Fish & Monkeys

With all the buzz in the media about being green, we evaluated how we could save energy at Barrel. We started with the little things - turning off monitors and putting computers to sleep when going out, turning off lights more often, and opening windows before resorting to the A/C. With simple calculations, it’s clear that all these things add up to many kilowatt hours saved a month. (Using devices like the Kill-a-Watt, you can measure the exact usage of all electronics in your house.)

We also took a look at our music/guest computer. It’s an ancient Pentium 4 PC tower that once served as a video editing workstation. The average desktop computer uses 200 watts and we’re confident this computer surpasses that number. Estimating 12 hours of usage a day, we calculated it uses 72 kWh a month, the equivalent of 144 lbs of CO2 emissions a month!

We researched several options and found Apple computers to be very power efficient. The Mac Mini draws about 20 watts, but with an external LCD adds another 30 watts. The 17″ iMac as an all-in-one package uses only 45 watts. For around the same cost we decided on a more versatile option. We purchased a MacBook, which as an energy efficient laptop uses only 20 watts, potentially saving us hundreds of dollars in electricity costs and over a thousand pounds of carbon emissions a year.