WHEN THIRTEEN-YEAR-old Andrew Davey read a blog by a leading expert in green computing, explaining how changing from a white background computer screen to a black one could save energy, he decided to put the theory to the test. He is now the proud owner of an environmentally-friendly search engine called Ecosmartsearch.com - a search engine with the motto “We are saving energy, now it's your turn”.
Andrew’s search engine uses a black background which saves energy because the computer monitor uses 59 watts to produce the image on the screen, whereas a white or light screen uses 74 watts to display the image. This means that every time ecosmartsearch.com is used, it saves 15 watts. As it is Google-powered the search results are exactly the same but use less energy.
The blog which inspired Andrew to invent his search-engine explains the maths: "Google gets about 200 million queries a day. Assuming each query is displayed for about 10 seconds, that means Google is running for about 550,000 hours every day. If users run Google in the usual full-screen mode, the shift to a black background would save a total of 8.3 megawatt-hours per day, or about 3000 megawatt-hours per year." Andrew realised that was a whole lot of carbon-dioxide that could be saved from entering the atmosphere.
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