Energy Saving Methods, what do you do?

[denzal2k4]

We have been asked by our Facilities Manager to look at reducing energy consumption in IT, it's something that has always been at the back of my mind but when you are asked to actually do something about it, you realize how much is being wasted. Using Impero's power monitor it told us that teachers machine over a one week period were wasting £80 of power, through being left on and idle overnight and at weekends. Same problem with projectors. So to counter this we have set a shutdown time of 10pm for all teachers machines and the same for projectors, this is the time the site gets locked up so we can be certain no-one is in using something. Also set thin terminals to shut off when a user logs off, which then also puts the monitor into standby mode.

 

What else do you guys and girls do, do any of you use standby on windows? Do you manually check everything's turned off at the end of the day? Anything else we can be doing to save more energy?

 

Over to you Edugeek!

[sted]

you can get extension leads that when the pc is turned off it turns off the other plugs as well so monitor printer etc something like http://www.amazon.co.uk/Status-S8W2MSPSS1PK3-Protected-Extension-Indicator/dp/B009Y1HLMQ/ref=pd_cp_computers_1

[denzal2k4]

I could do with something like that for my home media system setup actually! Wouldn't be a huge use at school though as its a new build and all power sockets are built into the floor, not allowed cables trailing all over the place. Thanks though.

[Andrew_C]

OK, it is possibly worth getting everything set so it goes into idle, or, in the case of projectors shutting down. However, the energy you save will, in real terms, be minimal. Over the winter, that power will be compensated for by a reduced load on the heating. (Simple themro-dynamics) If you have A/C in the summer, that £80 becomes £160 as you have to get rid of that heat.

 

I'd bet that running the school boiler for , oh say 20minutes, probably costs a big fraction of £80.

[denzal2k4]

So are you saying there is no point trying to save money in IT power consumption, because other things in the school still cost money??

[localzuk]

We've put laser printers on timers (where the printer is low enough ampage to not kill the timer), increased server room aircon temperature by 3 degrees (stability is the key, rather than ultra-low temperatures), and I'm looking at replacing laser printers with the HP OfficeJet ProX inkjet printers too.

 

We've also got some print controls in place, which reduce pupil print wastage (printing for a laser printer increases the power usage).

 

Oh, and the other major thing - we consolidated our servers down from 15 physical boxes to 5, with virtualisation. We've also started rolling out SSDs to machines, as they're much quicker and use less power.

[Andrew_C]

So are you saying there is no point trying to save money in IT power consumption, because other things in the school still cost money??

Not "no point"; just that it will be hard to make a saving, and that it would be "better" spending time, effort, and money elsewhere.

[denzal2k4]

I'm in a very lucky position where the building and equipment is all under 2 years old and mainly virtualized, so we are just trying to optimize and make as efficient as possible what we have, the building uses alot of passive heating, so relying on the natural movement of warm and cool air, and the concrete mass of the building to retain heat, what little heating we do have is pellet fed. So realistically the biggest power costs in the building are the IT and lighting, so if we can make relatively small changes and save a few thousand pounds a year I think its a pretty good use of my time.

 

Thanks @localzuk we can definitely tweak the temp in the server room, we have 4 air con units in there with any 2 active and the other 2 as backups at any time. We have managed Sharp printers that go into standby after a few minutes idle and we only have 5 or 6 of these around the school and a special printer in art. Also all our physical servers (15) are housed in 1 blade chassis. What temp do you have your server room at btw?

 

I think we will go ahead and put standby after 40 mins into place, with projectors turning off 5 minutes after no signal. We are going to start rolling out SSD's to teachers machines next year.

[localzuk]

I've got my server room at 22 degrees. Was at 18 or 19 before.

[eyetea]

you can get extension leads that when the pc is turned off it turns off the other plugs as well so monitor printer etc something like Status S8W2MSPSS1PK3 8 Way Square Surge Protected Slave Extension Socket with Neon Indicator: Amazon.co.uk: DIY & Tools

 

Picked up one of these as a test unit with the idea that the master would be the teacher's desktop PC, and the slaves would be monitor, amp + printer if they had one. We came across the issue that our PCs weren't drawing enough power to keep the slave sockets on. If I connected an extension to the master and ran the screen + PC it was fine - however it defeated the point of getting the screen to power off rather than stand-by.

 

I've ordered one of these http://www.amazon.co.uk/OneClick-DSK105-Intelliplug-Desktop-Version/dp/B000MPJSL0/ref=sr_1_2?s=diy&ie=UTF8&qid=1435137193&sr=1-2&keywords=OneClick which supposedly is meant to work with a desktop.

 

Anyone have any other good energy saving tips? Bursar / Premises manager on a bit of a vendetta at the mo as they recently attended an eco conference.

[southhamster]

Our new site manager has knocked 10% off our electricity bill by..walking round every evening and turning everything off at the wall!

This did include the laptop trolleys at first so they weren't charged up but he has worked with us on what actually needs to be on.

Another quick win. New server was specified with 2x std. CPU's. Instead we opted for 1 higher spec but lower power - thats about £80 every year saved and our server dungeon is much cooler so we have turned off the extract fan.

[Oaktech]

Our monitors go into low power standby after 10 minutes, our PCs turn off and on on a schedule that doesn't include weekends or holidays, our printers have 10 minute deep sleep modes. Kids are trained to turn laptops off when they are done with them and the chargers are set to only charge for 12 hours at a time. We've also not got air con in the server cupboard, we've got a fairly high volume extractor which keeps most things on an even keel, although if it gets really warm I can turn on air con in the room next door.

[Pete10141748]

How about banning staff from charging their own mobile phones at school? Bet that would save a fortune

[Davit2005]

Set workstations to shutdown at end of day and set projectors to go to standby if no video input detected. This as also helped stop staff accounts getting locked out because they leave themselves logged in overnight, forget, change their password and then blame us when their accounts get continually locked.

[mats]

... Using Impero's power monitor it told us that teachers machine over a one week period were wasting £80 of power, through being left on and idle overnight and at weekends.

 

You're a bit off with your numbers. A quick play with excel suggests that 300 watts (on the high side, I know) * 8 hours per day * 5 days per week * 40 weeks per year = £72 at 15p / kWh.

 

24 hours per day comes out at £216 so there's a saving to be made, just not what you initially suggested.

 

EDIT - unless you're talking about a school's worth of machines of course.

Edited June 24, 2015 by mats

[simonw]

Got some on/off timers, the ones you use at home to turn the lights on when you're away, to use with the tablet and laptop charging trollies, so they charge during the night.

[mikeprice]

went through this at my old school. Had a hell of a time getting one teacher to believe our figures - she insisted that a PC would use 80% of its full power load EVEN IF IT WAS SWITCHED OFF!!!

 

Anyway - we measured the powerload of a PC on standby overnight and it was pretty close to zero - but we still used AB Tutor to shutdown all PCs before we went home as a metter of good practice.

 

I am very dubious about the power switches being turned off on all devices at the end of the day - sounds like a good way to start crashing hard drives if the PC is still running!

 

Here I just go round the computer room and press the power button twice on any PCs left switched on - that always shuts them down properly

[Andrew_C]

sounds like a good way to start crashing hard drives if the PC is still running

Crashing HDs in this manner relates to v. old HDDs. However, I'd still be wary of dumping power in a "rude" way as a planned solution.

[mikeprice]

Maybe only old HDDs (I started working with Hard Drives when a disk drive was the same as a washing machine!) however I agree that being rude with the power has to be suspected of reducing the life of many components