Intelligent PC Power Management Saves Money, Reduces Greenhouse Gases

A typical PC, even one that is Energy Star rated, consumes up to $80 per year in electricity, and up to 60% of this expense is wasted due to poor power management. That means your enterprise PC installation – school, university, government or corporation – is wasting up to $50 per PC per year. This inefficiency adds up to a significant amount for larger organizations. Also, this calculation does not include the cost of the additional load on a building’s HVAC system.

There is another way!

A simple, low cost PC power management application can help your organization increase energy efficiency, cut costs, and significantly reduce your carbon footprint. Virsant, Inc. is a Washington, D.C. based IT consultancy with a developing expertise in PC power management, and our software application of choice is Power Save from Faronics. Power Save is low cost, widely deployed (over 700,000 installations on 500+ networks worldwide), and centrally managed software application that will help your organization start saving money immediately.

Virsant, Inc. can conduct a quick audit of your organization’s energy consumption, and objectively demonstrate how real savings can be achieved, easily and immediately.

Our approach is to conduct an energy consumption evaluation on 30-40 representative PCs and clearly demonstrate what’s at stake within an organization. There are two phases to the process, throughout which Virsant staff work with your IT staff to maximize savings potential and minimize the disruption to your employees.

Phase 1 – Setup Process

If properly coordinated in advance, this Phase should be completed in one business day. The plan is to use two groups of volunteers within the organization: the Baseline Group and the Test Group. The total number of each group needs to be 15-20 participants, in order to have a representative sample for comparison. All participants should be carefully chosen to be as representative of the entire organization as possible.

To begin, Virsant and client staff install external watt meters on all computers. We prefer to use the Kill A Watt meter due to its objective accuracy and ease of use. Virsant has these meters in stock, and we offer their use as part of the trial period. Each PC needs to be shut down to install the meter.

The setup process is as follows:

1. External watt meters are installed on the computer systems of the Baseline Group. This group simply operates their systems as they would normally, no DPM application is installed. The goal is to have data from this group be representative of the normal energy consumption of the entire organization. It is a simple matter of taking time and KWH meter readings from this group moving forward, from which an average wattage consumed number can be calculated.

2. External watt meters are also attached to the Test Group. Each computer’s power usage in On and Standby modes is checked and recorded, and these data are used to calibrate the DPM software.

3. Computer behavior is checked when transitioning from power-saving modes. Most manufacturers claim that computers should come out of Standby mode “immediately”, but more typically it takes 5-8 seconds. If a PC takes significantly longer to come out Standby mode, then Virsant technical staff can be retained to troubleshoot these issues under separate arrangements.

4. Virsant installs a server application from which to centrally and easily manage the Test Group computers. To do this, Virsant staff deploy a Windows-based server (most likely Windows 2003) on the organization’s virtualized infrastructure or on a dedicated machine. This server hosts the DPM’s Core Console server application, from which the client application(s) can centrally and easily be pushed, managed, monitored and calibrated.

5. Using the Core Console, Virsant staff push out two pieces of software to the Test Group computers. The first application is the Core Agent, which facilitates communications from the individual computer back to the Core Console. This push-out does not require a reboot of the test group computers. The next task is to push out the intelligent Power Save application to each of the test group computers. This step needs to be coordinated with the users, since it does require that each system be re-booted.

6. The Test Group computers are calibrated via the Core Console. Virsant staff take readings from each watt meter to establish the “zero point,” and the Power Save software is set to “Active” mode.

Phase 2 – Let them run!

Simple meter readings are taken during the evaluation period, typically two weeks. At any time an energy consumption report can be generated for the Test Group. Again, all volunteers are encouraged to use their computers as they would normally.

Compare!

Based on the hard data collected from the Watt meters, a detailed report is easily created and the numbers speak for themselves.

CALL US TODAY AT 202-244-9090 TO DISCUSS HOW VIRSANT CAN HELP YOUR ORGANIZATION!