Reducing energy drain at home

For Green IT NYC's first official post, let's start with one of the easiest ways to "green" your tech life at home: less energy use.

Use power strips to plug in your chargers
By plugging your phone, camera, or battery chargers into a power strip that can be turned off, you prevent "phantom drain" by those devices. Most chargers do use current even when they aren't being used.








If you want to go the extra mile, you can get a Smart Strip, which is a power strip with a control outlet. When you turn off the appliance plugged into the control outlet, power is cut to the rest of the outlets as well.

I have my external hard drive plugged into the control outlet on mine, so that when I turn off the hard drive, my monitor and speakers go off with it. To turn them back on, I turn the hard drive back on and the monitor and speakers come on automatically.

Become familiar with the types of rechargeable batteries your devices use, so that you can prevent over or undercharging them
Check out this battery charging guide (this one focuses on cell phones, but it still holds true for their use in other devices) to get the most out of your device's battery.

Solar chargers work
For most small devices, a solar charger can be ideal. Connectors are made for most types of phones, iPods, and even laptops.














Check out Solio for all your solar charging needs. You can also get a backpack version.

Check back for more tips in the next post.