Power plays in the home office

As more people work from a home office during the COVID-19 pandemic, they may also see increased home energy bills. Cass County Electric Cooperative offers some suggestions to maximize the energy efficiency of your electronic devices:

Use power strips
No matter what electronics you use, those glowing lights at night prove that power is still being consumed, even while everyone is sleeping. And those electronics all draw small amounts of power, even when not in use. There is a convenient and low-cost solution. A power strip makes it easy to turn them all off with one click.

Unplug
When a laptop or smartphone is fully charged, unplug it. Powering down your computer completely every night uses 50% less energy than sleep mode.

Print it twice
Print double-sided pages. Much more energy is used in the manufacturing and distributing of paper than the actual printing at your office.

Use the right light
Energy-efficient lighting uses one-quarter to one-third of the power of regular light bulbs. Energy-saving lights generate less heat and last 10 times longer than incandescent bulbs.

On or off?
Ensure power management features are enabled so your computer monitor will automatically go into sleep mode after a period of inactivity. A computer idling in sleep mode uses less than half the energy of an active computer. Most of you already have your monitor set to enter a low-power sleep mode when the computer is not used. However, many times the computer itself is not set to enter this same low-power mode. Spending a large portion of time in low-power mode not only saves energy but helps equipment run cooler and last longer.

Note that screen savers are not energy savers. It is a common misperception that screen savers reduce energy use. Use automatic switching to sleep mode or simply turn it off.