Free Going Green Essay Sample
Diabetes is a disease that is characterized when the body cannot regulate the amount of glucose in the bloo. Many offices and universities have very tight facility budgets thus it is especially important to find low or no cost strategies to reduce electric energy use. It is much difficulty to imagine of the offices and universities without computers, laptops, internet, light bulbs and other important technological avenues. Computers have revolutionized the way people communicate, work and live in their daily lives. The bulbs and computer technology has significant effect on energy saving. It is harder to think of computers and light bulbs in an energy, green context. Just like other energy zapping devices, they represent the products that damage the environment. This essay will give and elaborate on different things that should be done by offices and universities to enhance lower electricity usage leading to reduction in energy costs.
The universities and offices should make use of liquid crystal display (LCD) monitors instead of using the Cathode Ray Tubes (CRT). LCD displays constitutes of two sheets of polarized glass plates with some liquid crystal solution trapped between them. These displays are slimmer and much lighter. They use 30 to 35% less electric power as compared to CRTs. These liquid has special properties that enable them serve as effective shutters that opens and closes the light passes. This light blocking takes place in a perpendicular manner to the passage of light on the application of an electric current. The office managements should reduce the consumption of idle energy of computers that runs windows as their operating system. The analysis shows that idle typical windows machine uses approximately 115 watts which is excess for a computer that does not do any useful work. To curb this universities and offices are supposed to exploit various energy management solutions which includes both third party packages as well as windows' own energy management suite. For instance, they are supposed to employ the use of Auto Shutdown Manager, a third party product which provides the ability to set thresholds and complex rules for shutting down and waking up the computer and all its components. When installed, this software keep a live packet traffic that prevents any existing energy saving algorithm from taking hold by activating the Wake-on-LAN function of the computer, s network card. By stopping these requests and experimenting with variety of threshold schemes i.e. go to sleep when the signal from the keyboard and mouse is absent for some minutes and the utilization of CPU remains less for the entire duration. Through this, the machine goes to sleep when it is not in any use. The effect of this change is a time- series of electric power readings during the time period when the software is enabled. The average power usage after the change is about 3% of the usage prior to the change (3.5W against 115W). However , this change has some tradeoff of increasing the wake-up-times whereby the computer takes about 9 seconds to return to its operational mode after when it is triggered from sleep mode but this change makes a very significant difference which leads to electric power saving.
To quantify the energy reduction if all computers in the office are running windows and experienced similar proportional reduction of electric power usage in idle mode, the universities should apply same rules as on the initial machine to traces of power consumption from each of the other measured machines. To achieve the going green goal the universities and offices should deploy this software widely both inside and even externally. In addition, the following will assist in reduction of electricity usage in offices and universities;
i. Verifying that the computers have 80 Plus Certified power supplies which mean that they have more than 80% efficiency across the range of loads.
ii. Adjusting the brightness of the monitors because the brighter monitors consume a lot of power. The monitor's brightness can be reduced dramatically if used in dark rooms.
iii. Shutting down the computers when leaving the offices for long period of time or place the computers in hibernation or standby mode. The powering of computers off and on daily is also good habit for maintenance.
iv. Enabling the monitor's power saving mode which puts the monitor to sleeping state when there is no input signal from the mouse all keyboard.
v. Screensavers should be disabled because they are not energy savers. They use the monitor at full power and they were originally designed to prevent "burn in" not to save energy.
vi. Universities and offices management should consider purchasing and using laptops. These laptop computers use less energy than desktops and they are equally suitable for most users.
vii. Turning off the laptop's Bluetooth or wireless capabilities when not in use to get some extra time out of the device before the batteries dies.
viii. Those who play computer games should consider upgrading their video cards. They should use ATI and Nvidia's latest cards which are efficient and more powerful. For instance, they are supposed to make use of nVidia's new 9600GT that has good performance and uses approximately 10% less power.
In order to manage offices and university building energy costs, it is in order to understand how they are charged for their lighting system. Electricity is usually charged based on two measures which are consumption and demand. This consumption component of the bill is usually based on electricity amount used in kilowatt hour. Because of the high bills paid by universities and offices due to overuse of electric power, they should consider ways of reducing the power consumed in lighting. To enhance reduction of energy consumed by bulbs in the by institutions, the following measures should be taken.
The relevant engineers should always investigate the buildings and ensure that the lighting systems are operating efficiently and appropriately. Studies show that system operations changes over a period of time. Thus the buildings require tune ups in order to maintain the required optimal performance. Continuous monitoring of building's energy systems leads to reductions in total annual energy use thus reducing the costs
Efficient Lighting Upgrades
In university classrooms and administration blocks, the T12 fluorescent lamps should be exchanged with the modern T8 lamps. These lamps reduce the consumption of electric energy by about 35%. Also reflectors, new lenses and occupancy sensors and timers which double the saving significantly can be used. The Compact Fluorescents Lamps (CFL) should be used to replace incandescent lamps thus reducing the energy use by two thirds and saving much money per year. CFL- based lamps should be provided in the institutions to replace halogen lamps. The halogen lamps draws between 350 to 500 watts while the Compact Fluorescents Lamps (CFL) draws 40 to 75 watts and can operate at 200o Fahrenheit (F). The universities and offices should also employ the use of energy saving LED light bulbs. This is a rising technology that has no heat loss when emitting hence it is energy efficient.
Efficient water heating system
Low-flow faucets and shower systems in the institutions as well as sinks and shower controllers should be automated to automatically shut off after certain time duration. This can help conserve the energy used to heat water in buildings.
Energy is an important resource that is vital in all forms of human life. Therefore, the offices and universities should be in the fore front in saving the energy. This is achievable by exploiting the modern technological innovations and advancements.