Mr. Green's Blog

February 10, 2009 - Energy efficiency awareness is getting some help from Hollywood as celebrities make public service announcements calling for energy conservation. One such personality is Cameron Diaz who recently came out with two short videos, one calling for the use of power strips to shut off computers and another asking people to unplug their cell phone chargers when not in use.

January 13, 2009 - Is it time for a mandatory energy efficiency standard to force our new large screen televisions to go on an energy diet?

December 1, 2008 - On my way to work today, I heard that, as a consequence of the down economy, more people are staying at home. That makes sense. It also means that more people will be using their televisions more for watching broadcast programs, DVD movies, video games and other multi-media functions. This could be an energy nightmare since some large flat panel TVs have been known to consume up to 500 kWh per year, as much energy as a refrigerator.

November 13, 2008 - Video games have provided tons of family fun over the last few years, even allowing some of us rock star wannabes to perform center stage (well, center living room stage). But these boxes of fun have also been shown to be large energy consumers, even in their idle mode. One study showed recently that when left idle, certain game boxes can use over 100 W waiting for someone to come back in the room and take the controls. And some games consume almost 10 W even when they enter into their standby mode.