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August 18, 2011 By Sarah Rich
Vacant workstations waste energy and and add to energy costs.
Running a typical PC day and night without turning it off can cost an extra $100 a year, according to one energy supplier. For large organizations with hundreds or thousands of computers, that amount rises exponentially.
Government agencies have tried a variety of solutions to address this problem, such as power management software or policy that requires employees to turn off their workstation at the end of the day.
Riverside County, Calif., is trying something else. Last week the county started the process of installing 3,200 surge suppressors with built-in motion sensors at the workstations of county employees.
Riverside County currently spends $18.7 million a year in energy costs. When all 3,200 units are installed, the county is expecting to save $50 a year per unit totaling $160,000 in annual energy savings. The county expects to save $1.6 million in energy costs over a 10-year period.
The surge suppressors plug into computers, printers, desk lamps or other peripherals that consume energy. Through the infrared motion sensor, the surge suppressor detects inactivity at the workstation and powers down those devices when an employee is away from his or her workstation for 30 minutes or more. When the employee returns, the PC and peripherals automatically power back up, said Janet Purchase, an energy manager for the county.
“That’s the way we save energy since employees are not at their desk all day long,” Purchase said. “So this way the computer is on all the time and we don’t disrupt anything that’s going on at the computer, but we save energy.”
Riverside County is receiving the surge suppressors for free through a partnership with Southern California Edison, the local electric utility company. Through the partnership 1,400 surge suppressors have already been installed in county-owned and county-leased buildings. Approximately 800 more are scheduled to be installed.
The Edison partnership was formally developed in 2006 to build an infrastructure that would provide energy-efficient projects within the county.
Through the partnership, the county also receives free audits, technical assistance and has enhanced rebates for energy projects. For the new building construction, Riverside County receives free assistance on energy-efficient design, Purchase said.
The installation of the motion sensing surge suppressors may expand further in Riverside County. In April 2009, the county received U.S. Department of Energy grant funding to complete 22 projects. Some of the projects have come in under budget.
If there’s additional grant money left over after August 2012, the Department of Energy has given verbal approval, Purchase said, to allow the county to keep the extra funding to purchase more surge suppressors — for county-owned and -leased buildings that don’t have Edison as their electricity provider.
“Conservatively there’s probably about 10,000 more sites that could use these in addition to the [existing] 3, 200,” Purchase said. “So when you start adding that up, then you’re really looking at some big savings.”
Discussion Starter: What is your agency doing to reduce energy costs? Share your comments below.
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So, this means that your computer crashes with a power failure when you are at a meeting. You then need to wait for disk check to complete (another 30 minutes), and re-open your email and other applications, before getting back to work. So, on average, you have lost an hour a day. How much is that worth?
You missed this line, “So this way the computer is on all the time and we don’t disrupt anything that’s going on at the computer, but we save energy.” It's not a hard shutdown or a cold boot. Chkdsk won't run when it comes back on. To me, it reads like the computer is going to open back from a hibernation state.
A motion sensor uses around 1 watt per day . . . a PC in sleep/standby mode uses 1-5 watts per day (and it probably won’t be in this mode for a full 24 hrs on most days). So just set all the PCs to go to sleep/standby after 30 minutes of non-use and you don't need the additional expense (and work) to buy/install/replace motion sensors (which will continue to suck additional wattage while the PC is being used). Oh, and if I'm fairly motionless at my workstation and just rolling the trackball on my mouse, the PC may shut off on me while I’m working. We experienced a similar issue at my job when motion sensors turned off lights in ‘empty’ offices. We found that many employees had stretches during the workday where they moved very little while working on their PC (maybe while reading through a long document . . . hopefully not sleeping) and they had to keep waving their arms around to get the lights to go back on . Funny to see . . . yes. A nice short burst of exercise in an otherwise sedentary day . . . yes. A good idea . . . no. The sensors were removed in less than a month.
I hope they were smart about this and don't just plug computers into these without the device having a way to notify the computer to shut down; otherwise, they may find the $50 energy savings eaten up in lost productivity and increased maintenance costs.
If the object is to reduce energy consumption to reduce the load on the grid, it might be worth doing. But I would think that some sort of bi-directional communication between the PC and the motion sensor would be necessary to have an orderly shutdown (or "power-off hibernation") so that work in progress is not lost and so that disk buffers are flushed to the drives before powering down the PC. Otherwise there will be file corruption and eventually the IT department's trouble ticket costs would eat up any energy bill savings. Such a motion-sensing cutoff system, I would think, would be too expensive to justify on energy cost savings alone.
What the article fails to make clear is that the PCs are plugged in to the "always on" outlet on the power strip. What gets powered down is things like the monitor, speakers, desk lamps, etc. The PC will shut down/sleep according to power management policies (if any).