Based on the previous scenario, the monthly consumption of a single tower would be 280 Watts X 7 Hours/Day X 30 Day = 58800Wh Or 58,8 kWh which is , with simple calculations, about 715 kWh a year (It's worth mentioning that a fridge , working all time, built after 2001 consumes about 500 kWh per year).
Producing Electricity in the United States (2006).
| Coal | 50% |
| Nuclear | 19% |
| Natural gas | 19% |
| Hydroelectric | 7% |
| Petroleum Other | 3% |
| renewables | 2% |
Based on the table above, we would see that U.S depends mostly on the coal as a power source (bear in mind that this is not pure coal) for producing electricity.
As shown in the figure below, coal (which contributes by 50% of our energy) for every kWH of energy produces more that 0.6 lbs of pure CO2 emission, so if the avreage computer as mentioned above consumes 715kWH to operate, then it's producing about 536.25 lbs of CO2 emission every year.
Let's say that out of the average of 7 hours/day that we use the PC, we take an average of 1 hour break without turning off or even putting the computer in the standby mode, then we are wasting about 1 Hour X 280 Watt X 365 Day/Year = 102.2 kWH of wasted energy per year, and producing a useless CO2 emission of about 61.32 lbs. So what the solutions might be, well, there is a variety of option , easiest is to turn off your computer when you don't need it for long periods, or at least putting the computer in the stand by mode. You can also try to find the power efficient computers (like the star energy certified products), you can also assure that your pc gets good ventilation all the time because the more heat , the more power is needed for cooling.
I hope this thread was both informative and entertaining, sorry if it was long but i couldn't help it.
Sources:
Sustainability 101: A Toolkit for Your Business By Anca Novacovici, Jennifer Woofter
Chemistry and chemical reactivity, Volume 2 By John C. Kotz, Paul Treichel, John Raymond Townsend
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