What does an Apple G5 cost the environment Part I
No no, this is not an article about how much land fill is being created by Apple. Nor is this about how much toxins are being dumped into our soil by Apple. This is Part I of a blog on the power consumption of my computer. Why am I doing this? Simple: I bought a new toy!
Shiny new and clean, my Kill A Watt arrived today by Canada Post. I know, most of you are asking, what a "Kill a watt" is? A Kill A Watt is a handy little device that measures how much energy is being used, by whatever is plugged into it. These are the people who make the Kill A Watt:
P3 International
And I purchased it from a Victoria, British Columbia, Canada company:
Energy Alternatives
What does a Kill A Watt do blurb from the manufacturers website:
Connect your appliances into the Kill A Wattâ„¢, and assess how efficient they are. A large LCD display counts consumption by the Kilowatt-hour just like utility companies. You can figure out your electrical expenses by the hour, day, week, month, even an entire year. Monitor the quality of your power by displaying Voltage, Line Frequency, and Power Factor.
My first big test will be my Apple computer system which is comprised of the following:
- Apple G5 Dual 2.7GhZ
- 2GB of RAM
- 2 x 250GB Hard drives
- 20 inch Cinema display
- Epson V350 Scanner
- IO Gear MiniView KVM Switch
- Viewsonic 15 inch LCD screen
- 1 USB keyboard
My main goal is to see how much energy my computer uses at night, while it is sleeping. Sometimes it sleeps, and sometimes it just wanders around aimlessly, pretending to sleep. None the less, I want to see just how much I spend each night on my insomniac computer.
So stay tuned for the results of my computer test. In the meantime, here are the readings from a couple of other household items I tested:
Household volts: 117.0 to 122.1
Hertz: 59.9 steady
Toaster: 670-690 Watts, 7.3 amps.
Coffee maker when idle - 0.03amps, 0 watts.
Vacuum cleaner: 1024 Watts, 9amps.
Cost of electricity here in Quebec (figures are approximate):
Daily service fee: 0.406 dollars per day
First 30KW each day: 0.0522 dollars
Extra usage: 0.063 dollars per day
All of our electricity in Quebec comes from Hydro Dams. Though we are told that wind will be a producer of electricity at some point soon. Unlike parts of the US, Canada and Europe, pretty much ALL of our power lines are above ground. Which was a major contributing factor to the severity of the Great Ice Storm of '98.
The above picture was used without permission, from this site. If this is not okay, please let me know and I will take it down.