is a more energy-efficient option compared to a mechanical storage drive. By switching to an SSD drive, we can reduce the amount of electricity needed to run our computer. Moreover, it can significantly enhance the speed of accessing all the files and applications stored on the device.
- Disabling the dedicated graphics card can significantly reduce electricity consumption on a desktop computer. By default, Windows uses the dedicated graphics card, if available, instead of the integrated graphics on the motherboard. However, the dedicated graphics card consumes more electricity. Therefore, if we are not using graphics-intensive applications, we can switch to using the integrated graphics. This will save electricity and reduce our electricity bill. We can deactivate the dedicated graphics card in the device manager or BIOS settings, and activate it temporarily when we need it.
