How to Conserve Battery Power

Batteries can be a cost-effective alternative to using traditional energy sources in your home or office. To get the most out of your batteries, you'll need to take steps to conserve their power whenever possible.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Conserve a Digital Camera's Battery Power

1. Frame your compositions using the camera's normal viewfinder instead of the digital image display screen. While this screen is convenient and technologically impressive, it can put a substantial drain on your camera's batteries. Use of the digital view screen has no practical effect on your ability to take great pictures.

2. Limit your use of the flash feature. The power needed to operate a camera's flash can put an unnecessary strain on the battery. Not only will you prolong the life of your camera's batteries, but your pictures will have a more natural look.

3. Turn off your camera's image review system. This is the feature that briefly displays the image you just captured. If you must use the image review system, configure it to display images for the briefest possible interval.

Conserve Your Computer's Battery Life

4. Configure your computer to enter the hibernation mode automatically when not in use. The battery power spent to reboot a computer is much greater than the power needed to awaken one from sleep mode.

5. Reduce the brightness on your computer's display screen. This simple trick can do a lot to conserve the life of your computer batteries. The individual methods for changing the brightness of a computer monitor will differ between manufacturers and models, so you'll need to consult your computer's manual.

6. Turn off your computer's wireless card when you're not attempting to connect to a wireless network. Your computer will waste power needlessly by searching for a wireless connection.

Conserve a Cell Phone's Battery

7. Limit your use of the "vibrate" feature. Reduce the strain on our phone's battery by setting its ringer to a low volume instead. The energy needed to make your phone ring is much less than the energy needed to make it vibrate.

8. Turn off a phone when you're outside of a service area. Even if you can't receive a wireless signal, your phone will spend precious battery power searching for one. Instead, shut off your phone until you re-enter a known service area.

Tips & Warnings

• Save money and natural resources by investing in rechargeable batteries and using a charger to give new life to spent batteries. This can be a simple, cost-effective way to limit the amount of batteries in landfills.
• Completely drain rechargeable batteries before attaching them to a battery charger. By charging batteries that aren't spent, you may diminish the batteries' life.