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Power Management - Energy Efficiency
Category: UncategorizedOne of the simplest and cheapest ways an IT facility can save on energy bills is to activate power management software that allows users to put their computers to sleep when inactive. Although installed on almost every computer sold today, this software often is manually deactivated.
PCs or even laptops are left on overnight so IT pros can do network patches, software patches, updates or whatever the case may be.
But recent technology, such as Microsoft’s Vista or Intel’s vPro, allows IT pros to access a network computer and wake it up if a patch needs to be deployed. The engineer can then power the computer back down when the upgrade has been completed.
It has been estimated that in the business world, enabling that software, or installing that software, can save customers about 200 KW hours a year per computer, which can lead to your annual savings.
Data centers are notoriously wasteful when it comes to power. Studies show that about half of all energy is squandered. The main culprits are power conversion and inefficient motherboards.
Right off the bat, a computer must convert AC wall power to DC power to use it, resulting in between 65 and 70 percent efficiency. The motherboard further complicates things by taking the newly created DC power and converting it again for use in the processor, memory, hard drive and other internal components. This results in about 75 percent energy efficiency in motherboards. So if you do the math, 65 percent efficiency times 75 percent efficiency, which is how you get the overall system efficiency of 48 or 49 percent efficient. So about half of the power that goes into a computer from the wall gets wasted in heat. So even though servers are slightly more efficient than desktops, there still is plenty of room for improvement.
With so much heat being released within data centers, more energy and therefore more money is expended on cooling systems. The technology for more efficient computers is available - it just costs more. That’s why Google and Intel banded together in 2007 to found the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, a nonprofit organization aimed at expanding awareness and implementation of green IT.
B. Green
http://www.livinggreenindex.com
Tags: eco-friendly, environment, environmental, green living, living green