In the next few hours, all the Moslem are eager to celebrate Eid al-Fitr along with their lovely family members. Every year, we already common with tradition of seeking forgiveness after praying activity. Some Muslim usually held open house and the rest of will go to every person they know.
But at this pandemic period, it might different condition since the government asks to alter our silaturrahmi by online method regarding the social distancing or local lockdown. Online silaturahmiprovides us to maintain the relationship and closeness without directly contact with our friend in this long-awaited day for Moslem.
Despite this approach might be seen as a solution, unfortunately it has a set of drawbacks that might be unseen or noticed by people. It is the right time to realize or even mitigate about the setbacks.
It might be true that there is a connection between this new type of silaturahmi affected our environment and our personal expenditure.
Some people may already notice and know the solutions, some people may have noticed but did not know the solutions. How about the rest of people?
First, let assume that all the Moslem in Indonesian are calling their relatives from 10 until 30 minutes. If there are 10 contacts that they have to call on that day, at least 2 until 6 hours people must allocate their time for the video call duration cumulatively.
While conducting the silaturahmi online, the battery level of our device will periodically reduce. Neglecting the efficiency of our charger, the value of interval between initial and final level battery is equal with the amount of energy that we have to recharge for a single handphone and multiply it as much as the family member who use it also.
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Then, there will be a rising question, how much power consumption will be used in a city or regency?
How about 10 cities? While there are at least 514 cities and regencies across 34 provinces in our beloved country.
On that moment, the powerplant will be in the peak load, it means that a 200MWe steam powerplant has to set the coal feeder, air preheater flow, feedwater heater flow into maximum capacity to fulfill the citizen electricity demands and telecommunications tower. Not to mention about the PM 2.5, NOx, and hydrocarbon footprint will be released in the sky.
Data Usage
In that day, there will be a situation when our data usages are rocketing. This is because we continuously use our internet package for ensuring the video call process works well. On average, a well-known communication application, Whatsapp, it consumes data usage ranging from 2,9 Megabytes up to 3,4 Megabytes per 60 seconds. That range of data usage will be folded by our calling duration. Consequently, our expense about internet package will be increased too.
Power Consumption and Remedies of This Dilemma
There are a lot of points affecting the power consumption of our handphone. Despite the level of energy density from our battery, a quick run out battery will likely happen if we don’t fully understand about the handphone mechanism.
Brightness level
The brightness level affected our battery consumption, brighter display will cause more consumption of device’s battery. Reducing the brightness into proper level will be a wise step for us to minimize it. Also, we may conduct the video call in the open space since the sun light intensity will help the lighting problems, this is a cheaper way if our house or our room’s light is not sufficient.
Choosing our video quality wisely
Our data usage is affected by the quality of the video. We may set either 450p instead of 720p as the efficient set point. We don’t want to set 360p since we cannot see clearly our relative and it is extravagant if we set 720p since the data usage also increase.
Aware about your home
In some cases, the handphone signal will be interrupted because the material of our house. When this situation is happened, your precious momentum of silaturahmi will be ruined and just wasting your battery and mobile data. Finding the right room or go to upper level might be a solution. Similarly, if the location of telecommunication tower on the north, moving into the north side of your building will untangle the latency of the video.
The main aim is to mitigate the increasement of electric consumption with a simple way. Reducing the charging activity in that day will reduce the power generation activity, help the environment as well as cut monthly expense in the individual level.
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On the larger scale such as a family, a community, a city, a province, a country, it might be a win-win solution for energy conservation and still obeying the local lockdown policies. After Eid al-Fitr festival and pandemic situation, using this lifestyle will help us one step closer with green living.
