An article in yesterday’s Financial Post (Read more: http://www.financialpost.com/news-sectors/energy/story.html?id=2421140#ixzz0c8TituRh) described how Google, through its subsidiary, Google Energy, applied to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for a license to buy and sell energy at wholesale – an activity already conducted by about 1,500 companies that have subsidiaries with the same market-based rate authority, including Alcoa, the Safeway grocery store chain and Wal-Mart.

The primary purpose of Google’s request was to enable it to buy energy from alternative energy sources to meet its own green goals.  However, the article went on to say that FERC states on its website that information technology and telecommunications facilities account for approximately 120 billion kilowatt hours of electricity annually - or 3% of all U.S. electricity use, according to the Energy Department.  Rapid growth in the U.S. data centre industry is projected to require two new large power plants per year just to keep pace with the expected demand growth, the department says.

Since I am a heavy computer user, this raised the question of how much energy am I consuming through computer usage and how much might I save through better energy conservation?

I came across the article in TechSoup (http://blog.techsoup.org/?q=node/361) which discussed this subject.  The average computer (actual consumption varies, particularly with the size and type of monitor) consumes about 110 watts per hour (10% more than a 100 watt incandescent light bulb).  This calculates into 79,200 watts (79.2 kilowatts) per month.  The focus of the article was on manually or setting the computer to shift to idle, sleep or off mode when not in use.  It was projected that taking this simple step would reduce energy consumption by the computer by 40%.  In my home, we may have as many as 5 computers operating at any one time, so implementation of energy savings practices will add up.