When I pass vacant and locked office buildings at night, it’s a common sight to see computer monitors still on, TVs playing shows no one is watching, and even speakers playing music no one will hear until the next morning when people are actually, you know, back and present at the office.
No, to me, it seems asinine to be wasting all this electricity. Just leave a few lights on as usual and shut off the damn TV playing the same company salespitch on repeat at night with no one there. I even pass this one campus which has a goal to be carbon neutral by 2025 and their TVs and monitors and music and everything are on 247.
A lot, but not enough to matter. Electricity costs are a tiny fraction of the total cost of office building. The average employee in any office, where that employee has a college degree and is doing high value work, costs more than $100,000. I vaguely recall that the “fully loaded” cost to the employer can be 150k or so. (fully loaded includes office space, furniture, salary, benefits, payroll taxes, and so on)
Leaving a computer on 24/7 with the sound and screen on, probably uses about 200 watts. (measured using my Kilowatt on my personal computer) That’s 200 watts * 365*24/7, so that’s 1752 kilowatt hours, or $175.20.
It isn’t free, and technically the company would save “millions” if it had tens of thousands of employees, but it’s a tiny drop in the bucket.
The Queen apparently goes round the palace switching off unneeded lights. Now the savings must be miniscule compared with the running cost of a palace like Buck house, but it sends an important message.
A business that leaves all this stuff running 24/7 is saying “We don’t **really **give a shit about waste”.
In one of the UK’s more successful businesses - JCB - the boss, Mr Bamford, used to go round the offices in the evening and woe betide anyone who left their desk other than empty, or any equipment left on. It sends out a strong psychological message.
In my office each of us have 4 monitors and 2 computers. Some of us turn off our computers or at least turn off the monitors. Others allow their computers go to a sleep mode. However over half leave their computers and monitors on 24/7. Even in the dead of winter our AC needs to run. In the heat of the summer the AC often has trouble keeping up.
Things are better now compared to the inefficient CRT monitors of the past, but I bet we could save at least 10% on the cost of electricity if my co-workers would shut things down nightly.
This is one instance where energy conservation is sometimes looked at like a electrical generation station. If all these useless drains on power can be stopped it would be equivalent to so many more plants coming on line with the extra power now available. But this has it’s limits, and the most bang for the buck is the low hanging fruit, diminishing returns after that. In this case, for the place(s) in the OP it just does not seem like it’s worth the effort to shut down everything, then turn on everything every day. Nor is it presently worth the money to convert it to run on a single switch.
But there is hope, as more things become internet away, and wirelessly controlled, such as outlets, and the device itself, it may soon be possible to connect all these things onto a single ‘switch’ that can even be programed to run on business hours or by sensors that indicate taht people are present in the building.
Stuff like leaving an LCD monitor/TV running, or a few fluorescent lights running a lot is a drop in the bucket compared to heating and/or cooling a home.
For example, at my current 9.1 cents/KWh, leaving a 14 watt CFL (100 watt equivalent) on 24 hours a day for an entire year would cost me 11 dollars. My 21" LCD monitor (45 watts) would cost me $35 for the entire year.
It’s only magnified when you get into the sort of scale that commercial office buildings work in.
That being said, it’s the rare office building that doesn’t have motion activated lights these days, and a lot raise/lower the temps on the weekends and at night to save on energy costs.
All computers I’ve purchased or seen in the last few years have complied with the Energy Star standards, so that they go to a low-power sleep mode after a period of inactivity. The same thing is true for the monitors, printers and so forth. In this mode, I believe they use only a few watts.
Our building switches to low energy mode after normal working hours. All lights except for the minimum shut off, the HVAC goes to low power, and all the printers and copiers switch to sleep mode. (A pain if we are working overtime, as we need to turn the lights for our zone back on manually and repeat this every hour as they shut off again, and printing always takes a few minutes longer for printer warmup time.)
We are required to leave our computers on as most of the software changes are done as remote overnight “push” feeds by IT. They all go to sleep mode after 15 minutes, though, and this is a locked admin-only function that is part of our standard configuration, so can’t be changed by the user.
In Calif. office building lights are required to have motion detectors or be on an Energy Management System.
In my buildings the temps are not lowered on weekends of nights. The HVAC system is off. The schedule for HVAC is M-F 6 AM to 6 PM.
The better buildings have a dial up program. In the buildings you can call a number put in your code determine how many extra hours you need, and the lights and or the HVAC will stay on.