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June 04, 2007

Blackle aims to brighten your days by darkening your searches

Posted by mason at 02:27 PM ET

Sometimes it’s hard to see the forest for the trees. For example, April’s federal and Ontario government decisions to ban the sale of incandescent light bulbs struck me as a bit of a drop in the bucket when compared with other changes that could be made to save energy, such as turning off lights in office buildings overnight.

The value of small changes is well illustrated, though, with the introduction of Blackle. According to the site’s “About” page, Blackle was inspired by a January blog post calculating the energy used by a white screen versus a black screen:

Take at look at Google, who gets about 200 million queries a day. Let’s assume each query is displayed for about 10 seconds; that means Google is running for about 550,000 hours every day on some desktop. Assuming that users run Google in full screen mode, the shift to a black background will save a total of 15 (74-59) watts. That turns into a global savings of 8.3 Megawatt-hours per day, or about 3000 Megawatt-hours a year.

Three thousand megawatt-hours a year. That’s no small amount. Motivated by this big number, Blackle was set up by Sydney, Australia’s Heap Media as a search page powered by a Google custom search.

Unfortunately, the two queries I tested it with turned up different results than the same google.com or google.ca search. (One was “pronger suspended,” the other “incandescent light bulbs ban.”) I’m not sure what accounts for the difference. Maybe it’s the Australian factor. Nevertheless, Blackle demonstrates original thinking on the day-to-day problems of climate change.

More entries on: Interweb | Planet Earth

Previous: Friday links: Greening books, biofuel blowback, grey water grey water everywhere
Next: all out of proportion

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Reader comments:

ummm. this only makes sense with old-fashioned CRT displays; LCDs use electricity to darken the pixels on the display. So an all-black page would actually use more energy on a laptop or flat-screen, though arguably, CRTs just use more energy overall by orders of magnitude. Apple phased them out, but Dell still make them (cos they're cheap)...the pressure should really be to recycle all of them, institute trade-in programs, and discontinue CRT monitors and televisions as soon as possible.

Posted by: aj at June 4, 2007 04:17 PM

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Hey Mason - this is at least the second time you've mentioned your irritation over the office building lights being left on at night. Offices usually have cleaning staff come in after regular business hours. And each of the four office buildings I've worked in shut the lights off automaticly after a certain hour (and every hour on the hour after that). They also shut off the fans and air conditioning after hours and on the weekends. I know this because I have had to work late and figure out how to turn the lights back on while sweltering in stagnant air. At one office we could arrange to have the fans turned on, but the firm had to pay for it, which I think is key: energy isn't free. Users should have to pay and conservers should be rewarded.

Posted by: lynda at June 6, 2007 02:07 AM

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Lynda,

The only evidence I have of office tower lights being left on unnecessarily is what I see late at night on my way home from work in Toronto: Dozens of floors have their lights on. Surely some of these floors are being cleaned, but I doubt all of them are.

And now, Toronto has an art installation at the Harbourfront that shines 20 searchlights into the sky for the duration of the exhibit (the first week and a half of June, I believe). Check it out: http://www.blogto.com/arts/2007/04/luminato_to_light_up_night_sky/

Posted by: mason at June 7, 2007 05:56 PM

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The moon is gone.

She fled as dawn approached.

Dawn as a slowly opening eye.

White sea birds skimming over the water,

looking for an early morning snack.

The mirror brightens.

From a blood moon at dawn to a mirror

reflecting waking life...

Posted by: Poetry at June 11, 2007 07:07 AM

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