Black Google

[xoxoxoBruce]

Blogger ecoIron has stirred up a little dust by claiming, if Google changed their pages from white to black, collectively, we would save 750 Megawatt-hours each year. Now that's one hell of a lot of electricity....doesn't seem possible.

Using information from GoldStar (US Dept Energy), a black screen burns 59 watts vs a white screen at 74 watts.

Then he took Google's 200 million queries/day, displayed for about 10 seconds each, gives 550,000 hours/day total, Google's on PCs.

So, a shift from white to black saves 15 watts or 8.3 Megawatt-hours per day, or about 3000 Megawatt-hours a year, for the World.

But, you say, I've got a fancy schmancy LCD screen. Gotcha covered, about 25% of the screens are CRTs, that's why only 750 Megawatt-hours. But at an average of 10 cents a Kilowatt-hour, that's still $75,000.

Of course CRTs are disappearing but look at all the oil and coal that could be saved, all the pollution that could be avoided, and we won't even get into Global Warming.

This is what GoldStar claims for color costs.