Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Black Google Would Save Energy

By

From Luke Walker:

Black Google Would Save 750 Megawatt-Hours a Year

From the lights out department – did you know that a cathode ray tube (CRT) monitor uses about 74 watts to display an all white web page, but only uses 59 watts to display an all black page? Yes, there all still plenty of these still in use, particularly in China and Latin America. Worldwide, about 25 percent of the monitors currently in use are cathode ray tubes, which means that they waste energy displaying white backgrounds. This can add up for sites with a global audience.

Take at look at Google, for instance, who gets about 200 million queries a day. Let’s assume each query is displayed for about 10 seconds; that means Google is running for about 550,000 hours every day on some desktop. Assuming that users run Google in full screen mode, the shift to a black background will save a total of 15 (74-59) watts. Now take into account that about 25 percent of the monitors in the world are CRTs, and at 10 cents a kilowatt-hour, that’s about $75,000/year, a goodly amount of energy and dollars for changing a few color codes.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Jayne says

    Luke,the offspring here frequently use Blackle but after a couple of hours of research/homework,etc they complain of headaches.

  2. rog says

    Only a person who calls himself Luke Skywalker could take a black google seriously..

    or any google..

  4. rog says

    The comments on treehugger are amusing incl this one;

    “So why isn’t treehugger.com black?
    —
    editor note: Because we didn’t think of that when we created the design.
    But as has been pointed out, black isn’t very good for usability…”

  5. Schiller Thurkettle says

    $75,000 buys one public speaking engagement from Al Bore. One drop in his very large bucket.

    But like the AGW believers say, a la CO2, a vanishingly small bit can turn Earth into a baked mudball.

    There’s probably a multiplier at work here–a pandemic of headaches would keep some workers at home, behind darkened windows, eating aspirins instead of food, and of course, not driving to work.

    As everyone knows, doing productive labor is the worst contributor to the proliferation of the CO2 pollutant.

    I propose we use the number 3 as a multiplier for a black screen!

    Can I now have some money from someone who sells carbon credits? Please?