Blackle - 110,026.199 Watt hours saved, and counting

Following a post earlier this year which highlighted that black pixels take less power to display than white pixels, some clever folks have taken the logical next step and created their own black-themed version of Google.

The thinking runs as follows: white pixels apparently take 74 watts to power, whereas black ones take just 59. By switching an all-white, high volume site (ie, Google) to a different colour scheme, major power savings can be had.

Welcome Blackle:

Blackle saves energy because the screen is predominantly black. “Image displayed is primarily a function of the user’s color settings and desktop graphics, as well as the color and size of open application windows; a given monitor requires more power to display a white (or light) screen than a black (or dark) screen.” Roberson et al, 2002

All this clearly adds up. At the time of viewing, Blackle reckons it’d saved some 110,026.199 Watt hours of energy. The good news for Greenbang is that our colour theme only racks up something between 60 and 63 Watts–not as green as black, it seems, but not bad either.

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We blog on this rather than the environmental problems of the world because we are interested in the answers to climate change.