The Student News Site of Gannon University since 1947

THE GANNON KNIGHT

The Student News Site of Gannon University since 1947

THE GANNON KNIGHT

The Student News Site of Gannon University since 1947

THE GANNON KNIGHT

Gannon Goes Green Contest: Runner Up

I think that all students at Gannon University should get power strips. According to Energy Star, 8 percent of your energy usage is from electronics that are off.  Personally, I think that number is a big number for something to just be sitting there collecting dust. Consumer Energy Center calls these devices “Energy Vampires.” This problem can be fixed with a simple power strip with an on/off switch. This strip can turn off all electronics with one switch and can save almost 8 percent of your energy. The first step to make this happen is getting power strips for your place of residency. The next thing you have to do is plug things into the power strip like your TV, radio or stereo, video games, DVD player, computer, printer, etc.  By plugging all those devices into a power strip it makes it easy to turn everything off when not using it. For example, when you have class before you leave, turn the strip off; this turns everything off, thus saving energy. Why not save energy when you’re not using the electronics in your dorm? It just makes sense. Another example is when you go to sleep. Why waste energy when you’re sleeping? Just turn off the power strip. The power strip makes it easy to save energy.

Many people don’t really know what devices or “energy vampires” use power when off. The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory says basically anything with an external power supply, remote control, continuous display, or charge batteries will draw power continuously. This is practically everything we have these days. The Consumer Energy Center shows the wattage that some things use. Things like DVD players use on average 4.2 watts of energy. Video games on average use 1.7 watts. Lastly, on average a printer uses 5 watts of energy. These are some of many examples on the website showing how much energy you can be using when something is not used. If you add those three things together they use 10.8 watts. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory shows you how much money you are paying for this energy, and it is over $10 a year. This is only three devices that you might have, and you probably have many more, and they add up quickly. If Gannon students could use this power strip, they could save Gannon lots of money by lowering the energy Gannon uses. This also helps the production of energy to lessen emissions into the air.  Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory says that this energy use is responsible for roughly 1 percent of the world’s CO2 emissions. That might seem low, but these devices are putting CO2 emissions into the air when we aren’t even using them. Personally I think that is ridiculous. So I encourage people to plug devices into a power strip to make it easy to turn everything off with one switch and start saving energy.

BEN KIES

[email protected]

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