Thanks to my youngest brother for commenting about Granola in Facebook, otherwise I might not have come across a very useful software like Granola. Granola is an intelligent software power management solution for x86 servers, laptops, and PCs running Linux and Microsoft Windows. And guess what, Granola is FREE for personal use!

Once installed, Granola automatically optimizes a computer system to use energy more efficiently without compromising performance or availability. The Granola Power Management Daemon when installed on a server, laptop, or PC, matches the energy consumed by the system to the load on the system automatically. Granola typically lowers total system energy use by 10-35% even when a system is 100% utilized. Granola also tracks the energy saved for use in estimating cost savings and carbon emission reductions.

How does it benefit YOU, a computer/laptop user?

Here are the benefits:

  • If you always leave your computer/laptop turned on for hours, you will save on electricity consumed.
  • If you use laptop running on batteries, your laptop battery may give the extra hours or minutes needed to last longer.
  • If you’re concerned about the world environmental impact, you are already saving electricity and environment by using Granola to optimize your computer/laptop energy usage.

How does Granola work?

Granola, once installed, should start automatically with your operating systems such as Windows. And it runs in the background using sophisticated workload modeling and prediction algorithms to determine your computer energy usage needs. With these algorithms, Granola increases or decreases the energy needed by your CPU. The underlying magic is a technology called dynamic voltage and frequency scaling or DVFS. It allows software running on a computer to lower the power of the CPU without turning the system off.

Get Granola and start saving energy and reduce your electricity bills!

I downloaded Granola from the website, http://grano.la/. You can also download Granola Linux version.

Installation of Granola took less than 2 minutes and when I started Granola, I got the following message:

Granola Startup Problem

Granola’s innovative power saving techniques rely on a technology called dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) to change the amount of power required by your CPU. Unfortunately, your system appears to not have DVFS enabled. Luckily, for systems newer than 5 years or so, enabling DVFS is simple, and will allow you to begin saving energy with Granola right away.

Click here to learn how to enable DVFS

After enabling DVFS, restart Granola (re-installation is not required) to start saving the world. If you are having trouble getting DVFS to work, please submit a support request and we will try to help you as soon as possible.

Submit a support request

Oopss! My laptop does not have DVFS enabled. I clicked on Click here to learn how to enable DVFS button and the next step for me is to restart my laptop, go into BIOS and make the necessary changes. It is something to do with Intel SpeedStep technology. Different BIOS might have different naming and steps to change the setting. Best is to follow the steps given by Granola website. If you are not sure, then please ask any IT person to do it since BIOS is not something you can play around without knowing what you are doing.

Using Granola in my laptop, I’ve joined the fast growing Granola software users community to reduce energy usage and save the environment! You can do it too! If you would like to get updated with tips like this whenever I post them, please subscribe here Get Latest Updates.


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