Apartment Therapy Re-Nest

Blackle

In the name of energy conservation, Google is powering a search engine by the name of Blackle. It has been shown that for a given monitor, the energy required to drive a screen displaying light images is greater than that of one displaying a black image. On your own, the energy savings from using Blackle are small, but multiplied by the number of Google users worldwide the effects are substantial. Based on the average number of queries received by Google on a daily basis, the result is a global savings of 8.3 Megawatt-hours a day.

posted originally from: AT:Hometech

-via Core77

Comments (3)

http://www.neroogle.com/

:)

posted by giorgia on July 27th 2007 at 8:35am
view giorgia's profile

This would only seem to work for CRT monitors. The backlight design of an LCD means that it's actually using no energy to display a white pixel, and a small voltage is applied to each of three sub-pixels to display a black pixel.

In other words the light is produced (consuming the energy) whether the LCD lets it through or not and by required a extra charge to cover the light, Blackle could actually increase energy use on a LCD monitor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_crystal_display

This is, in part, supported by Blackle's own cited study, which states "...display color is a significant determinant of on power for CRTs, but not for LCDs." (PDF pg 19). So not only do LCDs use 1/3rd to 1/2 the power of CRTs, users of LCDs can view white webpages without added watts.

On the other hand dimming the entire monitor will make a actual (if small) difference (think of power save mode' on a laptop.

posted by phaedrus on July 27th 2007 at 10:30am
view phaedrus's profile

If the savings are really true, how come Apartment Therapy Green still displays on a white background?

posted by CJL on July 30th 2007 at 4:23am
view CJL's profile