Wait, are you supposed to shut down your computer?

Don't worry too much about whether you need to turn off the phone every night. I usually unplug the laptop and close the lid after get off work. I believe many people do the same.

Shut down the phone every night is not without its disadvantages. If you just let the computer sleep, everything will remain the same the next morning. But if you shut down, you need to wait for your computer to start and then reopen all the apps and documents, which is cumbersome.

While many annoying things can save energy, it is worth thinking about from an environmental and economic perspective. Does shutting down really save energy and money? I've done research on this.

The computer in the sleep state consumes very low power

It's easy to make your computer sleep: Just close the lid for the laptop. Windows systems provide this feature in the Start menu, macOS systems provide this feature in the menu bar, and both operating systems automatically hibernate the computer after a period of time by default. If you do not use the device as a server, you do not need to change this setting.

So, what does "hibernation" mean to the computer? It basically means that the computer is not actively handling any tasks, and the power is only used to prevent RAM (memory) from being powered off. RAM is where your computer stores open applications, documents, and browser tags, keeping them running without consuming too much power.

To understand the specific power consumption, I conducted some simple tests. First, after using your laptop outdoors in the afternoon, charge it at about 6 p.m. At that time, it was almost fully charged, and after that I unplugged the power and closed the lid. The laptop has barely dropped its battery power—just 1%—and this laptop has been in use for nearly six years and has less battery life than before.

However, I wanted a more accurate number, so I used Kill A Watt to measure the power consumption of my laptop while sleeping. From 4 pm to 7 AM the next day—15 hours in total—stayed plugged in and was in a pause, consuming 0.02 kWh of energy. This is not much. In Portland, Oregon, I live in, the electricity price for a residential home is 19.45 cents per kilowatt-hour, which means having my laptop plugged in with power all night cost me just over a third of a cent. Over the course of a year, it totaled about $1.42.

Although this is not zero, it is almost negligible. A 60-watt incandescent bulb consumes 0.06 kWh per hour, which means if you have one of these at home, replacing it with an LED bulb will save more energy than shutting down. Using an electric dryer consumes about 3 kWh per drying, which means skipping a drying cycle will save energy equivalent to the sum of shutdowns every night for 150 days. Imagine how much energy you would save if you skipped the drying cycle once a week, or switched to drying clothes altogether. You can also invest in a heat pump, which is more energy-efficient than electric or gas heating, thus saving more energy.

In short, anyone who cares about energy use can take many steps to save much more power and money than shutting down at night. This is not to say that shutting down at night won’t save any energy – it’s just that the energy savings are insignificant compared to other changes you can make.

Occasionally shut down is still a good idea

This is not to say that you should never shut down. If I leave town for more than a week without a laptop, I will shut down. In this case, the energy consumed by the computer is worth it to me compared to the trouble of having to start it again. Additionally, sometimes dormant laptops that are unattended for a long time can drain the battery, which is also annoying.

There are also some types of computers that may be worth shutting down. For example, if you have a gaming computer that is only used on weekends, it might make sense to shut down on weekdays.

There is another reason for shutting down or at least restarting your computer regularly: it can sometimes solve annoying computer problems. The main reason for this is software errors – over time, such problems can fill the device’s memory and often lead to the computer becoming unstable. But even without errors, computers that have never been shut down can become unstable, because the reason is from outer space. I'm not kidding - the BBC reports that cosmic rays from outer space can cause problems with the computer:

When a computer goes down, we tend to think it's just some kind of software failure, some bad programming. But ionizing radiation, including proton rays emitted by the sun at us, may also be the cause. These events are called single-particle flips, which is rare and difficult to determine whether cosmic rays are involved in a specific failure because they leave no trace.

Between this rare event and more common software errors, even the best-maintained computers will experience some problems from time to time. In this case, shutting down or even restarting the computer will help. So sometimes you should shut down. But if you use your computer every day and you prefer to let it hibernate, I don't think you have to have insomnia for it.

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