You are Never Alone

A very satisfied ICT Cordinator reported on a list that I belong to: “we purchased 210 computers, delivered on 3 July and during the July holiday break our Network manager, one technician and four Yr 12 ITVet students deployed them throughout the College. Wednesday was our first day back for the start of Term 3 and all is working well…”
Doubtless his sentiments are being echoed at schools throughout the country.

But then I began to wonder whether schools in this first roll out of the Digital Education Revolution computers are also looking at their “ecological footprint” and planning how they will manage to keep the power bills down, and make simple decisions about whether to turn computers off, or simply power them down when not in use.

Round One of applications saw 896 successful schools, with nearly 117,000 computers to be provided to these schools. The map provided on the DER site allows you to see the list of successful schools in each state.

I am not sure whether there are any guidelines for controlling power usage on computers. Perhaps you can comment if you know of a website where information can be found. This page: How much does electricity does my computer use? may be a starting point if you have never explored this idea.

This UK review points out what we all probably know: After lighting, computers and monitors have the highest energy consumption in office environments. Studies have shown that power management of computers and monitors can significantly reduce their energy consumption, saving hundreds or thousands of dollars a year on electricity costs.

Among their recommendations:

• make sure computers are turned off at the end of the day
• make sure computer goes into low power mode when idle during the day
• turn off monitors when not required

I asked for advice from teachers and here is some of the feedback:

Useful sites

• Climate savers Computing
  They suggest 10 easy ways to cut power bills
• Put the computer on standby or turn it off?
• Choice Magazine: Computers’ Energy Costs
• eSchoolNews: eco-friendly computing
  Knowing just how much power your IT systems are using is the first step.

Tips

• At my school we run an automatically scheduled network-wide shutdown script at 6:00PM each day.
• All of the monitors have built-in energy saving features but we turn them off completely prior to holiday periods.
• Some people argue that standby is better than shutting down but … turning them off is a much more economical and environmentally responsible choice.
• The US Natural Resources Defence Council suggests setting a computer to hibernate after 30 minutes of inactivity.
• Queensland Government’s Climate Smart Living says, among other things, that a laptop computer uses up to 75% less energy than a desktop one, and then follows that with some practical suggestions such as switching off the monitor if leaving your computer for more than 10 minutes.

I would like to make this a topic for further discussion so please do comment, with anecdotes or URLs for me to look at.