Student Council heads effort to cut on library computer energy use
By Carson Creasy | October 15, 2014The Student Council Committee on Sustainability recently headed an initiative to cut down on energy use in Alderman Library by letting the computers go black after 10 minutes of inactivity rather than after an hour.Second-year College student Alex Wolz, a member of the Committee, helped lead the effort.“We thought this would be a good issue to tackle because we could solve the problem without compromising the performance of the computers,” Wolz said.According to Lia Cattaneo, co-chair of the committee, the issue was first recognized by Council Representative Body Chair Abraham Axler, who observed that it did not seem energy efficient to have screen savers whenever a computer was not in use.Wolz said the amount of time it took for the computers to enter hibernation mode was unnecessary and that it wasted electricity. “A simple reduction in the amount of time it takes for the computer screens to go black saves electricity and therefore reduces UVA's energy footprint, all without affecting the performance of the computers that students use for research, homework, etc,” Wolz said.According to Wolz, James Kelly, supervisor of ITS’s Desktop Image Group, worked closely with Wolz on solving the problem.
