Your point of sale system does use quite a lot of power, and so it does substantially add to the electricity bill. If you are thinking of saving on your electricity bills, then you should look at it.
There are several things you can reduce power consumption of your pos system.
1) Maybe you do not need all the computers and equipment on, all the time. To save power, consider turning off all the equipment that you don’t need. One item, in particular, to watch is laser printers, which consume a lot of power even if not in use. Have if possible one electric switch to turn off all the equipment at night so you do not accidentally leave say a printer on overnight.
2) Look at the equipment, most current equipment is more energy efficient, for example, an LCD monitors uses much less power, and I think looks better. Consider upgrading the old equipment and when you are looking to buy more modern equipment ask about its power consumption.
3) It is a good idea to set the computer to turn off the screen after a few minutes of use to save power. Check your power management plans in your computer.
4) While on the power management plans consider using the computer's automatic Sleep mode. Just make sure that these computers that you are setting for sleep are not being used for automatic backup and/or running services like Xchangeit. If so what you may consider is doing all of this on one computer so you only need one to remain on. Sleep will reduce the power consumption slightly, and the computer will restart in seconds if required. It is ideal for computer that you use off and on during the day.
If you want to go on further then Hibernation mode is something you can also consider if you are using computers that will in the course of a day will not be needed for long periods but this mode can be messy, so you will need to experiment first on how it goes. I have noticed that some peripheral equipment have problems if a computer using them wakes up from hibernation.
With these simple ideas, you should be able to save about $300/year on each computer.
