Consistency can be a good thing, but the regular price hikes for electricity in Vanuatu (ie. every month, with rare exceptions) are a growing drain on the Vatu you have left to spend. One of the areas worth reviewing when trying to reduce electricity consumption is the power-saving features of your technology.
This time of year, heat is an issue for computers. Some of it comes from the surrounding environment, with high humidity increasing the effect, but computers themselves generate a suprising amount of their own heat. Laptops in particular, with their squished-in components and tightly-fitted casings, are vulnerable to overheating, but it is a problem for many IT items. You have only to feel the air outlet of the power-supply fan (at the back of your laptop or the main computer “system unit”) or put your hand on the top of your monitor to find out how much heat is being dissipated.
This heat, of course, is a by-product of the electricity that drives the computer. While you are actively using your computer, at this time of year it is well worth considering having a small desk fan pointed at the computer to assist in heat removal. Overheating can cause hard-disk failures, processor damage, or other similar electronic failure that leads to expensive or even disastrous consequences. Alternatively but far more costly is the use of air-conditioning.
There is not much you can do to reduce your computer's electricity consumption (and therefore heat production) while you are actively using it. However, you can take small steps such as switching off peripherals (scanners, printers) rather than leaving them in standby mode. Greater impact will arise from investigating your computers power-saving settings.
Taking Windows XP as an example, right-click on an empty area of your Desktop and select “Properties” then choose the “Screen Saver” tab. Here you can set how long it takes before some sort of screen saver kicks in – good to look at, but not energy saving nor in fact with modern monitors does it even save your screen. But click on the “Power” button and you see the configuration options for how long before your screen should turn off (saving energy) and when your hard disks should turn off (saving energy). You can also get the computer to switch to Standby mode after some time (saving even more energy) and a bit later switch to Hibernate mode (where the computer is all but shut down, saving most energy).
Now the more your energy savings, the longer the computer takes to 'wake up' again, but this is measured in seconds. With the cost of electricity as high as it is, and consistently rising month after month, you can save thousands of Vatu over a year by setting fairly brief automatic shut-off times (say 5-10 minutes for the monitor, 15 for the hard-disk, 20 for Standby and 30 for Hibernate).
Above all, close the computer down completely when you have finished with it. A hibernating computer may not be using much, but it is still using some energy, and for no particular reason other than to save 30 seconds of your time. So save energy, save money, save the planet.
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