60
USE LESS
POWER
AND CUT
YOUR BILLS
With energy prices soaring, it’s more
important than ever to minimise your
power usage. Nik Rawlinson explains how
Windows and smart devices can help
Adjust Windows’ energy-saving
settings
Your screen, which relies on a backlight,
is one of the most energy-intensive
components in your whole set-up,
so it’s worth putting it to sleep when
you’re not at your computer. Press
Windows key+I to open Settings then,
in Windows 11, click System followed
by ‘Battery & power’. Now click ‘Sleep
and screen’ to reveal the settings you
need to tweak.
If you’re using a laptop, you’ll see
separate settings for battery and mains
power. If you’re using a desktop PC
without an internal battery, the battery
settings won’t be shown.In Windows 10, open Settings and click
System followed by ‘Power & sleep’, then
use the two dropdown menus below
Screen to specify when the display should
switch off when on battery power (^1 in
our screenshot above) or when plugged
in^2 , and the menus under Sleep (^3 and(^4) ) to specify how long it should wait
before powering down if not being used.
The shorter the time you choose, the less
energy you’ll use overall.
Make sure the settings for going to
sleep and turning off your screen are the
same: there’s no point keeping your
computer awake when it isn’t being used.
Check which programs use
the most energy
Your choice of programs and how you use
them affects your power consumption.
You can see how much power each uses
in Task Manager: open it by pressing
Ctrl+Alt+Esc, or right-clicking your
taskbar and selecting it. Look at the
far-right column for each program’s
power consumption. In our screenshot
below, Brave’s consumption is High
because we’re using it to play a
full-screen video. When we moved the
video back into YouTube’s interface,
power consumption dropped to Low and
only very occasionally became Moderate.
Monitor how much energy
each device uses
It’s instructive to know how much power
each piece of software uses, but it won’t
save you anywhere near as much money
as tracking how much energy your
devices use. To do this accurately (within
an estimated margin of error of just 0.5
per cent), you need a dedicated electricity-
usage monitor.
One of the best monitors is this Mecheer
model (£19.99 from http://www.snipca.com/41786,
pictured above right), which has seven
modes showing different aspects of
energy use. For example, mode 1 shows
the length of time power has been used,
the amount of wattage used, and how
much it has cost. Our photo shows mode
3, which displays the duration at the top,
voltage (235.8) in the middle, and the
frequency (50Hz) at the bottom.
Specify how long Windows should wait before
turning off your screen or putting your PC to
sleep
Use Task Manager to find out which programs consume the most power
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11 – 24 May 2022 • Issue 631