Six Tips for Reducing Electricity Consumption in an Office Full of Computers

If you run a busy office full of computers and other electronics, you may have an expensive electric bill every month. Luckily, there are ways that you can reduce the amount of power your office computers use. Take a look at these tips:

1. Minimise your computing power.

The more powerful the computer, the more electricity it uses during the day. To ensure that you're not wasting electricity, look at your computers and make sure that they aren't more powerful than you need. If you've built your own systems, consider removing RAM sticks, downgrading motherboards or making other efficient changes.

Alternatively, consider downgrading desktop computers to more efficient laptops or replacing laptops with tablets.

2. Turn up your idle settings.

Every computer in your office is likely to have customisable idle settings. Don't let the computers waste energy for five or ten minutes while not in use. Instead, turn up the idle settings so they go into power-saving standby or sleep mood within a few seconds or a minute of no use.

3. Blank your screen savers.

Your employees may enjoy having cartoons or personal photos as their screensavers, but these waste power and money. If you want to reduce the amount of power your computers consume, switch all the screensavers to plain black screens.

4. Switch to flat panel monitors.

The type of screens or monitors your computers have can also have an impact on your electricity usage. If you have old CRT monitors, replace them with flat monitors. That will help you save electricity.

5. Invest in powerstrips and use them.

It's also important to shut everything down at the end of the day when no one is in the office. To make that task easier, invest in a series of powerstrips, and at the end of each day have everyone shut down their computers, and then, have someone assigned to shut off all the power strips to save money.

6. Check out the wiring.

In some cases, if your electricity bill is high, it doesn't just have to do with the amount of electricity you are consuming. It may be related to your wires. If your business is in a relatively old building, it may have old less efficient wiring.

Contact an electrician to look over the situation. They can advise you on the efficiency of your wires and also help guide you toward other energy-saving practises for your office.