Sustainable ICT Suite

[Sylv3r]

Hello

 

I am looking at creating a sustainable ICT suite within school, this will include use of eco-friendly PC's, no printer and one of those RM Wind turbines to power the teachers PC's in the room. Does anybody else have something similar setup or have any further ideas on how I can make the room more sustainable then a standard ICT Suite. We have a small pot of money to play with, so anything wild, wacky and different is welcome.

 

Thanks

[laserblazer]

I'm looking at ways to harness the hot air produced in the SMT meetings. If only we could find a way of tapping into the energy the kids produce on the palyground.

 

It's a great idea Sylvr. How about exercise bikes powering the PCs?

[FN-GM]

Will you be able to get away not having a printer?

[cookie_monster]

What about thin clients we're trialing a small setup in one room at the moment and hoping to roll it out to more rooms soon. We're hoping that we can make some reasonable power savings and as they boot faster we can have them turn off after a few mins of inactivity.

 

 

How about exercise bikes powering the PCs?

 

I like this idea you can have the PE department powering the IT lessons

Edited June 15, 2008 by cookie_monster

[Sylv3r]

It's a great idea Sylvr. How about exercise bikes powering the PCs?

 

Its a good call - building in the healthy schools aspect also....

[Sylv3r]

Will you be able to get away not having a printer?

 

Well we will be pushing our VLE more next year and they will be printers in other areas of the school they will be able to use. An e-paper school is the long term target but its a long way down the line - this will hopefully be the first stages of it.

[Andrew_C]

In real terms, I'd put money on re-using old PCs saving more power than the windmill would ever.

 

Time switch to turn the power OFF, rather than everything being sort of standby for 75% of the week when the rooms empty.

 

PIR light switch.

 

No Air Con allowed, but can you extract heat from the top of the room, and feed cool air at floor level?

 

A compost heap to re-cycle kids if the pull key caps off.

[FN-GM]

TFT screens with thin clients will save lots of energy.

[Sylv3r]

In real terms, I'd put money on re-using old PCs saving more power than the windmill would ever.

 

The idea of the windmill was more of a gimmic to show and explain to students that all energy does not have to come from a mains plug.

 

Do any schools on here use solar energy at all on a small scale?

[dhicks]

Do any schools on here use solar energy at all on a small scale?

 

Hmm - just how small is that pot of money? A quick search for "solar roof tiles" on Google turns up less that I would have thought - you'd think someone would have created a modular plug-in-and-go replacement for normal roof tiles by now. Advertised systems seem to start at around the £2,000 level. But... you're a school, so maybe should be aiming towards the educational rather than the consumer-ready... Could you make a fuel cell? Or, if you have a decent bit of space outside (and most schools do - huge great playing fields...), how's about a heat pump?

 

--

David Hicks

[dgsmith]

Do any schools on here use solar energy at all on a small scale?

 

 

Our school was among ~100 that received solar panels half funded by the co-op. We have a monitor in our front foyer that gives a reading as to how much has been generated since installation, how much is generating right now, and how much co2 we have "prevented" entering the atmosphere - quite impressive for when we have visitors! On a good day, we can get anywhere past 5000W generation real-time, although during winter that barely gets aboe 50-100W (30% of a workstation?).

 

The saving in energy cost is probably negligable, as is the less gasses released, but still if every school had one (hypothetically), I suppose it would have an impact if looking at it in the bigger picture.

[CyberNerd]

we have some 9yr old thin clients, they run linux and still work fine

boot up is only a few secs slower than our new thin clients.

[Butuz]

Thats such a good idea - I wonder if our excercise bikes, running machines etc etc could somehow be modified so as to harness the energy the kids expend when they excercise...

 

hmmmmmm 1100 human batteries......... - just call me Agent Smith!!!

 

Butuz

[eean]

A huge proportion (I read somewhere) of a PC's total energy consumption is in the manufacturing. Although those Eco-Friendly RM pcs sound like a neat idea, they are such specification that you are going to end up replacing them much more quickly.

[Guest Guest]

A huge proportion (I read somewhere) of a PC's total energy consumption is in the manufacturing. Although those Eco-Friendly RM pcs sound like a neat idea, they are such specification that you are going to end up replacing them much more quickly.

 

Here here. Its something which alot of people seem to miss. Same when people go out and buy a new car because its more economical and green than their old one

[cookie_monster]

Very true with cars they 'cost' allot to produce although newer cars do help to improve general air quality in busy areas.

 

Thin clients seem to be a good move for saving power and lower production costs as well.

[joe90bass]

We're going thin client in a few suites, and the servers are running the new greener Intel chips (forgotten model number), that's about as good as we'll get for a while!

 

As for eco cars, aren't the Prius batteries made in a factory in an area with the highest pollution in the world and transported long distances? - not very eco after all!!

[eean]

Yes, you would drive yourself mad trying to factor in everything!

I mean, those solar cells sound great -but they use minerals that are in fairly short supply, so: would Coop have been better to send them out to Africa where they:

a, would benefit from it and can't afford cleaner energy sources

and

b, would actually be in use all year round!

 

Wikipedia says:

Greenwash (a portmanteau of green and whitewash) is a term that is used to describe the act of misleading consumers regarding the environmental practices of a company or the environmental benefits of a product or service. The term Green sheen has similarly been used to describe organizations which attempt to appear that they are adopting practices beneficial to the environment

[dhicks]

aren't the Prius batteries made in a factory in an area with the highest pollution in the world and transported long distances? - not very eco after all!!

 

Yea - your Prius ain't lookin' so smart now, huh!

 

Goodness - life imitates xkcd again. Or the other way around. Whichever.

 

--

David Hicks