Going green and saving money
2006-03-19 16:12 | Permanent Link | GeneralNot exactly a geo-anything post, but I just got done reconfiguring my home network and computer setup. We have two iMacs, two PowerBooks, a Mac Mini, and various bits and pieces of networking gear running here. I had already set the iMacs to shut off automatically at night and start up again in the morning. And I've got them set up to sleep after 30 minutes of inactivity during the day. The hard disks are set to spin down when idle, and the displays blank after 20 minutes. So what's left to do?
I was using an old Dell XM590 running Smoothwall as a firewall. But the always-on 145 watts have been bothering me. In our town electricity is running $0.20 per kWh. Each watt saved is about $1.75 per year. Last night I realized that the VOIP boxes we have (we have Vonage for our phones) can also act as firewalls, complete with the ability to put one host on the net via the DMZ function. So today I redid all the internal network setups and managed to eliminate the Dell, two LAN switches and a hub. Total savings, about 150 watts at $262.50 per year.
Oh, and I also have the printers on auto-power-down mode now, too. But I'm not done. I have to set up an easy-to-reach powerstrip to shut off my scanner and external monitor more easily.
Now I'm starting to wonder how much of all this I could run off of solar panels...
