Monitor energy consumed for computers using Joulemeter

Joulemeter is a new application from Microsoft to monitor the consumption of power in computers. This application was released by Microsoft on 19 May 2010 and is currently in alpha-test state.

About Joulemeter

• Joulemeter is designed to track the power and total energy consumption of running computers. This light-weight application will always reside in your memory, even if not started manually.
• The statistics reports the power being consumed, average power, the total energy consumed and the total volume of CO2 released. The interface is so simple and neat. More developments can be expected in the stable version.

• The statistics provides details about base power for running PC, power consumed for CPU, hard disk and monitor.
• The uncalibrated model only gives the approximate statistics. For getting accurate measurements, calibration is necessary. But as far as I am concerned, the calibration always failed in all three attempts made. This may be due to some bug which is hoped to be fixed in the stable version.

The approximate statistics of power being consumed is calculated in watts (W) and the total energy consumed in calculated in kilowatt-hours (kWh). 1 kWh is commonly referred as 1 unit of energy. It is the same unit as read on the energy meters at home. As you can see in the screen-shot, using my laptop for 48 hours cost me about 1 unit of energy. Read more on calculation of energy consumption at labnol.org.

Joulemeter is handy and consumes very less memory. It gives the basic idea of power consumption in computers. A few and old energy saving tips can be found here.

Links: Download Joulemeter | Joulemeter Project

Hope this application would help you estimate the cost of running the computer. Do share your views on Joulemeter here.