theGreenspider — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 09:34:00 +0000

So does it really work?!?!

Over the next few weeks I’ll be looking at the full story behind the idea of an energy saving website. Can something as simple as switching from Google to theGreenspider really make a difference to the environment?!

The reality is that the effectiveness of switching to theGreenspider depends on the type of monitor you use. In reality this is likely to be a CRT or LCD monitor but in some instances you may use a plasma screen. In addition I’ll look at the likely impact of OLED monitors, expected to take over from LED as the most popular form of monitor in the near future.

So firstly, what if you’re are using a Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) Monitor?

A CRT monitor uses a cathode ray tube to display images. The back of the tube has a negatively charged cathode, and an electron gun shoots electrons down the tube and onto a charged screen. The screen is coated with a pattern of dots that glow when struck by the electron stream. Each cluster of three dots, one of each color, is one pixel. Certain colors, such as white, require all three dots to be charged, and are energy intensive to display. Other colors, such as black, require no additional energy to produce and consume the least out of all the colors.

Therefore, power consumption for CRT monitors is primarily a function of the user's color settings and desktop graphics, and any given CRT monitor requires more power to display a light screen than a dark one. Other authors, such as Roberson et. al., have verified these results. The amount of energy saved from switching from white to black varies considerably on the size of the monitor. In a 2002 study, Roberson found that between 4 and 30W could be saved by switching from a white to a black screen. This translates into an 18 to 88% power savings per monitor. The US Department of Energy produced similar results, stating an average 15W savings per monitor. Several informal studies have also been done, with results ranging from a 7 to 23W reduction when using a black screen.

In the first quarter of 2006, Display Search, an industry reporting service, estimated that CRT monitors comprise 25.3% of all monitors in the world. There are substantial regional variations; for example, the report mentions that as of 2006, 45.3% of the monitors in China, and 62.8% in Latin America, were still CRTs.

Therefore it is clear, with no disputes whatsoever that significant energy savings will be made if you have a CRT monitor and switch from Google to theGreenspider!

Welcome to theGreenspider blog

theGreenspider — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 11:05:00 +0000

This is the new home of the blog for http://www.thegreenspider.com/, the energy saving search engine powered by Google.

More to follow shortly...