GreenTech
Put office energy hogs on a diet
PC power management is one of the easiest and most cost-effective ways to green IT.
by Denise DiRamio
Faced with rising energy
costs and green initiatives, enterprises are
challenged to find ways to become more
energy efficient. While much of the IT
industry has focused on data center energy
efficiency, the world’s more than 1 billion
PCs are a significant source of energy use
that can offer significant savings, without
investing in expensive new hardware or
complicated consolidation programs.
PCs and their monitors
are energy hogs. The average PC consumes 600
kWh annually, and according to the U.S.
Department of Energy, up to 400 kWh, a full
two-thirds, of that electricity is wasted
because PCs are operating at full power when
no user is present.
Power-management
solutions can lower costs by reducing total
energy consumption, without affecting user
productivity, yet this savings opportunity
is overlooked in most organizations.
Power management is as
simple as turning on power-saving features
and turning off unused equipment. In recent
years, power-saving features have been
incorporated into all desktop and laptop
computers. While most PCs have energy-saving
settings, such as standby, hibernate and
shutdown, more than 80 percent of PCs have
their power-saving settings disabled. In
addition, 40 percent of organizations do not
even have a policy of advising users to turn
off PCs at the end of the day, according to
a recent Info-Tech study.
Software programs, like
Verdiem’s Surveyor, can measure, monitor and
manage power consumption on network PCs and
monitors. Network managers can configure and
maintain PC power settings across
distributed networks to automatically send
PCs into low-power states as needed, saving
an average of 200 kWh per PC annually. That
adds up to a cost savings of $15 to $50 per
PC annually, depending on local electricity
rates.
While saving less than
$50 per PC a year does not seem like much,
the accrued savings can be dramatic. If a
typical desktop computer uses $80 per year,
an organization with 1,500 desktop units
would be faced with a $120,000 power bill.
Power-management features that reduce energy
consumption by one-third would result in
nearly $40,000 in savings. If all computers
used power-management software, according to
a recent report from HP and Intel, the
global energy savings could be as much as
$80 billion.
There are two basic
methods of achieving significant power
savings on PCs: Optimize power management
settings, and power down machines when not
in use.
General Electric’s
information technology managers are saving
more than $2.5 million a year simply by
activating Windows power-management features
on the company’s approximately 75,000 PCs.
They have set the features to turn off
monitors after 15 minutes of inactivity,
turn off hard drives after 30 minutes,
engage system standby after two hours and
activate hibernation after three hours.
Even more energy savings,
however, can arise from turning off
computers. Yale University’s facilities
department realized that a simple way to
save energy would be to turn off their
computers at night instead of leaving them
on 24/7. This move saves more than $40 per
computer, or $4,700 per year. Their next
step is to determine where this approach can
be used on the rest of the campus. With more
than 10,000 computers at Yale, the savings
could be more than $400,000 annually.
"The savings from
avoiding unnecessary power to idle monitors,
processors and peripherals is compelling,"
says Tom Simmons, area vice president of
federal systems at Citrix Systems, "Turning
off even one PC can make a difference."
Communications News’ GreenTech column focuses on a variety of issues concerning the green IT movement. You can contact Associate Editor Denise DiRamio at
ddiramio@comnews.com .