It's not easy being green: understanding home computer power management

ABSTRACT

Although domestic computer use is increasing, most efforts to reduce energy use through improved power management have focused on computers in the workplace. We studied 20 households to understand how people use power management strategies on their home computers. We saw computers in the home, particularly desktop computers, are left on much more than they are actively used suggesting opportunities for economic and energy savings. However, for most of our participants, the economic incentives were too minor to motivate them to turn off devices when not in use, especially given other frustrations such as long boot up times. We suggest research directions for home computer power management that could help users be more green without having to dramatically change their home computing habits.

REFERENCES

• 1: Agarwal, Y., Hodges, S., Scott, J., Chandra, R., Bahl, V. and Gupta, R. Somniloquy: Maintaining network connectivity while your computer sleeps. Microsoft Research, 2008. http://research.microsoft.com/research/pubs/view.aspx?type=Technical%20Report&id=1458.
• 2: Banerjee, N., Rahmati, A., Corner, M.D., Rollins, S. and Zhong, L. Users and Batteries: Interactions and Adaptive Energy Management in Mobile Systems. Ubicomp 2007, Springer, Innsbruck, Austria, 2007, 217--234.
• 3: Hugh Beyer , Karen Holtzblatt, Contextual design: defining customer-centered systems, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc., San Francisco, CA, 1998
• 4: Eli Blevis, Sustainable interaction design: invention & disposal, renewal & reuse, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, April 28-May 03, 2007, San Jose, California, USA [doi>10.1145/1240624.1240705]
• 5: Marshini Chetty , David Tran , Rebecca E. Grinter, Getting to green: understanding resource consumption in the home, Proceedings of the 10th international conference on Ubiquitous computing, September 21-24, 2008, Seoul, Korea [doi>10.1145/1409635.1409668]
• 6: Energy Information Administration. http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/pdf/appa.pdf.
• 7: Energy Information Administration. Residential Energy Consumption Survey. 2005. http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/recs/recs2005/hc2005_tables/detailed_tables2005.html.
• 8: Energy Star. http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=power_mgt.pr_power_management.
• 9: Maruti Gupta , Suresh Singh, Greening of the internet, Proceedings of the 2003 conference on Applications, technologies, architectures, and protocols for computer communications, August 25-29, 2003, Karlsruhe, Germany [doi>10.1145/863955.863959]
• 10: Anton Gustafsson , Magnus Gyllenswärd, The power-aware cord: energy awareness through ambient information display, CHI '05 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems, April 02-07, 2005, Portland, OR, USA [doi>10.1145/1056808.1056932]
• 11: Harris, C. and Cahill, V. An Empirical Study of the Potential for Context-Aware Power Management. Ubicomp 2007, Springer, Innsbruck, Austria, 2007, 235--252.
• 12: Tiffany Grace Holmes, Eco-visualization: combining art and technology to reduce energy consumption, Proceedings of the 6th ACM SIGCHI conference on Creativity & cognition, June 13-15, 2007, Washington, DC, USA [doi>10.1145/1254960.1254982]
• 13: Kawamoto, K., Koomey, J.G., Nordman, B., Brown, R.E., Piette, M.A., Ting, M. and Meier, A.K. Electricity Used by Office Equipment and Network Equipment in the U.S.: Detailed Report and Appendices. Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. 2001. http://enduse.lbl.gov/Info/LBNL-45917b.pdf.
• 14: D. Korn , R. Huang , D. Beavers , T. Bolioli , M. Walker, Power management of computers, Proceedings of the International Symposium on Electronics and the Environment, p.128-131, May 10-13, 2004
• 15: Yung-Hsiang Lu , Eui-Young Chung , Tajana Šimunić , Luca Benini , Giovanni De Micheli, Quantitative comparison of power management algorithms, Proceedings of the conference on Design, automation and test in Europe, p.20-26, March 27-30, 2000, Paris, France [doi>10.1145/343647.343688]
• 16: Jennifer Mankoff , Deanna Matthews , Susan R. Fussell , Michael Johnson, Leveraging Social Networks To Motivate Individuals to Reduce their Ecological Footprints, Proceedings of the 40th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, p.87, January 03-06, 2007 [doi>10.1109/HICSS.2007.325]
• 17: Microsoft. Application Power Management Best Practices for Windows Vista. 2007. http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/pnppwr/powermgmt/PM_apps.mspx.
• 18: Olson, M. The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and The Theory of Groups. Harvard University Press, Cambrigde, Massachusetts, 1965.
• 19: Tye Rattenbury , Dawn Nafus , Ken Anderson, Plastic: a metaphor for integrated technologies, Proceedings of the 10th international conference on Ubiquitous computing, September 21-24, 2008, Seoul, Korea [doi>10.1145/1409635.1409667]
• 20: Satyanarayanan, M. Pervasive Computing: Vision and Challenges. IEEE Personal Communications, 8, 4 (2001), 10--17.
• 21: Schultz, P.W., Nolan, J.M., Cialdini, R.B., Goldstein, N.J. and Griskevicius, V. The Constructive, Destructive, and Reconstructive Power of Social Norms. American Psychological Science, 18, 5 (2007), 429--434.
• 22: Verdiem. http://www.verdiem.com/edison/.
• 23: Webber, C.A., Roberson, J.A., Brown, R.E., Payne, C.T., Nordman, B. and Koomey, J.G. Field surveys of office equipment operating patterns. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. 2001.
• 24: Woodruff, A., Anderson, K., Mainwaring, S. and Aipperspach., R. Portable, But Not Mobile: A Study of Wireless Laptops in the Home. Pervasive, ACM, Toronto, Ontario, 2007, 216--233.
• 25: Allison Woodruff , Jay Hasbrouck , Sally Augustin, A bright green perspective on sustainable choices, Proceeding of the twenty-sixth annual SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, April 05-10, 2008, Florence, Italy [doi>10.1145/1357054.1357109]

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.m Miscellaneous

General Terms:
Human Factors

Keywords:
home computer use, power management, sustainability