IT Vs. the Permanent Energy Crisis

snydeq writes "Organizations looking to remain profitable in the face of escalating energy costs may lean even harder on IT to achieve energy efficiencies in the years to come, InfoWorld reports. But instead of limiting IT's efficiency role to the datacenter, companies will tap IT's vast knowledge of company networks, equipment, and work processes to uncover efficiencies across the organization, in some cases tipping facilities management into IT. 'There is a lot IT can do to fix its own 2 percent [of the company's carbon emissions] and make it more efficient, but the big opportunity for IT is to take a leadership role in tackling that other 98 percent across the business,' says one analyst. And by taking charge of the organization's energy strategy now, IT will be in prime position to alter its relationship with management and reap benefits in the boardroom in the years ahead, analysts contend."

Comments

My solution

[MyLongNickName]

Go back to the abacus. Computers are overrated. Penthouse can take over the only other computer function.

Re:My solution

[Dr Caleb]

Penthouse . . .and a deck of cards.

Re:My solution

[fiannaFailMan]

Go back to the abacus. Computers are overrated. Penthouse can take over the only other computer function.

Actually, I remember seeing a documentary showing kids in Asian countries learning how to perform calculations using an abacus. They become lightening fast with it, some even able to do calculations 'in their heads' using an imaginary abacus. It helps them to visualize numbers and visualize the processes of arithmetic.

Re:My solution

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

I look forward to the Nvidia 3d card abaci ! Surely advanced technology like that will be able to run Crysis, right ?

I wonder what the framerate is. Do we have YPF as a measure yet ? Years per frame.

Re:My solution

[foobsr]

It helps them to visualize numbers and visualize the processes of arithmetic.

Probably an education emphasizing the use of wetware a little more would lead to the creation of more visionaries in the 'Westen World'. Yes, I know, old stuff (Computer Power and Human Reason by Joseph Weizenbaum, 1976).

CC.

Re:My solution

[Sponge Bath]

Penthouse . . .and a deck of cards.

I think you will find that tissues are more absorbent than cards.

Re:My solution

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you will find that tissues are more absorbent than cards.

I don't know about you, but I don't use my computer as a tissue...

Re:My solution

[Gramie2]

I can confirm this. I taught high school kids who told me that after a while, they didn't need the physical abacus.

Re:My solution

[Gramie2]

Oops. I forgot to mention that I was in Japan at the time.

Re:My solution

[konohitowa]

Regarding your sig...

If guns kept people safer we'd be allowed to carry them on commercial flights.

Isn't that a bit like saying "If condoms prevented teen pregnancies we'd be allowed to buy them in High School bathrooms."

Re:My solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't that a bit like saying "If condoms prevented teen pregnancies we'd be allowed to buy them in High School bathrooms."

Over here they give condoms out for free (admittedly, not in the bathroom).

Re:My solution

[konohitowa]

Which has nothing to do with his sig nor my response.

Re:My solution

[sgage]

Two words:

Butlerian Jihad.

PS - paper towels, my boy, paper towels

Re:My solution

[zunicron]

Not at all. You can't buy guns on a commercial flight.

Re:My solution

[Anonymous Coward]

AMEN BROTHER!

Re:My solution

[Minozake]

I've always wanted use an abacus. I kind of prefer a slide rule myself.

Re:My solution

[Anonymous Coward]

I just tested that theory and instead of using Word to write my letter of resignation, I posted a copy of Penthouse to my boss. It worked.

Re:My solution

[konohitowa]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analogy

Re:My solution

[archkittens]

Regarding your sig...

If guns kept people safer we'd be allowed to carry them on commercial flights.

Isn't that a bit like saying "If condoms prevented teen pregnancies we'd be allowed to buy them in High School bathrooms."

only if condoms could also CAUSE teen pregnancies. guns are both weapons and shields, ether protecting and serving a responsible owner or damaging a victim at the whim of someone who doesn't value the social contract.

a closer shot would be to ask "if teenage boys can cause teen pregnancy, why do we allow them in highschools?"

Re:My solution

[konohitowa]

Well, condoms aren't 100% effective, so that argument isn't exactly solid.

However, rather than go over the fine points of what was never intended to be some finely nuanced analogy... I'll spell it out in layman's terms:

The fact that an authority has regulated or banned something cannot be used as evidence of its apparent usefulness or lack thereof. Therefore, the fact that guns aren't allowed on commercial flights says nothing about their ability to keep people safe. Much in the same way that the fact that condoms aren't readily available in the majority of US high schools* says nothing about their contraceptive properties in regards to teen pregnancies.

*Notice all of the qualifiers I had to add to this to keep the pedants from avoiding the actual point?

Re:My solution

[archkittens]

i think that nothing you could do would stop the pedant from explaining the point, barring ignoring someone's attempt at a clever sig. :p

that condoms are not available in public schools says quite a bit about their effectiveness at preventing pregnancy, actually. see, instead of granting access to "safe sex" information and materials, schools prefer to emphasize "no till marriage" and the dangers of sexual activity, both proven to have no effect at all. condoms are effective a majority of the time, despite being absent from condoned distribution at school. it's like some sort of sick joke, but that's life.

and let's face it: a gun is not a shield, it will not stand between you and harms way. period. the only thing a gun can do is hurt whatever is wanting to hurt you, hopefully before it gets the chance. what a gun is: a weapon, designed originally to kill other living things. how many of those do you want on a plane?

"if security cameras keep people from stealing, why cant we put them in dressing rooms?", you might ask. the answer is the same as to "if guns keep people safe, why are they not allowed on airplanes?", and that answer is that someone determined that other concerns (privacy, security) far outweighed the usefulness of the device.

in fairness, that answer fits for the condom analogy too, despite it being a poor fit

pedantic enough for you? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedantic

IT Wins?

[Dan East]

"IT will be in prime position to alter its relationship with management and reap benefits in the boardroom in the years ahead, analysts contend."

Ahh, more responsibility, additional liability, same pay scale.

Re:IT Wins?

[EvilIntelligence]

I agree. This will be just another way for executives to tell IT to do "more with less", or sometimes "everything with nothing". It's bad enough that people want IT to stuff 100gb of data into 10gb of storage, but now you have to do it eco-friendly, too. The problem is that getting more eco-friendly means changing out some fundamental infrastructure, such as the air conditioning to keep the server room cool. How do you get rid of that? Buy a big block of dry ice and run a fan over it? Or do you get an air conditioner that runs on... what, wind power? Hydrogen? Fine, but that will cost some investment in research, which companies will NOT do.

Re:IT Wins?

[Ethanol-fueled]

Or, you could just shut your computer off after you leave.

No, really.

Re:IT Wins?

[Hatta]

Yes, all they need to do is leverage synergies across the company to achieve a new green paradigm. They'll need to be proactive about it though.

Re:IT Wins?

[Smidge204]

Nono, Dry ice is CO2. You have any idea how bad your carbon footprint will look if you use that?

Here's one idea: Upgrade the server room AC to use heat pumps that can put the heat back into the building where it's needed.

Another idea: Upgrade lighting and switching. Do all of the lights need to be on all of the time? Probably not. Add more switches to light only the parts of the room that need it, and occupancy sensors to make sure they're turned off when everyone leaves.
=Smidge=

Re:IT Wins?

[g0bshiTe]

A simpler solution would be to migrate all IT power needs to Solar.

Re:IT Wins?

[Rie Beam]

We could always leave this one up to government regulation...

*distant screams of terror*

Re:IT Wins?

[Fulcrum of Evil]

great, now I'll need to flap my arms every 5 minutes in my office.

Re:IT Wins?

[R2.0]

"Here's one idea: Upgrade the server room AC to use heat pumps that can put the heat back into the building where it's needed."

Sigh. Do you even know what a heat pump is?

ALL cooling units are basically "heat pumps" - taking heat from one place and rejecting it to another. So, you are suggesting that the heat pumped away from the server rooms be pumped back into the building for heating. No problem with existing equipment - a lot of it is water cooled.

But wait.

Most office type buildings require cooling all year round - people and office machines put out a LOT of heat. In winter, they require heat at the perimeters, but it's hard to get 140F water out of anything but a boiler. And since the heating water return is about 120F, that would require the condenser water for the heat pump to be above that temp. And if you told Liebert that you wanted an AC unit that rejected heat to 130F condenser water, you'd be laughed at.

You need to obey the Laws of Thermodynamics whether you live in the Simpsons house or not.

Re:IT Wins?

[Anonymous Coward]

great, now I'll need to flap my arms every 5 minutes in my office.

Lucky you! I had to get up and walk over to the door or throw my trashcan at the sensor. Now the sensor's covered and at night I just turn on a lamp. I never wanted those stupid things on during the day anyway, so I'm saving power. Stupid "green" building.

Re:IT Wins?

[The Orange Mage]

Only if the New Green Paradigm is Web 2.0 friendly.

Re:IT Wins?

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

That is your great idea ? That accounts for less than a thousanth of a percent of energy usage.

We actually *use* energy you know. That's not to say we can't use it more efficiently, but stopping any of the really energy intensive processes in civilization is a non-starter.

Think about heating, you can do with slightly less, but not much. Everything above 50-55 degrees north would be utterly unliveable. Most of Europe would have to be abandoned.

Think about transportation, again a *little* less should be liveable. Any real reduction is totally out of the question. Cities 1% of the size of anything remotely resembling a metropolis would be out of the question, for way, WAY too expensive to maintain.

And of course the real energy sponges : The human body is about 6% efficient (energy intake vs energy expenditure), and eats either plants (themselves 2% efficient) but also has to eat meat (eating only meat gets us to about 8-9% efficiency) (and cows are some 12% efficient, eating 2% efficient plants). This is a very, very generous amount of efficiency to give the human body since it counts human body heat as work, and most factory floor supervisors will disagree with that being "useful labour" however if you take it out, even a tenth of a percent would barely be attainable for a human body)

Let's say you're a normal person. You eat 100 grams of meat for 900 grams of vegetables you eat. That means you're 90% * 6% * 2% + 10% * 8% * 12% * 2% efficient.

That means that all the energy you expend, running (200-300 watts), thinking (150-200 kcal/day), keeping your body at 37degrees, which feeds most of your cell processes (2200-3500 kilocalories per day) is 0.10992% efficient.

Suddenly that SUV that is about 12% efficient at 16 miles per gallon doesn't seem at all wasteful anymore. If you could somehow digest oil, you wouldn't be able to run half that distance, and certainly not with 500 kg of load on your back.

And the worst part of the human body. The total amount of human bodies in the world grows at 1.6% per year.

Energy conservation, making stuff more efficient is something we can do *once* and we can't make the human body any more efficient at all, we can only replace it. For everything else there are fundamental limits we cannot cross, any really big differences are either already caught, or will be caught the first time we try to fix things (ie. they've been caught in the last 4-5 years). We're not going to save much beyond that first drive.

Say the wet dream of every environmentalist comes true. God descends from heaven and says that all cars drive on electricity at 90% efficiency from now on. Great ! He's just saved us about 60% on the current energy cost of transportation. That will provide for "normal" economical growth without growing energy levels for ... 10 years. There can be only one reasonable conclusion : we need *more* energy. Not less.

Conservation is hopeless. We need new energy sources (and nuclear will do very nicely thank you), and after that we need nuclear fusion, and move part of the species into space.

Btw, in case anybody likes to think "nature is so much better" well no, nature is actually worse, as in less efficient than civilization, in energy usage (incidentially that is why there is so very much oxygen, a (relatively) unstable chemical in the athmosphere in the first place, and so very, very little co2 (without nature, the "natural" state of the athmosphere would be to be so filled with co2 that humans (or animals for that matter) wouldn't be able to breathe).

Re:IT Wins?

[R2.0]

Both you and the PP bring up very good points - energy saving design won't do a damned thing if the building occupants can override them.

I'm a project manager for a Very Large Non Profit, and I build buildings ("Hi, Project Manager"). The absolute, positive biggest challenge I face isn't the contractors, or suppliers, or the local government - it's the end users (IT included) that simply CANNOT accept when they don't get things their way. I've had entire departments threaten not to move in because their space was laid out the way the *previous* director wanted it. I've had VP's in a tizzy over the fact that they had to tell their people they could not bring their fans, space heaters, and coffee makers to the new buildings and plug them into their cubicles.

As for building controls, it doesn't matter if you have a system set on a timer or occupancy - someone, at some point, will override those controls based on a request from higher, and they will stay that way. Openable windows? They will STAY open, regardless of the temperature outside. Natural light? It's too bright for Ms Delicate Skin - buy some blinds.

Energy conservation is about People Control, not Building Controls.

Re:IT Wins?

[Lumpy]

You are correct. the "Energy Crisis" is nothing but a red herring for management to use to whip It people and departments with. It's utter bullshit and they know it.

Us in IT have been asking for higher end hardware that uses less power, we are offered a budget to buy the low end crap that uses power like it's going out of style. We are told "that's too expensive" because the first place they cut budget is IT and infrastructure. Here in my town GVSU built a office building for their great lakes studies that get's 80% of it's power from solar and wind power. the roof is covered in solar panels and they have 3 wind generators now. they built the place right, it will generate a thermal siphon for cooling in summer, and warm a concrete wall for heat in the winter from the south facing glass walls. all way up here near the 43rd parallel. It's called not being stupid like most corperations and building substandard buildings and substandard infrastructure. You can easily cut IT power and heat generation by buying the right stuff. You can generate your own energy easily, and you can have your building built right to nearly cut energy costs by 1/2...

American corporations refuse to do it. They prefer to build and buy as cheap as possible as next quarter is what's important, not 5-10 years down the road.

Re:IT Wins?

[geekoid]

If it puts more IT clout into the board room, this is a good thing.

Re:IT Wins?

[lawaetf1]

That's what the drinking bird on top of your monitor is for.

Re:IT Wins?

[Anonymous Coward]

but you get really good at predicting when to stretch :)

seriously, I stretch every 15 minutes without even thinking about it now.

Re:IT Wins?

[Vellmont]

  I've had entire departments threaten not to move in because their space was laid out the way the *previous* director wanted it. I've had VP's in a tizzy over the fact that they had to tell their people they could not bring their fans, space heaters, and coffee makers to the new buildings and plug them into their cubicles.

You mean people are sensitive to an environment they spend 8 hours a day in, and don't want to accept what you've given them without talking about it? Do you really find that all so surprising? I'd find it odd if people weren't sensitive about those kind of things.

Energy conservation is about People Control, not Building Controls.

Nonsense. Energy conservation is largely about economics. You've got the wrong mentality entirely. If it's really too expensive to drive the gas-guzzling SUV to work every day, the SUV will get ditched fairly soon. The only reason you've got this fight between "the controls" and "the people" is the people aren't paying the energy bill directly.

Re:IT Wins?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good argument. So we shouldn't try to make things more efficient, because there are things that just can't be made more efficient.

Why even try to save 10% if we can never achieve 100%?

Re:IT Wins?

[MrSteve007]

That's what I did. No Really. http://www.jbdg.com/solar.html

Re:IT Wins?

[Smidge204]

No, I *don't* know what a heat pump is. I just size and specify them for commercial projects. Maybe you need to be a little less pedantic and understand that, outside of college, there is a practical difference between a "heat pump" and a "straight cool" DX* system.

Specifically, a "Heat Pump" is a device that is designed to be reversible through control settings, as opposed to a "straight cool" unit which, while it might be PHYSICALLY reversed, is not designed to be.

Heat pumps are also designed and rated to operate under different conditions. For example, your window AC unit is not likely designed to operate with an indoor ("evaporator") temp below about 50F and the outdoor ("condenser") temp below about 80F. A heat pump will be designed to operate comfortably at LEAST to an evaporator temp of 10F (most modern units are good enough to handle 0F).

So yeah, thermodynamically they're the same but mechanically... not so much.

Also, you're an idiot if you think that:

1) It hasn't been done before. Daikin's 3-pipe "Heat Recovery" system is one example I have a lot of experience with. One outdoor condenser can operate multiple indoor fancoil units in a mix of heating and cooling modes simultaneously, using the reject heat from the cooling units as a source for the heating units with the balance of the heat/cool load handled by the outdoor coil. (I'm not a rep or otherwise affiliated with Daikin, BTW)

2) All building heat is water, which you seem to imply by jumping directly into water temps. Hot air heating is very popular and very economical. Though hydronic heating certainly has its advantages you are unlikely to encounter any in low-rise, finely divided spaces like office buildings or large open-plan spaces like cube farms or warehouses. It's all forced air.**

3) That a heat pump system can't or won't produce water at over 130F. Obviously we try to avoid that in cooling applications because it reduces efficiency (and with cooling towers promotes bacteria growth) but it'll happen if you set it up that way.

I'd also like to know where you live that boilers run 140F to 120F. Around here where it actually gets cold we run 180F to 160F standard. Modern cast iron boilers can handle 30F dT (180 to 150) for better efficiency, and condensing steel boilers can easily handle return temps as low as 100F.

=Smidge=
* That's "DX" as in "Direct eXpansion" - another industry term you're likely to encounter. Opposed to "water-source heat pump" or "water-cooled condenser."

** Radiant heat flooring is, of course, a notable exception... And very nice if you're willing to pay for it. Only practical in new construction for obvious reasons.

Re:IT Wins?

[AmberBlackCat]

At the IRS building, we actually do that. Not every 5 minutes though. There are a couple of times I have been instructed to get up and walk around, just to make the lights come back on. And there are a few times I've taken less traveled paths to my desk, only to make unused lights come on and briefly feel bad about costing the government "millions" by being reclusive.

The newest Wal-Mart out here has a slightly better sensor for refrigerated aisles that light up when people walk by. I cost them "millions" too because it's just so cool to walk down an aisle and have a pathway light up for you as you go.

Re:IT Wins?

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

We can't save 10%. Even one percent is utterly unattainable except in the extreme short run.

Therefore the smart money is in the expansion of energy generation.

Like another poster said. Nuclear can easily bring electricity down to 1 cent a kwh (for a chevvy volt this would mean 2.5 cents per 100 km)

A prius is currently using about 7cent/mile (and an SUV up to 25 cent/mile). A plug-in SUV would use about 0.4 cent/mile, or about 17 TIMES less than a prius. Any investment that brings electricity down to 1 ct/kwh is going to make the chevvy volt and it's colleagues conquer suburbia faster than bubba conquers the asshole of a 15-year old "peace out y'all" protestor in prison.

Re:IT Wins?

[billcopc]

Well now, if the additional responsibility means I get firing powers over the energy-deficient people in the company, I say bring it!

That assgasm who calls me 3 seconds after firing off an email, to discuss the content of the email ? Pink slips!

Granny Smith who prints out the 200-page weekly report so she can read it with her bifocals ? Early retirement!

The worthless drones that disable the 20-minute standby so their elaborate client-side Outlook rules can continue running all night ? Back to the mail room they go!

There's a lot of fat to be trimmed in the typical office. If IT is the only faction that's jaded enough to do it, we'll fucking do it!

Re:IT Wins?

[Bob-taro]

Let's say you're a normal person.

Okay, you lost me there.

Seriously, tho, RTA. While your analysis is interesting, the "efficiency" of the human body seems pretty irrelevant to this discussion.

Re:IT Wins?

[whoisjoe]

Its not quite that simple--they also need to think outside the box.

Re:IT Wins?

[Fulcrum of Evil]

The absolute, positive biggest challenge I face isn't the contractors, or suppliers, or the local government - it's the end users (IT included) that simply CANNOT accept when they don't get things their way.

Too bad you don't get your way - try working in a screwed up place where the lights shut off whenever the sensor thinks nobody's there - sort of distracting.

I've had VP's in a tizzy over the fact that they had to tell their people they could not bring their fans, space heaters, and coffee makers to the new buildings and plug them into their cubicles.

So add a coffee maker spot in the kitchen and fix the AC - space heaters are a symptom of a bigger problem.

Openable windows? They will STAY open

Damn straight. I like my fresh air.

Re:IT Wins?

[Washii]

Wait, wait. Doesn't it cost more to keep turning on fluorescent lighting than to turn it off?

I've seen numbers that stated, unless you were turning the flurorescents off for a week, it was cheaper to leave them on! And most places use fluorescent lighting anyway.

Re:IT Wins?

[xaxa]

Why not go all the way and have an electric bus/train? Then it's even less than 2.5/100km (I'm not going to make up figures).

In any case, the aim isn't to reduce energy consumption, the aim is to reduce CO2 emissions. One way is to reduce inefficiency, the others are to use renewable power sources, or nuclear power, or change our lifestyles in various ways (e.g. eat less meat, swap cars for public transport, swap short flights for high-speed trains).

Re:IT Wins?

[xaxa]

A week? A metre-long flourescent strip light is about 40W. 40W * 24h * 7 = 6.7kWh (24MJ). I can't believe that a flourescent uses 24MJ to start up. I've heard that with modern lights the time is more like a minute.

Re:IT Wins?

[thogard]

Its not just the tube energy, but all the other bits in the lights that were intended to turn on about 250 times a year with a 10 to 20 year life span. If your start turning them on 10 times a day, you may have to replace them in less than a year.

Re:IT Wins?

[Smidge204]

Mythbusters covered this. The startup current spike lasts for milliseconds, and is still quite small. So unless you plan to keep the light off for only a fraction of a second, you're saving energy.

There might have been some modicum of truth behind this back when fluorescent lamps had thermal delay starters (even then we're talking seconds of operating energy, not even minutes), but anything newer than the 1970's will be efficient enough to not make a difference. Turn the light off.
=Smidge=

Re:IT Wins?

[myowntrueself]

Damn straight. I like my fresh air.

How right you are.

When will people learn that open windows *helps* airconditioning to be more efficient!?!?!?!

Re:IT Wins?

[Beltonius]

Switching and dimming of lights is key. (Yes, you can dim fluorescents).

Rule of thumb is 1 watt of cooling requirement saved for every 3 watts of lighting savings from dimming/daylighting/etc

Re:IT Wins?

[xenocide2]

How is it that a company can generate their own solar power cheaper than contracting it to the market?

Re:IT Wins?

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd be surprised what you can do with heating. There are experimental houses in Germany and other places in Europe that use extensive insulation, air/heat exchangers, and other measures so that even in the winter, just normal activities---sunlight, cooking, people's metabolisms---provide enough heat to keep the house livable.

Even if they only will buy us a decade or two, efficiency measures are useful. A decade is a long time in technology, we might have the tools we need by then.

As far as the energy efficiency of plants, animals, and people, you're missing the point. It's not the energy that's our problem, it's the carbon. Plants and animals just shuffle atmospheric carbon around---fossil fuels are moving carbon from the ground to the air.

Re:IT Wins?

[davolfman]

Did you seriously just choose heating as an example for energy reduction? The ONE thing that runs at virtually 100% efficiency. Heck, even just about everything else we ever do with energy is still a nearly 100% efficient heater. That's half our problem with energy consumption in the first place.

Re:IT Wins?

[extrasolar]

It is if you innovate with cloud computing. Call it a "Green Cloud[TM]" if you will.

Heh. Heheh. Heheh. Heh.

Re:IT Wins?

[cerberusss]

Eh? The article is very positive and mentions there's an opportunity for IT people here:

IT will be in prime position to alter its relationship with management and reap benefits in the boardroom in the years ahead

Then you complain:

more responsibility, additional liability, same pay scale.

To me, you sound like an awfully negative person.

Re:IT Wins?

[clare-ents]

-1 Just Wrong.

You state,

"Suddenly that SUV that is about 12% efficient at 16 miles per gallon doesn't seem at all wasteful anymore. If you could somehow digest oil, you wouldn't be able to run half that distance."

One litre of petrol contains approximately 8400kcal, and will propel a Toyta Prius about 14miles, a generic SUV about 4miles. By comparison I burn about 1500kcal of food running a half marathon (13.1 miles). If I could digest oil directly I'd be getting 73 miles per litre, almost a factor of twenty better than said SUV and five better than the Pruis.

The rest of your argument is just balls. Your calculation for the efficiency of humans is from energy emitted from the Sun, for cars from refined petrol, neatly skipping the sun->plant->fossilisation->drilling->refining->delivering steps.

Re:IT Wins?

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Because of the problems those methods of transport have. Trains can only go where rails have been laid (meaning expansion is slow and horribly expensive, esp. now metals are so high), and cannot have too many stops, or they'll both slow down and have less efficiency.

And someone really should create a train that actually does controlled (nearly constant second derivative of position vector) stopping of the train, so that passengers don't really notice them stopping and starting. (I truly hate the trains' stopping and starting behavior, and yes, they've tried to fix it by stopping "somewhat slower" but why not engineer the right solution ?)

Same for buses, they'll always be slower than cars, they will either drive empty most of the time, or will not be available for many people. Buses can work in dense sections of the city that are considered "safe", and therefore they should be provided there (pref. by a private enterprise with perhaps a minimal subsidy to get them to commit to certain lines). In suburbia, buses are hopeless due to the size.

Cars, individualised transportation, are a very good solution, allowing for a truly decentralized economy, allowing for both spacious living and working. In reality, cars are truly great inventions. Giving cars to just about anyone, as the ford model T did, was a very, very big improvement over previous conditions.

Re:IT Wins?

[clare-ents]

-1 pure fiction.

"A prius is currently using about 7cent/mile (and an SUV up to 25 cent/mile). A plug-in SUV would use about 0.4 cent/mile, or about 17 TIMES less than a prius."

A Tesla Roadster, at current electricity prices (12c/kWh) uses 4c/mile according to the manufacturers, and weighs about 1220kg. A typical SUV weighs more like 3000kg, and has shocking aerodynamics by comparison.

To get your 0.4c/mile value, we need the electricity cost to plummet by 90% and your average SUV to get the same energy efficiency as a Tesla Roadster. We should bear in mind that a Lotus Elise has at least twice the fuel economy of a typical SUV (30mpg versus 10-16mpg). So the efficiency fairies need to pop up and make an electric SUV with double the fuel efficiency that the Tesla team have managed, and the nuclear fairies need to pop up and start producing electricity at 10% of the current cost.

Re:IT Wins?

[xaxa]

The university I went to had these (so do lots of other places, but the university is the one I spent enough time in to work out how the sensors were set).

In the day, you had to walk around every 15 minutes or so before the lights would turn off. In the evening it was about 5 minutes. At night (when the building was, in theory, closed), it was about 1 minute. This is the lighting in corridors, toilets etc -- the room lighting sensors were good enough that they hardly ever turned off the lights when the room was occupied.

Re:IT Wins?

[tc9]

First read SMidge's reply above. It is quite good.

About the only thing that I saw him leavving out wwas that in humid parts of the world, there is heating going on every day of the year. Take in 8% humid air, cool it, and get ranstorms in the building (and mold). Chill it down to get enough moisture out, and you have air too cold, a cold breeze no one wants. So the air is heated again.

Waste heat from data centers can be a predictable source of re-heat. You need re-heat even while you are cooling offices every day of the year. Energy recycling is a great way to reduce footprint while preserving amenity.

In the riight scenarios, you can store heat as well, even in counterintuitive ways. Capture the heat from the overnight processin in the data center, run it through an absorption chiller, and pump the cool somewhere. If there is some reason to not put this into the cooling stream for the data center itself, you can store it in a pool of icey brine in the basement to use for cooling during peak electrical demand tomorrow...

 

Re:IT Wins?

[dajak]

Going back to old methods of doing work certainly doesn't work. When the car was introduced, its major selling point was that it was so much cleaner, more hygienic, and more economic than the horse it replaced.

I don't buy your calculations though. You comparing efficiencies of a different nature.

Re:IT Wins?

[ckaminski]

The solution to rail travel time is long fast loops. You take 25 mile loops, with short 2-3 miles deceleration sidings, and spin a car off as it nears it's station, it's then programmed to accelerate back into the main loop, and the vast majority of people travel near 70-80 miles per hour.

Re:IT Wins?

[R2.0]

Of course people are sensitive about their work environment - that's why they were asked for their input, and the design was approved. Then they changed their minds. And it wasn't like they were willing to deal with it while it was changed - they were refusing to move out of the old building that they didn't even own anymore - it had been sold and they were on a lease-back.

As for energy conservation, economics IS behavior. It's not like when a gallon of gas goes above a certain level automatic controls pop up and your SUV gets sold out from under you; a person DECIDES to sell the SUV.

Re:IT Wins?

[R2.0]

I didn't say occupancy sensors were the answer; quite to the contrary, they are problematic because they DON'T take behavior patterns into account.

As for the coffemakers, they were already installed in all the break areas in the building, and the tenants in question KNEW this - they just wanted THEIR OWN coffemaker. And it was a brand new building - people were bringing space heaters because a) that's what they had at their old building, and b) some had medical problems - you can't turn the temp up to 80F for a whole floor because some lady won't take care of her circulation.

As for the open windows, I was referring to the fact that they stay open even when you are not in your office. So all that energy is wasted for the time you aren't there because the controls system is trying to maintain temp .

Re:IT Wins?

[R2.0]

"When will people learn that open windows *helps* air conditioning to be more efficient!?!?!?!"

Only on the very few days when the outside air temp agrees with the room temp setpoint. Higher or lower and the HVAC system tries to maintain temp, and all that hot/cold air goes right out the window. You can design a system with occupancy sensors or window sensors, but that gets expensive and complicated quickly.

Re:IT Wins?

[R2.0]

Sorry, you are still blowing smoke. Yes, a heat pump system is a reversible refrigeration system. why would you use one in a server room, when it is ALWAYS in cooling mode. I assume then you are talking about using a heat pump in the DX units and using the waste heat from the server room cooling units to provide heat. Nice try, but for 2 things:
1) If you are using DX as primary cooling, you have already lost the efficiency battle - making them able to heat as well won't make up for the inefficiencies in using DX instead of chilled water.
2) Control: the amount of heat rejected by the server room units is wholly dependent on server room demand. So, the building system gets what it gets - sometimes more, sometimes less. Then the system either needs supplementary heat, or the ability to reject heat outside of the building. Things are getting VERY complicated inside that cheap RTU you are proposing.

As for the Daiken unit, BFD - sounds like a refrigeration rack system. But it's certainly not a heat pump.

I didn't say ALL building heating was by hot water, but it is the most efficient way overall to do it. the types of buildings you are talking about are built cheap - that's why they use RTU's, which you CANNOT buy with the doodads you are proposing. Now you are into custom AHU's which, if you are going that direction, may as well put in a proper air handling system and really control costs and raise efficiency.

As for the water temps, I picked 140F because that's what we use in the buildings I build. Of course they can go higher and lower. But you are contradicting yourself when you say that "That a heat pump system can't or won't produce water at over 130F. Obviously we try to avoid that in cooling applications because it reduces efficiency (and with cooling towers promotes bacteria growth) but it'll happen if you set it up that way." Yes, they CAN produce that temp water when they are designed to do that - produce hot water. But you not using that type of heat pump to cool the server room, are you?

If you were really professional, you wouldn't be throwing out such a flip answer to a very complicated question. What you seem to be proposing is NOT simple, is NOT cheap, and sounds like it would only really work in a certain subset of buildings. Let me know who you work for so I know who to avoid when building my next building.

Re:IT Wins?

[R2.0]

What about control? Is the waste heat going to one coiled in an air handler, or throughout the building to local VAV's or CV's? Things start getting very complex very quickly, and the upfront cost start to exceed the operating savings.

Absorption chillers are a neat way to use waste heat, but they are a big capital investment and with higher maintenance costs. Likewise, ice or chilled water systems sound neat, but they haven't worked the bugs out yet - I know if 2 installations where they were removed within a couple of years of installation because of performance and maintenance issues. Apparently they don't scale down very well from "central plant" sizes.

Don't get me wrong - I am all in favor of using every last BTU of energy input wisely. But we have used up all the simple answers, and what remains is a lot more complex that people realize.

Re:IT Wins?

[Fulcrum of Evil]

And what about the common case where the AC is set wrong? The whole cold room/hot room thing is so common it's hardly worth mentioning.

Re:IT Wins?

[Smidge204]

Clearly you're not in the industry. I especially like your bait and switch tactics: Make a ridiculous and unrelated claim, then attack me for refuting it. My fault for falling for your strawman I guess.

How many data center HVAC systems have you designed?
=Smidge=

Re:IT Wins?

[MemoryAid]

I always like to consider such problems by looking at the inputs, in this case the AC power input. Usually, the lights are on a circuit breaker which gives a nice upper limit for current spikes of arbitrary duration. Multiplying the voltage by the circuit breaker rating and the duration of the supposed current spike will give us a round number for the energy wasted during startup.

So, 110V times 20A times 100ms is 220J. That's well short of 24MJ mentioned earlier, and 100ms is probably pretty high.

I'm sure replacement cost versus operating cost could be analyzed, too, and would show that operating cost dwarfs replacement cost for fluorescent tubes.

Re:IT Wins?

[R2.0]

Who set it wrong? Somebody did it - we're not talking about the HVAC system on the ship in 2001.

"Raise the temperature setpoint, Hal"
"I'm sorry, Dave, I can't do that"
"I'm freezing my effin balls off in here, Hal."

Re:IT Wins?

[myowntrueself]

My bad, I was being extremely sarcastic with no emoticons to indicate my state of mind.

Re:IT Wins?

[sumdumass]

The problem isn't conservation or the lack of obtainable results. The problem is attempting to rely on it alone to solve the problem.

Any savings on energy, even if 10% was realistically obtainable, could easily be outdated and overcome in as little as 6-10 years by population growth. I can do the math for you and show this if you want. And yes, I will lop side it into the conservation side quite a bit and still prove it.

The problem is that we are about as efficient as we can currently get for the tech we have. You don't have companies saying "well, we could save this much in energy costs but to hell with it, it is only profits we are missing". In fact, they are attempting to be as efficient as possible to gain that savings in profits and to satisfy the demands of the consumers who want more efficient products. It is true that there is a trade off sometimes between features verses efficiency but this is more of an exception then a rule.

We are working on new technologies around the clock and lets say something was discovered tonight that could allow us another 10% on efficiency in everything. Realistically, your not going to run out next week and crush your car or toss all your appliances and electronics into the trash to by the newer more efficient products. No, it is going to take time to retool manufacturing and redesign whatever to take advantage of the efficiencies. It is going to take time to get the new and improved products onto the markets and it is going to take time to either allow your old devices to expire naturally so you have a reason to spend the money or sell the things to others so you can buy the more efficient stuff. So lets say that will take a year before you can replace everything with stuff that is 10% more efficient. Your other stuff didn't just disappear unless your rich enough to not worry about the costs of buying new things. Your either going to trade the old one in, sell them as a second hand products or give them to someone you know (charity?) so someone will get some use out of them. This means that the reality is, even though we found something and everything being produced after one year is miraculously 10% more efficient, the old stuff will still be wasting that 10% and only a fraction of electronics or cars or whatever will be replaced per year.

Lets look at the life of a car for a minute. It starts out brand new and people who can afford them buy them that way. After 3 to five years, they sometimes trade it in for a new model. The old car doesn't disapear, it gets sold as used to people who cannot afford a brand new car. They keep that for 3 to 5 years and sell it to get another used car or perhaps they can afford a new one now. So someone a little less fortunate will buy the car and after making some repairs, drive it for a couple of years, possible another 5. This is 15 years that this car has been productive if an accident or something doesn't take it out first. But it usually doesn't just die there, it goes on as a rust bucket to even less fortunate people who will use it for another 5 or so years. Currently, I have a truck and a van that is over 20 years old, I have a muscle car the is 38 years old (I purchased a 1969 chevell for $1200 in 1986 and still have it today). So something like a car will take 10-25 years realistically to be replaced and longer if there is some sentimental value there.

Now, unless your destroying the old stuff or shutting them off and hiding them, this means that all the more efficient equipment will be in addition to all the old stuff minus the normal dieing that would take place anyways. So right off the bat, the 10% savings becomes a potential 90% increase in usage. It won't really be 90% because people without will want and buy, some of the stuff will naturally die and need replaced anyways, but running out and adopting the more efficient stuff just because it is efficient will increase power usages across the board. This isn't readily obvious because the effect is more like compound interest then a simple putting 10% of something in the bank every year without drawing interest.

Re:IT Wins?

[sumdumass]

I think your missing the weight factors he mentioned. Your not going to burn just 1500kcal if you were carrying the same amounts of weight (even though it isn't possible) as the SUV or the Prius.

I also don't think the drilling and everything else is important to the conversation. That is something already figured into the mix by the time the mix is being questioned. You don't calculate how much energy goes into cultivating and planting the field, the sun growing a stalk of corn, someone picking it, packaging it, you going to the store to buy it, taking it home and cooking it, just to know that eating it will provide X calories that you can use if your digestive system is working properly and you can tap all the energy in it instead of passing a bit of the energy before being able to use it.

I think maybe we need to relax a bit.

Re:IT Wins?

[sumdumass]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't turning lights on and off use more energy the leaving them on?

I mean if the light were on all the time 24/7 I could see how turning them off would/could save a little. But switching them off for two minute and then back on 20 times in the course of two hours would definitely cost more then leaving them on for the same time span. Hell, jump that up to 8 hours and it would still be a savings in most cases.

Let IT go nuclear

[cryfreedomlove]

Using conservation to reduce carbon emissions assumes a carbon based power source. Why not take all the brain power you are going to throw at conservation and throw it into developing wind, solar, and nuclear as power sources?

Re:Let IT go nuclear

[Anonymous Coward]

Because that would:
A) Solve the problem, thereby removing all the juicy paychecks consultants can get, and

B) Disrupt the oil-drenched hegemony ruling the USA.

Can't have that now, can we.

Re:Let IT go nuclear

[Kingrames]

I don't think the goal is to take the easy way out. I think the goal is to find ways to make energy consumption much more efficient so that the tools and methodologies you develop can be applied to other kinds of power sources. Eventually, our spaceships are going to be working on limited supplies of fuel, and "just using solar power" or some other alternative source of energy isn't gonna work out real well.

What we need is to give a big boost to the people who work exclusively to make stuff more efficient. It's clear that they've been neglected for a while in favor of profiteering, because cost-cutting beats efficiency on the next quarterly report every time. The problem is, if you don't keep that downward spiral going, you crash.

A lot of people are starting to realize that building more efficient systems beats cost-cutting in the long run, and right now the long run is all America has left.

Re:Let IT go nuclear

[Ambitwistor]

Because there's a lot of immediate low hanging fruit to be had from simple conservation and efficiency measures, because it will take decades to seriously ramp up our non-fossil power infrastructure, and because conservation+alternative energy is achieves more than alternative energy alone.

Re:Let IT go nuclear

[cryfreedomlove]

So you are in favor of investing in both conservation and non-fossil power? Me too. How about nuclear? Are you willing to invest in that as a non-fossil source?

Re:Let IT go nuclear

[Giant Electronic Bra]

Heh, there is no more 'long run', this civilization has hosed itself. Might as well be the captain of the Titanic right about the time the lookout said 'Iceburg ahead'. Already screwed. Typical humans, always reacting after it is too late.

All go have a cold one, relax...

Re:Let IT go nuclear

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on, this is so July/08!!! There is no such kind as an energy crisis, and this thing about wind, solar and nuclear power is just communist conspiracy!
Drill, baby, Drill!!! That is why we've chosen Sarah Palin for President!!!! Alaskan Oil babe is going to end this talk about crisis with just one straight shot!

Re:Let IT go nuclear

[bazorg]

I don't think that burning brains is carbon neutral...

Re:Let IT go nuclear

[zippthorne]

Why? Uranium and thorium come from the ground, too. The "hegemony" can build mines, and would certainly enjoy the extra barriers to entry that the additional regulation a nuclear America would "require."

Of course, the only part of our energy infrastructure that is heavily dependent on oil happens to be the one which is unsuitable for more robust systems due mostly to weight concerns, but don't let that get in the way of a good anti-capitalist rant.

Re:Let IT go nuclear

[ultranova]

How about nuclear? Are you willing to invest in that as a non-fossil source?

Nuclear power is immoral on the grounds that it desecrates the remains of dead stars. It would be like using mummies for fuel. If you think their curse was bad, just wait until a wormhole-ridden undead white giant comes after you for vengeance. It really sucks, you know.

And don't except mercy, it ended its life with a heart of iron.

Re:Let IT go nuclear

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently Oncor has started handing out $100 credit per server you virtualize here in Texas. I think that's a pretty good idea. It gives corporations an incentive to move to virtualized infrastructure as they come to a need for a hardware refresh.

Small incentive, but incentive nonetheless in addition to all the other benefits of virtualization.

Re:Let IT go nuclear

[lysergic.acid]

well, that's obviously the most important change on the level of infrastructure. but i think what the infoworld article is talking about is how our day to day operations can be more energy-efficient.

if we want to survive as a species, we need to embrace conservation on a fundamental level. that doesn't just mean dropping our dependency on fossil fuels. the public needs to change its basic attitude towards energy-conservation--or just conservation in general. leaving it all to the energy companies to change fuel sources ignores actions that each of us can take in our daily lives to contribute to lower energy consumption.

likewise, IT departments can also implement cost-saving and energy-saving initiatives. perhaps instead of expending electricity on cooling needs, one can simply run more energy-efficient & low power-consumption hardware, which naturally produce less heat (this also has the side-effect of creating a quieter computing environment).

similarly, bigger/more powerful is not always better. outside of CPU-intensive applications (CAD, multimedia design, computational modeling, etc.) there's really no need for a super fast system that consumes tons of electricity. does your accounting department need the same quad-core workstation as your CAD/engineering department? i would venture to guess that 80% of the desktop computers in most companies don't need to run anything more CPU intensive than an Office Suite(word processor, spreadsheet, e-mail client, PowerPoint, etc.) and a standard web browser. as long as you're not trying to run Windows Vista and IE 8, most office computing needs can be met by lower clock speed, low power-consumption CPUs.

i don't know what processors on the market today are aimed at the low power-consumption market segment aside from mobile processors (perhaps an energy-efficient desktop market needs to be created), but that's probably another way to reduce energy usage, as is telecommuting, effective use of sleep/hibernation mode, and smart buildings. the same conservationist attitude one uses at home can also be employed in the office.

Re:Let IT go nuclear

[zippthorne]

The proper procedure in the case of the Titanic would've been to steer into the iceberg and hit it head-on. It certainly was NOT too late. They simply used the wrong procedure, one which ended up breaching too many of the water-"tight" compartments.

Further, the procedure they *did* choose was not an unsophisticated "yelp! turn away!" but a tricky maneuver to swing the stern about. The "guiding center" of their motion would have actually passed through the iceberg. It was the correct maneuver for a ship with more power and turning capability, and one they would've learned was inappropriate if they hadn't abbreviated the sea trials.

The real lesson is not to jump in too soon all knee-jerk, and instead carefully study all of the options.

Re:Let IT go nuclear

[Ambitwistor]

Sure, I'm pro nuclear, but I don't think it's going to be the silver bullet that many nuclear proponents think. Nuclear is not as cost competitive as one might think if you take away all the subsidies that currently exist, and there remain serious storage and proliferation issues that would have to be addressed if we really scaled it up. (Especially if we're looking for solutions that other countries can adopt, including ones we're not necessarily friendly with.)

Re:Let IT go nuclear

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Wow, that sounds delightfully exploitable. "Hey, Oncor, all these things that look like the rejects from my last desktop refresh, they're... um... my distributed computation cloud system! Yeah, that's it, and I'm virtualizing them all..."

Virtualization is cool, and can definitely reduce power demand in some cases, and conserving energy is all well and good; but we have to avoid the temptation to use goofy fad metrics, particularly when good ones exist, or could be made. Why mandate hybrids, when we could just mandate x miles/gallon or greater? If virtualization saves power, the power company will end up effectively crediting you for virtualizing, no need for overhead. Why ban incandescents or mandate CCFL, when you could just institute a simpler luminous efficiency of foo or better rule and be done with it?

Don't get me wrong: I'm all for efficiency, and there may be cases where grants that allow people to make capital improvements that will pay for themselves overall make sense; but I'm annoyed by the general tendency to latch on to particular technologies, elevate them to symbolic importance, and lose sight of the actual objective.

Re:Let IT go nuclear

[fm6]

We've already beaten the safety issue to death — and true believers on both sides are never going to change their minds. So lets table the safety issue.

Instead, lets look at cost. Digging up fissionables is expensive (and uses a fair amount of fossil fuels). Building nuclear power plants is expensive. Training people to run them is expensive. Disposing of the waste (assuming you can find a place to put it) is expensive. Guarding the waste from Osama is expensive (especially if you factor in the thousands of years you need to guard it!). Decommissioning worn out plants is expensive.

Fighting NIMBY lawsuits related to all of the above: not cheap.

So instead of revisiting all the tired old arguments, just answer me one question: why bother? Why spend all that money just to provide power that will never meet more than a small percentage of our needs, when the same money spent on renewable sources seems much more likely to make a difference.

Re:Let IT go nuclear

[PitaBred]

Because disposing of the waste is a solved problem, digging up fissionables is also a solved problem if you look at the previous link. NIMBY lawsuits, that would simply take an act of Congress saying "We'll put these anywhere a different kind of power plant could be situated, and you can't do shit about it". Decommissioning worn out plants of ANY sort is expensive, so that's something that can't be leveled only against nuclear (coal, oil, whatever it is, it's expensive). Really, your arguments are old and uninformed. Nuclear is a VERY viable option for a lot of power going forward from here. It just needs to break through disinformation that's presented as fact by people like you.

Re:Let IT go nuclear

[MrSteve007]

Eventually, our spaceships are going to be working on limited supplies of fuel, and "just using solar power" or some other alternative source of energy isn't gonna work out real well.

Solar works quite well for me, as it powers all of the servers at my workplace.

http://www.djc.com/news/en/11202007.html

Re:Let IT go nuclear

[fm6]

Right. Nuclear power problems aren't real, it's just a disinformation campaign. Never mind, I thought I was talking to somebody with an open mind.

Re:Let IT go nuclear

[PitaBred]

I didn't say there weren't any problems with nuclear power. I said that the ones you set up were strawmen, ignoring the state of technology.

And that "open mind" bullshit? That's something cold-fusion and free-energy idiots spout when someone tells them about thermodynamics. Don't be that guy.

Re:Let IT go nuclear

[chris_mahan]

Wait, aren't we the remains of dead stars too?

In this case I agree, there's been plenty of desecration...

Re:Let IT go nuclear

[fm6]

I never said that the problems involved with nuclear power were insoluble. I said that they were too expensive. That was the whole point of my post. You simply ignored my argument and threw the Stupid Luddite Hippie boilerplate at me. Which is what happens any time I'm stupid enough to try to argue with a nuclear power fanboy.

Re:Let IT go nuclear

[ckaminski]

That is unfounded speculation. Knowing what is now known about the state of the Titanic's steel quality, it is entirely possible that a 30,000 ton behemoth crashing at 24 knots into a giant immovable rock would have split the ships back and sent her to the depths near instantly. Ignoring for a moment the intelligence and survivability of hitting a brick wall at breakneck speed (which at these masses, 24 knots was), if you didn't stop, you were going to deflect to one side or another, and if you did, that you probably would have torn a hole through the ENTIRE length of the ship.

Nevermind that research has also shown that if the ship did indeed fill evenly, it likely would have capsized an hour earlier than it sank, killing far more people than it did. If you'd like, I'll find a link to the history/discovery special where they tested this in a scale model tank.

The only thing that could have saved the Titanic was traveling slower through an area reported to be filled with pack ice.

Re:Let IT go nuclear

[PitaBred]

You stated problems that no longer exist with nuclear power as being too expensive. That's pretty much the textbook definition of setting up a strawman. I'm not a nuclear "fanboy", I simply see that the environmental and other side-effects of nuclear power are much preferable to any other kind of power generation that we have on the table at the moment. Expensive is ok, if you get the return on the investment.

Re:Let IT go nuclear

[fm6]

You stated problems that no longer exist with nuclear power as being too expensive.

Really? OK then, how do you guard a nuclear waste dump for 1000 years at a reasonable cost?

Re:Let IT go nuclear

[sumdumass]

We cannot conserve our way out of energy our problems. We simply need more energy.

And your wrong about several things here. First off, saving energy is profit. The more energy that is wasted means more profits out the window for those businesses using the energy. You can't sit there and say "those evil corporations only care about profit" and legitimately claim that they waste energy because saving energy is profit. It doesn't get much simpler then that. Now, when it is a situation where it costs you $200 to save $10, then yes it is over looked and rightly so. I picked such a high difference because any smart company looks into the future and knows that energy costs will go up so in as little as half of the life span of whatever, the costs could almost double making the savings worth twice as much if not more. Resources are also a limitation. If a company only has 10 million in operating capitol and it will take 9.5 million to build the factory and pay the workers until revenue starts coming in, you can't fault them for not shelling out another 5 million for energy efficiency. That's right, even profit driven corporations are limited to their resources which I wish these tax the rich people would understand. I have never been offered a job by a poor person, or at least not a job paying a living wage or one that was steady. I have mowed lawns for poor people and averaged about $5 an hour but we are talking grown up stuff here.

The second thing is Space ships won't be operating under the same conditions that we are. And it isn't like they can't refuel in space. There are tons of hydrogen pockets floating around just waiting to get harvested. If we ever get that cold fusion thing going, we have Helium 3 on the moon as well as on other places. It is estimated that the space shuttle's cargo bay can hold enough Helium 3 to power the entire US for 10 years.

Third, cost cutting doesn't beat efficiency. I don't know why you think that. Inefficiency means lost profits because it increases costs, plain and simple. Any Manager worth his salt can explain that spending X now will save Y in the future and Y is going to be more then X. They can also convince everyone to look at quarterly profits with this in mind and get the changes made. If that isn't the case, then are you suggesting that companies spend money just to spend it? I mean if I spend $200 up front to save $10 a year, it's going to take 20 years to recoup that $10. Now if I wait 5 years, the $200 could drop to $50 and energy could cost 50% more meaning for that $50 I will save $15 a year and it will take less then 4 year to recover the money. You see, CEOs and Management know this stuff and take it into consideration. But on a new build, 80% of that $200 could be absorbed into construction costs meaning that you would only be spending $40 for a $10 a year savings and you will realize that in 4 years too.

Finally, I don't understand why you seem to think the long run is all the US has left. That is the most asinine comment I have heard lately. The entire world is having problems. It is the high costs of fuel that's causing it. And no, solar or wind isn't the answer because that is still high priced. Until those get cheaper, they won't be the answer. Conservation and efficiency isn't the answer either. Well, unless your going to tell people what they can and can't do, and when that becomes a reality, I will lead the revolution- this is supposed to be a free country and it should be a free world too. Anyways, fuel prices touch everything in the world and getting more of it is what we need in the US, the UK, and everywhere else in the world. Developing solar and wind to get the costs down would be a start but it will take a lot longer then getting more oil. But that isn't going to happen over night, we have been working on it since the 60's and had a larger push in the 70's and then again at the turn of the century. And then it would be nice to have a way to tap the solar when the sun isn't shining and the wind when the wind isn't blowing. A calm nig

Re:Let IT go nuclear

[sumdumass]

Why Bother? Because no one has ever shown that renewable resources as energy can be as efficient or as reliable as Nuclear or traditional power and energy sources. They have shown the potential, but they have been showing that since the 70's that I can personally remember.

So why invest in an unknown that hasn't delivered in more then 30 years? Well, I don't know either. How about why don't we just do both? I mean three quarters of the issues you listed with nuclear can be legislated away with an act of congress. Lawsuits, oppositions to placement, investment/building costs and training can be taken care of by an act of congress. Disposing of the wastes could be solved in the future with as much likelihood as solar and wind being able to compete on the same scales. (and actually, solar seems to have some answers to actual disposal too). Guarding them wouldn't be too much of an issue if you store it on site, you already have to guard the plans. Maybe some automatic sentries that can be controlled from a concrete bunker in addition to regular guards.

Re:Let IT go nuclear

[fm6]

My god, an intelligent answer on the nuclear power issue. Give me a moment to recover from the shock...

OK then, your point about renewable resources being unproven is a good one. So maybe the expenses of nuclear power can be justified. I do emphasize "maybe".

But I think you're totally off base when you claim that most of these costs are avoidable. Congress can't legislate away training, mining, or construction costs. In theory they can legislate away the NIMBY lawsuits, but politically speaking, that's a non-starter. And:

Disposing of the wastes could be solved in the future

No, it has to be solved now, because it's already an issue, even with the small number of nuclear plants we currently have online. Storing on site, is not an answer — they're already doing that (because of the delays in getting disposal sites open) and the cost is horrendous. Besides, the lifetime of a nuclear power plant is maybe 50 years, whereas the waste has to be stored for centuries before it ceases to be dangerous.

Now consider: solar thermal wonks claim they can supply 90% of all U.S. energy needs with plants that would collectively cover about 9,000 square miles. Note that this is 90% of all our energy needs, not just our current consumption of electricity.

As you say, that's unproven technology, and also horrendously expensive (especially when you add in the costs of converting existing non-electrical systems to use electricity). But If I have to choose between a horrendously expensive program that promises to meet most of our needs, and a horrendously expensive program that would never meet more than a fraction of our needs, the choice is pretty clear.

And face it: however much you do to offset the risks of nuclear power, the risks are there. True, people overreact to them (you can blame knee-jerk enviromentalists, but I think bad SF movies are a bigger factor).That does not mean that all concerns are bogus. It may not be possible for a power plant to produce a nuclear explosion (something most people have trouble understanding), but there are real issues that won't go away completely.

When you tackles these kinds of issues, you always consider the worst case scenario, and never assume that you can engineer it away (as the designer of the Titanic learned the hard way. Maybe you can reduce the risks of nuclear power to an acceptable level, but let's stop pretending they don't exist.

If we didn't have other options, and nuclear power had the potential to make more than a marginal difference, I'd say the risks were worth taking. Not otherwise.

Re:Let IT go nuclear

[sumdumass]

But I think you're totally off base when you claim that most of these costs are avoidable. Congress can't legislate away training, mining, or construction costs. In theory they can legislate away the NIMBY lawsuits, but politically speaking, that's a non-starter. And: Sure they can. All they have to do is create a works program that provided training for unemployed people to work at the facility, mine and help in the construction. Congress can actually cover a portion of the construction costs with guaranteed loans or outright funding. I know most of our fissionable material comes out of Africa, they could possibly to an aid swap thing that gets it started and then let the controlling companies take over. It would probably be better off if the government owned the facilities and contracted the operation out. This makes it easier to place military guards on site.

No, it has to be solved now, because it's already an issue, even with the small number of nuclear plants we currently have online. Storing on site, is not an answer -- they're already doing that (because of the delays in getting disposal sites open) and the cost is horrendous. Besides, the lifetime of a nuclear power plant is maybe 50 years, whereas the waste has to be stored for centuries before it ceases to be dangerous.

Well, regardless of the short term solution, nothing is preventing a long term fix from happening. It might be that new tech comes along and we can use waste for the same purpose several times again. It could also be that we could process the radioactive out of it and make it as safe as the sand at the beach. The future holds vast possibilities and like you said, we are already working with it.

Now consider: solar thermal wonks claim they can supply 90% of all U.S. energy needs with plants that would collectively cover about 9,000 square miles. Note that this is 90% of all our energy needs, not just our current consumption of electricity.

As you say, that's unproven technology, and also horrendously expensive (especially when you add in the costs of converting existing non-electrical systems to use electricity). But If I have to choose between a horrendously expensive program that promises to meet most of our needs, and a horrendously expensive program that would never meet more than a fraction of our needs, the choice is pretty clear.

well, not really. You see, Solar isn't very efficient on a cloudy day, it isn't very efficient in the dark of night and the reliability and consistent delivery over the long term simply isn't there yet. I too have seen the claims if what can be done, but those numbers are at peak power and so on which isn't realistically practicle for all of us.

Now, I'm not saying abandon solar or wind. No, by all means keep working on it and perhaps through legislation you can force companies to use it and pay the extra costs associated with it. But then there is no incentive to bring the costs down because regardless of how much more it costs then normal energy, the law will say they have to use some of it. In the end the consumer will be hit the hardest.

But aside from that, our energy demands increase by about 3% a year on average. Getting us away from oil, away from coal, away from foreign interest, growth that is exponential, and so on will always create opportunities to switch to the other cheaper solutions in the future. It isn't like we need to make one decision and never change it. It may be that in the time it takes to get a few Nuclear plants on line, solar panels become 90% efficient, battery tech could evolve to a sate that we can store all the excess energy and compensate for then conditions aren't optimal and so on. The point is, we don't have to make a choice, we can do both and implement what is the most efficient and costs effective and reliable when we cross those paths. I mean hell, we may reach a stage where we can use coal with 150% efficie

Re:Let IT go nuclear

[steeler359]

I built my "server" with an AMD BE-2400 CPU which I chose specifically for it's energy-efficiency rating. Before that, I had a single-core "Lima" processor. The system now draws around 50W, and is generally at a load average of 0.00 most of the time. Since then, AMD have brought out another low-energy range also with a 45W TDP.

Conversely, I put the same CPU in an Asus Pundit barebones box downstairs, and it draws a massive 90W or so, due I guess to inefficiencies in the motherboard, etc.

Most obvious thing any business could do

[Moryath]

Quite seriously - run some optical tube skylights (like this, they come in a wide variety of options) into your working areas. FAR too many companies are wasting energy powering internal lighting when the sun's out. You can always turn on the lights *if* you need them due to a storm.

As an added bonus, you'll start to eliminate health problems - daytime-constant lighting has been proven to mess with your internal cycles and messes up peoples' sleeping patterns, a large part of why sleep disorders are so prevalent in developed countries.

Re:Most obvious thing any business could do

[Colonel Korn]

Quite seriously - run some optical tube skylights (like this, they come in a wide variety of options) into your working areas. FAR too many companies are wasting energy powering internal lighting when the sun's out. You can always turn on the lights *if* you need them due to a storm.

As an added bonus, you'll start to eliminate health problems - daytime-constant lighting has been proven to mess with your internal cycles and messes up peoples' sleeping patterns, a large part of why sleep disorders are so prevalent in developed countries.

New Belgium, imo the best brewing company in the Unites States, already has those. They also compost their waste and collect the methanol it produces, then burn it to provide 10% of their power needs. The rest of their power comes from wind (i.e. they pay extra for their electricity, at rates that make the local wind power profitable, and that money goes to building more wind generation). What else would expect from a company with a bicycle in its logo?

Re:Most obvious thing any business could do

[Moryath]

New Belgium, imo the best brewing company in the Unites States, already has those. They also compost their waste and collect the methanol it produces, then burn it to provide 10% of their power needs. The rest of their power comes from wind

I suppose there's room here for a joke about feeding the employees beer, beans, and bratwurst for lunch each day and then collecting the "wind" during the afternoon ;)

Seriously - good for them!

Depending on what business you're in, the number of things you can do to save energy varies - but just about ANY company ought to be able to set up some form of solar lighting solution, whether they're in an office building, small building, or warehouse setup.

Re:Most obvious thing any business could do

[HeyMe]

Better than that: http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/246/ The optical fibers block most of the IR.

Re:Most obvious thing any business could do

[Anonymous Coward]

As the son in law of the original founder of Solatube, I strongly suggest using the real thing www.solatube.com.

It makes a world of difference to get a quality product. We distribute in more than 50 countries and have many commercial installations. From factories to schools to shopping centers.

Re:Most obvious thing any business could do

[Starteck81]

I live near Seattle,WA you insensitive clod! The clouds almost completely block the sun for 10 months out of the year.

Re:Most obvious thing any business could do

[Fulcrum of Evil]

New Belgium, imo the best brewing company in the Unites States

What about Rogue, Dogfish Head, or Red Hook? Lots of great beer in the US.

Re:Most obvious thing any business could do

[Chineseyes]

Yeah that's great, except for those of us who work in high population density areas where multi-story buildings are the norm.

Re:Most obvious thing any business could do

[Moryath]

Yeah that's great, except for those of us who work in high population density areas where multi-story buildings are the norm.

Did you look at the designs? The purpose of these is to get the collector on roof level, and run a tube down into the building. They also incorporate domed tops to collect more scattered light. I bet there's a large portion of your day where the top of most buildings gets a decent amount of sunlight.

Re:Most obvious thing any business could do

[xaxa]

A cleverly designed building can have lots of natural light, even if it's very tall (example: the "Gherkin" building in London, which is apparently very energy efficient, but probably cost a lot to build).

Re:Most obvious thing any business could do

[houghi]

Because people are idiots is the reason it won't work. Unless you have a management that stand behind the idea AND enforces it, you have no change of success.

Where I work we have plenty of daylight, including roof windows that are larger then what you showed, yet all the lights are on all the time.
This has happened in each and every building and company I worked in the last too many years.

I have seen server rooms where light was on 24/7 even though almost nobody went there.

Even if it isn't helping very much to turn off one light, it will be a change in attitude and that can't be a bad thing.

Re:Most obvious thing any business could do

[Colonel Korn]

New Belgium, imo the best brewing company in the Unites States

What about Rogue, Dogfish Head, or Red Hook? Lots of great beer in the US.

I know all of those well, and count I actually like Rogue Dead Guy Ale more than any New Belgium beer. Midas Touch Ale from Dogfish still manages to surprise me with its excellent, complex finish every time I try it, and I've had a dozen bottles by now. Still, I pick NB overall for a range of excellent beers that can all be enjoyed ad nauseum (ha). My favorite individual beer from America is currently Pranqster (think Delirium Tremens with more reliability but less potential, and not made by monks) made by either Lost Coast or North Coast. If their names weren't so similar I could tell you which one it is.

America has an outstanding brewing culture, in some ways the best in the world.

Re:Most obvious thing any business could do

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Too bad the most popular beer here is crap like Bud.

Come again?

[Steauengeglase]

But instead of limiting IT's efficiency role to the datacenter, companies will tap IT's vast knowledge of company networks, equipment, and work processes to uncover efficiencies across the organization, in some cases tipping facilities management into IT.

So what do the people we work for do again? Accounting? Nah, Background checks? I think we make soap. Yeah, tell the guy in the survey we make soap.

I'm an IT Manager

[maynard]

Those articles read like market-speak on toilet paper. At least if it had been printed on a roll, it might have been of use.

Re:I'm an IT Manager

[MyLongNickName]

And get the ink smeared on my ass? Explain THAT to the wife.

Re:I'm an IT Manager

[MikeB0Lton]

Articles like that are for upper management types who do not want to read technical details. It does seem that more and more roles are merging together, facilities management included. Look at asset management. The tools we use are starting to provide centralized asset management for not just IT, but finance and facilities too. Granted they don't require the monitoring and config management capabilities of an IT geared product, but then they don't have to have rights into those modules either. With building systems tying into the network it's a fact of life that IT will become more involved.

Re:I'm an IT Manager

[Rie Beam]

"I swear, it was just an analogy that got out of hand..."

Re:I'm an IT Manager

[Anonymous Coward]

You're doing it wrong!

What's that smell?

[TheNecromancer]

"There is a lot IT can do to fix its own 2 percent [of the company's carbon emissions] and make it more efficient"

What about IT's methane emissions? There are alot of pizza-eating, Diet Coke-drinking techies maintaining your servers. If that energy could be harnessed (instead of lighting them off through your jeans), a company's energy costs would be significantly decreased.

Re:What's that smell?

[NevarMore]

Diet Coke-drinking techies maintaining your servers.

Well theres your problem. IT is supposed to drink Jolt, Mt. Dew, Red Bull, etc. Diet Coke is more of a receptionist kind of thing.

Lets not forget all of the rotting bullshit from marketing and the executive suites.

Re:What's that smell?

[luke923]

From your title, I'm guessing there's a Skynard joke in there somewhere -- and I would say it falls into the category of, in the words of David Spade, "not Freebird."

Green or Greenhouse?

[Quantos]

Why is it that the same people wanting IT to be green are the same people that want IT to deliver 5 9's, as well as complete security for anything that could possibly violate the integrity of the personal information that they submit on an inter/intranet? The server and it's software either has to work, or else chaos will move in and take over - what happened to bitching at the hardware manufacturers for their shortfall? Why should hardware and software work less than the brave and pioneering IT's that we have all come to know and love? (and trust with our deepest secrets).

Telecommuting?

[Oxy the moron]

Wouldn't telecommuting kill two birds with one stone? If your employees stay at home, they don't use up energy commuting to work, and you don't need as much energy to heat/cool your office space or keep it well lit.

Yeah, it doesn't solve everything, but it's a start.

Re:Telecommuting?

[zappepcs]

Yes, fundamental changes in how IT is run will bring changes.

Telecommuting
Lighting changes (as mentioned)
Changing current infrastructure out for energy efficient stuff (also mentioned)
Improved cooling systems (mentioned)
Better power distribution - less point of load conversions
Unified cooling schemes throughout the data center as well as tweak and improve existing schemes. Underfloor cabling blocking forced air system balancing etc.
There are parts of the world where underground heat exchangers could reduce the over-all cost of standard A/C systems - but that means investment.
Compartmentalized data center "closets" - reduce power and cooling needs
Upgrade older equipment for newer, cheaper, more capable hardware

As can be seen, nearly all of this comes with investment costs up front. That will not happen without some form of incentive. Spend short term money to save money in the long run doesn't look good on a quarterly report. When Wall Street or Washington are on the bandwagon and supporting or giving incentives... then it will begin to happen. In the mean time, look for more data breaches, service losses, and general poor performance from companies who continue to squeeze IT budget and demand less expense from them.

Re:Telecommuting?

[Anonymous Coward]

Spend short term money to save money in the long run doesn't look good on a quarterly report.

Depends on how you structure it.
You can play with the length of depreciation (or various other accounting tricks) to lessen the impact on your quarterly report or to get favourable tax benefits or a handful of other things.

Re:Telecommuting?

[plasmacutter]

Telecommuting can't be a 100% solution though, otherwise you will not be able to train new entrants..

oh wait, i'm a new entrant and nobody wants to train me...

I guess i'll have to wait about 25 years until they realize their trained staff are retiring and their actual labor pool is dwindling.

I really don't see a problem here.

[Aphoxema]

The solution is obvious, simply outsource all the work and fire the IT employees. This will give you massive savings, make the few domestic employees more reliable, and give you super management powers that will make you invincible.

Re:I really don't see a problem here.

[Kingrames]

Dammit man, you KNOW someone's gonna read that.

Re:I really don't see a problem here.

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod: -1 [Bastard!]

Re:I really don't see a problem here.

[Grishnakh]

The solution is obvious, simply outsource all the work and fire the IT employees.

We've already done this at my F-500 company. IT functions are all done, remotely, by an Indian contractor that gets paid based on how many trouble tickets they respond to.

Re:I really don't see a problem here.

[Anonymous Coward]

Done that, thanks!
--
Your Boss

Re:I really don't see a problem here.

[Tracking System]

Yes, and then we suffer the language barrier and hold time.

The permanent energy crisis is like war in 1984

[Anonymous Coward]

Used to keep the populace in line and fearful. We've always been at war with EastAsia.

If you want to see a real energy crisis (not the one that western environmentalists have manufactured as part of their plan to be able to tell everyone else how to live while feeling morally superior) visit someplace like Albania, where the power is on for limited periods during the day, even in Tirana, and randomly intermittent throughout the rest of the country. Or someplace in Africa, where electric lights are a far-off dream for most.

The "energy crisis" is FUD stirred up by the very people who won't allow us to build nuclear power plants, who shut down wind power sites because of danger to spotted owls, and who seem to believe that 6 billion people should return to an agrarian lifestyle characterized by hard physical labor, malnourishment, and a short lifespan. All while they, the appointed guardians of the new order, are the only ones allowed to drive their SUVs around "public" parks like Yosemite.

Re:The permanent energy crisis is like war in 1984

[plasmacutter]

Used to keep the populace in line and fearful. We've always been at war with EastAsia.

If you want to see a real energy crisis (not the one that western environmentalists have manufactured as part of their plan to be able to tell everyone else how to live while feeling morally superior) visit someplace like Albania, where the power is on for limited periods during the day, even in Tirana, and randomly intermittent throughout the rest of the country. Or someplace in Africa, where electric lights are a far-off dream for most.

The "energy crisis" is FUD stirred up by the very people who won't allow us to build nuclear power plants, who shut down wind power sites because of danger to spotted owls, and who seem to believe that 6 billion people should return to an agrarian lifestyle characterized by hard physical labor, malnourishment, and a short lifespan. All while they, the appointed guardians of the new order, are the only ones allowed to drive their SUVs around "public" parks like Yosemite.

The hyperbole is a bit thick, but I agree with this somewhat.

Environmentalist extremism as about as bad for us as environmental apathy.

Environmentalism, believe it or not, has been around much much longer than 60 years, and has been about incremental achievement

Cars were better for the environment than horses, which not only produced methane, but littered the streets with dung and pathogens, for instance.

Nuclear seems to be the next step from this, because its waste product is more centralized and manageable, all be it deadly, and, if it escapes, only alters a fixed region (which is under human direction) rather than the global temperature.

Then there's the breeder reactors.

Etc. Etc.

Environmental extremists have this nasty habit of smearing anything which is not completely and utterly innocuous to the environment, which is about as impossible as finding a food which is completely innocuous to the human body.

IT in a factory

[fishybell]

Well, until recently I ran the IT department for a manufacturer and I'd say bad, bad idea. The company is currently in the process of building a new facility with in a combined office/factory building. I must say, sure, the computers and computer cooling equipment might take upwards of 15% of the electricity of the new building, but cranes, welders, plasma tables, galvinization equipment, etc. that is required for us to build our product isn't just going to magically take less electricity just because we want it to. IT can take less electricity today due to increases in computing power, efficiency, etc. These have been demand driven because of the operating costs, but when you buy a welding machine you look at its functionality, not its electricity cost. Unless the cost of electricity climbs beyond $50,000 a month for a small shop such as ours you won't be seeing any demand for more efficient tools. Demand is what gave us more efficient IT equipment, and it will be the same for other equipment. When that happens the various departments such as welding, fabrication, etc. will still be designing their new work spaces, just with a mandate to purchase efficient equipment whenever possible. The IT department won't be planning many factories any time soon.

Re:IT in a factory

[mdfst13]

cranes, welders, plasma tables, galvinization equipment, etc. that is required for us to build our product isn't just going to magically take less electricity just because we want it to.

The idea is that the controls will move from ad hoc human decisions (e.g. I'll flip on the welder now because I plan to use it in five minutes) to computer planned decisions (where work is scheduled for the welder so as to minimize the amount of time when the welder is warming up, etc.). The example given in the article is heating and cooling. For example, if you know that it will be hot during the day and cold at night, you can allow the temperature to gradually increase during the day and cool overnight if you only have a daylight shift.

Of course, we've been talking about doing this for twenty years. While this is the future, I don't know that it is particularly likely to take over in the next few years. It will gradually become more common, the way that it is now common for every automobile to have computer controlled fuel injection, valves, and sparking system rather than operate purely mechanically.

Exactly.

[khasim]

From TFA:

The benefits of analysis-based energy management include lower costs for energy, decreased equipment maintenance costs, a reduced carbon footprint, consistency across the real estate portfolio, and increased effectiveness and decreased cost of the extended enterprise, says Dan Sharplin, CEO at Site Controls, a building automation supplier.

In order:
No.
No.
Maybe.
WTF does that mean?
No.
and no.

Saving energy in IT means two things.
#1. Reducing usage.
#2. Buying more efficient components.

Since, if anything, usage demands grow over time the only thing you're left with is hoping that someone develops components that deliver the same performance at a lower power cost.

If you want to cut the power usage of the IT department, encourage remote workers. It doesn't help overall, but it moves the power usage to the user's home.

Re:Exactly.

[AmericanInKiev]

remote worker's use far less energy - if one assumes the home would have been kept Air-conditioned anyway - one more person doesn't raise the cost much. The computer power of course is negligible.

Re:Exactly.

[Splab]

You know, it is in fact possible to survive in most parts of the world without air conditioning. Yes I know it's shocking, but it's a fact of life.

Also computer power being negligible? Well yeah, if you drop enough money for good equipment. Most cheap ass computers comes with power supplies going at full capacity + cheap screens will likely send your power usage above the 300W, doing that 8 hours a day from home is far from negligible.

Re:Exactly.

[tinkerghost]

If you want to cut the power usage of the IT department, encourage remote workers. It doesn't help overall, but it moves the power usage to the user's home.

Actually, it was mentioned in TFA that having someone remote work doesn't reduce the energy load @ the office unless the office is smart enough to shut down the extra heating/cooling/lighting. Thus the discussion about tying LDAP logins to the heating/cooling/lighting system. When the last person logs out, shut down the AC/Heating, and 10 minutes later have the lights go out - that type of automation is the heart of using IT & it's many tendrils to help reduce corporate energy consumption.

Of course I think that getting people to listen to IT when they say something is overkill would be nice too. I've seen too many high end PC's doing nothing but lightweight WP & Email to think that there isn't substantial savings there. I know of at least 2 quad core systems w/ high end graphics cards that have never done anything harder than open up a webpage.

Re:Exactly.

[Anonymous Coward]

True, but on the flip side of that, the building in said climates will need to be heated in winter. Unless you can find me a part of the world that has a range of temperatures less than 15 degrees (centigrade) which is suitable (ie. affordable) for business, it looks like we're stuck with climate controlled buildings.

Re:Exactly.

[Steveftoth]

not if they use a laptop, or a decent cheap computer which is what most people need anyways, not the 300W+ monsters that seem to be the norm these days for anything with a video card that is near the high end.

Most laptop power supplies are like 100->200W at the most. And they charge the battery as well as let you use the computer, so if you've got a full battery then it's probably less.

Re:Exactly.

[fishbowl]

>You know, it is in fact possible to survive in most parts of the world without air conditioning.

Yes, of course, but if you want me to exchange my time in order for you to take advantage of my skilled labor, I shall do much more than merely "survive."

This is not negotiable.

I can "subsist" without making myself part of your corporate enterprise, get it?

If I work for you, I'm doing it for the rewards, and I have no shame in asking for the money.

On the other hand, when I've worked in IT I haven't had the problems that are so often reported by people who seem to do nothing but suffer.

Re:Exactly.

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Most cheap ass computers comes with power supplies going at full capacity + cheap screens will likely send your power usage above the 300W, doing that 8 hours a day from home is far from negligible.

You'll find that most computers draw about 100W while working, and displays generally power down to 5W or less when left alone. Don't believe me? use killawatt or an ammeter and check it out yourself.

Re:Exactly.

[Grishnakh]

You know, it is in fact possible to survive in most parts of the world without air conditioning. Yes I know it's shocking, but it's a fact of life.

Yeah, so? What's your point? If you don't want A/C, feel free to turn it off in your own home.

Personally, I and most other people are not willing to work in an office without A/C, especially here in Arizona where it's 120 in the summer. It would be nice if they'd turn the thermostat up just a bit where I work though.

Re:Exactly.

[Lonewolf666]

Saving energy in IT means two things.
#1. Reducing usage.
#2. Buying more efficient components.

If the energy usage reaches a point where it really hurts,
#3. Invest in more efficient software so you can make do with slower but less power hungry components.

But for that Management needs to be desperate about energy costs. Because optimizig software is time consuming and expensive.

Re:Exactly.

[buttle2000]

At work we use thinclient hardware. Each one has a 20W transformer plugger into the wall.
Some people work from home some of the time opening a remote session using freenx. Desktop speed is quite acceptable, I'm at home write now.
We also have many office branches. IT staff (two of us), haven't needed to get in the car and drive out there for a long time.

Re:Exactly.

[jonbryce]

That's fine if everyone in the office uses a computer, but generally they don't.

Re:Exactly.

[AKAImBatman]

You know, it is in fact possible to survive in most parts of the world without air conditioning. Yes I know it's shocking, but it's a fact of life.

You know what else? Many of those people die.

I was watching a History Channel miniseries on the American Revolution the other day, and I was surprised to learn that one of the revolution's greatest Generals Nathanael Greene, died of a heat stroke. But not on the battlefield as one might expect. (Especially during the searing heat of Clinton's retreat from Philadelphia.) He died on his own plantation of a heat stroke.

What I'm getting at is that you should be careful about considering AC a luxury. It may make life more comfortable, but it also saves lives. One only needs to go as far as a major city to find reports of deaths every year from low income people who have no AC.

Re:Exactly.

[MrSteve007]

My workstation draws a constant 335 watts while idling. Albeit, it's an 8-core system with dual 24" monitors, but 300+ watts in not out of the question for some workstations.

Re:Exactly.

[Fulcrum of Evil]

200 of that is the monitors if they're like my samsungs.

Re:Exactly.

[Wowlapalooza]

Connect the dots please:

How many people have died in the Gulf Region because of our geopolitical policies and actions?

Much of which is driven by our need to keep (historically/relatively) cheap oil flowing from that region.

Which, in turn, is driven by our ravenous hunger for energy.

A significant portion of which goes to feed our air-conditioning addiction.

Get it?

So, while some vulnerable people in this country may die from lack of air conditioning (they should have been identified as vulnerable to begin with and provided with safe surroundings, of course), this air conditioning "culture" we have actually causes more deaths in the long run.

(I would have mentioned something about Arab/Muslim lives not being considered as valuable as American lives, but then I'd be labelled as Flamebait and I'm trying to improve my karma. Oops, there it goes again...)

Re:Exactly.

[AKAImBatman]

That logic would be AWESOME... if our air conditioners ran on oil.

(insert stoic look here)

AC runs off the grid. The grid is primarily powered by Coal, Uranium, and Natural Gas. Oil is a tiny part of that energy infrastructure. All these "deaths" you're waxing over are in pursuit of CARS, not Air Conditioners.

Re:Exactly.

[houghi]

Yes, people die. News at 11. Even the 10.000 people who died of the heat in France one summer.

I will probably be modded down as a troll, but we need to think whether we want to save the whole planet and let some people die a few years earlier or save the few people and give everybody a nice temperature to live in.

And it is possible (except perhaps for the elderly and the sick) to have cooler buildings without the use of air conditioning. Look at how people build in hot countries for many, many ages. They use smaller windows and thicker walls. No incoming sunlight during the day.

Instead we prefer to have cheap buildings, put in an airco and kill off the planet, because we like to have big windows.

There will indeed still be people die, just as there will people die from falling of a ladder. Sorry, it isn't possible to save everybody for ever. Dying is a fact of life. Deal with it. It is not worth saving a few by killing all the rest. It is worth letting a few die by saving all the rest and future generations. (NOW mod me troll, I have plenty of Karma to burn)

Re:Exactly.

[ckaminski]

Off-topic, but what do you use, exactly? I was interesting in HP's PcBlades at one point for supporting my remote and offshore users, but they didn't seem to have a roadmap for the product - IE yet another EOL'd product that just hadn't sold all it's inventory yet.

I did see another company making 1ghz bladeservers (cubic or something) ?

Anyhow, I'm interested.

Regards!

Re:Exactly.

[buttle2000]

Hi,

Well, we're using a homebrew setup. HP and other virtual desktop solutions are very, very expensive and don't seem any less beta than our own system.
So we spent some money on a server

Server SuperMicro Dual X: 3,625 + tax
Plus we bought 2 clones (4 core, 8GB ram, no hard drive).

On the SuperMicro we've installed xen and run many different servers like dns, ldap, samba, cups, etc, etc. One of those virtual servers boots the clones (cluster nodes) via the network. The nodes are diskless servers running ubuntu desktop.

Users connect to a virtual freenx server that balances the load between the nodes.

And that's about it. Cheap and effective. We're still going through some teething pains but, according to previous experience with the current production desktop server, we think we can get about 20 users onto each node. 2x20=40 and we are only 35 people.

Cheers.

Re:Exactly.

[sumdumass]

Are you advocating that we should tell people that by simply showing up to work, you are losing your control over your health because, well, people die?

I mean seriously, if there is a way to save a person's life, wether it is turning on the AC at work or by treating the injuries from the falling ladders, we should do it. Why? Well not necessarily because their life is worth more then anything else but because when it is your life on the line, you would want someone to save it too. I mean, we could take it one step further and not send the ambulances out for auto wrecks if the cop doesn't think there is a good chance of them surviving. How much energy would that save if we didn't have a heavy vehicle speeding across town just to lead someone up and take them to a hospital where lights and all sorts of expensive machinery will be used to save their lives? Ok, so maybe your masochistic enough that you wouldn't mind laying there for hours before dieing while the tow truck winched your vehicle over and pull it up onto a rollback or watching the fire creeping closer until it burns you enough that you pass out from the pain while a smaller fire truck takes it's slow ass time to get on the scene in a fuel efficient way. After all, people die all the time right? Well imagine if that person wasn't you but your best friend, your wife, your parents, or you own kids.

I don't really care who you are, when something as minor as air conditioning can save a life, and that life is lost because someone else decides to save a dollar, as far as I am concerned, they are just as guilty for that death as if they skimped out out on safety equipment and cause an industrial accident resulting in death or withheld giving someone their medicine because it costs too much. Or purposely drives impared after drinking or doing drugs and kills someone. Often the savings is going to pay for other luxury items anyways. An no, just because people die anyways is no reasons to hasten that death by not providing relatively minor conveniences like AC or emergency services.

Telecommuting

[AmericanInKiev]

Surely the largest energy gains would come from telecommuting.

I submit that the shift to telecommuting will look less like the current employee group working out of their home, and more like companies increasing relying on "outsourcing", and out-sorcerers increasingly consisting of people who work in low-marginal-energy environments - whether their own college dorm, some un-cooled sweatshop in Thailand.

It bears mentioning that working from home reduces the AC energy for life-work by 50% while reducing the transportation energy by 80%. It also reduced healthcare costs by reducing viral exposures.

Re:Telecommuting

[Splab]

Thanks but no thank you. I'd like to speak to fellow human beings; you know, face to face.

Re:Telecommuting

[BitterOldGUy]

Thanks but no thank you. I'd like to speak to fellow human beings; you know, face to face.

I talk out of my ass most times. You still want to talk?

Re:Telecommuting

[Splab]

Look up "Little big man" no human being would ever do that, so I wont talk to you.

Re:Telecommuting

[catmistake]

Brilliant, obvious and totally doable on a short time scale (like, by the Monday after next, everyone telecommunting 3-5 days a week). Unfortunately, the lazy layabout management needs to make sure that everyone is still looking busy and never takes a few minutes to think about effecientcy, or the next obvious step will be to eliminate management, increasing productivity and reducing spending in one brilliant, long-time coming layoff.

Re:Telecommuting

[catmistake]

Thanks but no thank you. I'd like to speak to fellow human beings; you know, face to face.

Adapt or perish. 'face to face' is not a meaningful metric when it comes to the negative side of saving money or moving towards environmental responsibility.

Re:Telecommuting

[swillden]

Thanks but no thank you. I'd like to speak to fellow human beings; you know, face to face.

It's overrated.

I like talking to my colleagues, but when held against all of the convenience and flexibility of working from home, not to mention the energy savings... I recently told a potential employer that they had to pay me $10K more per year if they wanted me to come into the office every day. I ultimately turned the job down for other reasons, but upon further reflection I decided that I should have said $20K.

Re:Telecommuting

[Anonymous Coward]

I know this is a bit off topic, but it bears repeating regarding a great benefit of telecommuting.

In case of a pandemic, public health authorities will consider restricting movement and public assembly as a way of slowing the spread of the disease. Modern office buildings, with their open floor plans and often dense concentrations of people, are not places you want to be in this situation. Telecommuting will help keep up some measure of productivity since workers wouldn't have to work in the office. This would work even better if the telecommutes are already in place prior to the pandemic.

Re:Telecommuting

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, how did that attitude work out for the human beings? Look up "genocide".

Re:Telecommuting

[giblfiz]

Actually, (at least according to the urban planning master's major's who I have been hanging out with) telecommuting doesn't seem to save any miles driven out in the real world.

This was something of a shock to me, but apparently, according to the studies of actual telecommuting implementations, people still end up coming into the office once or twice a week, as well as running a whole lot more errands during the day. Because they are telecommuting they tend to be willing to live much farther from their employer, making those one or two trips weigh in extra heavy, and they tend to move out to the boonies where their daily errands mean a lot more driving.

I was pretty surprised by the results of the study, and I got the impression that the people who conducted it were as well, but it seems to be pretty much cannon for urban planners at this point.

Re:Telecommuting

[AmericanInKiev]

I don't see a lot of potential for the occasional telecommuter.

Personally, I've only telecommuted from other continents - certainly didn't drive in weekly.

This is not your daddy's telecommuting, I'm talking about. What I see is new companies with managers who are skilled in telemanaging, new systems oriented to telecommuting, and employees who are productive independently.

This isn't for people who are substituting work for a life; it's for people who have a life, and want to fit their work in around it.

Re:Telecommuting

[Stanza]

The company I work for has a lot of long-distance commuters. Rather than telecommuting, it instituted a four-day, ten-hour work week. That shaves 20% off the driving time right there, without any difficulties. And all those people who were already working ten hour days got a free day off each week.

For the rest of us, the three day weekends are awesome! Ten hour days... well that three day weekend every week pretty much makes up for it.

Re:Telecommuting

[plasmacutter]

that's badly managed telecommuting then.

My mother has been telecommuting for about 8 years now, and has gone into the local office perhaps 100 times in that time (for immediate physical hardware difficulties). Has also made 10 trips total to the region to which she was transferred about 5 years ago.

Re:Telecommuting

[houghi]

It has been calculated that in Belgium commuting does not mean less driving around. What it is used for is bringing the children to school, going to the grocery and so on. It was a bit less, but not so much as one would expect.

I believe it was somewhere around 75% of the normal distance was still driven by car and even at the same moments as they did before.

Sorry, I was unable to find the study.

Re:Telecommuting

[Anonymous Coward]

Well let me tell you 'bout telecommuting, as I've been doing it for about 2 years now.

About 10 months after the peak of the housing bubble I ditched my townhouse in the DC area, made a butt load of money and moved to Huntsville, AL. It's nicer than you'd think here -- tons of bandwidth, nice houses, and because of NASA and Redstone Arsenal, the culture here (in the city anyhow) is comparable to a bluish-red state (not unlike northern Virginia).

I was the first on my team to do it, now my entire team is 100% telecommute. Since we're all developers, most of our communication was ascii-based anyhow, even when we were sitting in the same office. These days, we run video conferences on skype when we're feeling frisky.

It's been the greatest decision of my life. I've finally got some cash in the bank, I can afford a not to live in the ghetto, I've got time for my family every night, and I'm not spending upwards of 3 hours a day burning gasoline sitting in traffic jams. My carbon footprint has got to be way less than half what it was in the DC area, even with the bigger house.

The only thing is that when you telecommute, you essentially live at the office, and believe me .. it won't take long for your employer to figure that out.

As long as you have the testicular fortitude to draw clear lines of demarcation between work time and family time, it's the greatest lifestyle you can imagine.

Imagine a...

[Rie Beam]

I think Beowulf clusters might be uncalled for here.

Automation

[Anonymous Coward]

How about automating power-down or low-power mode? I could see that being useful in a data center. Perhaps 100% of the computers aren't needed all of the time. I'm assuming load balancing, redundancy, etc.

Also, what about combining the above with virtual machines that can move from server to server automatically or something.

Maybe it's already being done, I'm no data center/network/system admin.

IT reducing power

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, the last company I was with, to reduce power they laid people off.

Not good

[Heather D]

There was a time when 'networking' was synonymous with schmoozing. :-)

The concept has merit, taking some of what's been learned in IT over the last three decades and folding it into the other departments could bring real gains. That said, giving IT control of those departments would be a serious mistake for all but a relative few enterprises.

Commuting counts too

[Anonymous Coward]

Companies should consider the TOTAL energy cost, including employee commuting. Allowing more progressive work environments, flex-hours, telecommuting, etc., can significantly reduce energy costs. Sitting in snarled rush-hour traffic produces huge amounts of CO2. Allowing flex-time and off-peak commuting, 3 and 4 day work weeks, etc., can significantly reduce energy waste.

Why IT shouldn't get into facilities management

[Thelasko]

Ever see Jurassic Park?

Re:Why IT shouldn't get into facilities management

[Coraon]

That park would have run perfectly had IT been properly paid. Rule #1 of IT always, ALWAYS more sure you are paying more then your competitors. IT is loyal to the paycheck, and loyalty to ones coin is loyalty none the less.

Re:Why IT shouldn't get into facilities management

[halber_mensch]

Ever see Jurassic Park?

This warrants a new adage:

Never reboot if the raptor fences aren't out

Or perhaps:

Don't put your maintenance sheds by the raptor pens

Urk...

[TheSHAD0W]

But the big opportunity for IT is to take a leadership role in tackling that other 98 percent across the business...

That's not my yob...

Seriously, that's like suggesting the HR department take on increasing power efficiency. When you blow compartmentalization like that all sorts of nasty things happen. It's like letting the programmers work directly with the clients; you're guaranteed to go bankrupt in months.

On the other hand, I can just picture what happens next: A new department. "Say hi to the new carbon-compliance officer!" [facepalm]

so while the internet is not a series of tubes

[circletimessquare]

we will be transitioning more IT workers into plumbing positions?

That would never work at a college

[Anonymous Coward]

and occupancy sensors to make sure they're turned off when everyone leaves.

I once had a professor who was so boring, the occupancy sensors would turn the lights off 3 or 4 times each lecture.

This could work...

[Firemouth]

... but the scope needs to be limited to IT resources. The only thing I think this would cover is setting policies for shutting off monitors and computers. Outside of that? I think this is a bad idea. We've done some research as to the extent we could save the company for our network of 200ish computers. We could save a few thousand a year, but those calculations were assuming everyone left their computers and monitors on. Which isn't always the case. So our actual savings would be even less. Even so, it's a realtively simple change for anyone for any network with centralized management which supports setting those policies. Also, how many people will you piss off if your policies aren't in line with their usages? Will their laptop suddenly hibernate in the middle of a presentation because its been idle for more than 30 minutes? Do you let users customize these policies so they can just disable it if they want to? I think the policies would have to be set relatively loose, which would further diminish your actual savings...

Re:This could work...

[fatmal]

Will their laptop suddenly hibernate in the middle of a presentation because its been idle for more than 30 minutes?

This is probably off-topic, but why the hell can't laptop manufacturers or O/S suppliers make a simple change - if the laptop is plugged into a projector then DON'T pop-up anything over the top of the presentation! It drives me nuts when I see it happen, and it can be embarassing for the presenter (and the audience, depending on what pops-up!).

More choice?

[bendodge]

Is this saying businesses should let the IT people choose what kind of equipment gets put in other departments, or perhaps that we get to streamline inefficient processes?

It basically sounds like they want to turn IT into pseudo-management, which may not be such a terrible idea, given the logical nature of IT. That essentially boils down to: they want people who can think logically and have lots of knowledge to plan the way things are done. Shocking concept.

Re:More choice?

[bendodge]

Ick, I also seem to have shocking grammar today...

Re:More choice?

[Belial6]

Unfortunatly, IT often isn't logical, and often doesn't have all that much knowledge. While I have know many superstars, and think very highly of myself, I have also seen very large numbers of IT folks that are clueless. There is a reason that Saturday Night Live had a skit called 'Nick Burns: The company computer guy'.

This energy thing,

[Old97]

does it run on Linux?

Ok, this may be completely crazy but....

[Gat0r30y]

How much stuff do you have on your desk that actually runs at 120Hz AC? If you switched to a local DC source (say solar, backed up by batteries or something) you wouldn't have to convert to and from 120. Straight 12 volts DC down from the roof to the data center. That step alone seems to me like it would cut out at least two conversions which at best would be ~ 85 or 90% efficient. I don't design power supplies for servers but it seems that all of the components run on 12V, 5V or 3.3V so there is no reason to waste energy heating up a power supply right there in a server so that you have to use more power to cool it.

Obligatory Penny Arcade strip

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/9/3/

Re:Obligatory Penny Arcade strip

[smegged]

Too lazy to copy paste...

Tesla, Insight and the color of Google homepage

[harrie_o]

The PBS piece with Click and Clack months ago and Tesla brought to light the major role IT folks had in that startup electric car.

Seems that all the magic is in the software that makes the batteries motor and charger do its best.

I think next year's Honda fuel cell Insight is a better idea (brew and tank your own HYDROGEN and OXYGEN from water + electricity when plugged in, then run all day with a "gas gauge" and no heavy batteries.

If Google would change its homepage to black it would save an incredible amount of energy on all those monitors displaying that ubiquitous screen.

Re:Tesla, Insight and the color of Google homepage

[Gat0r30y]

Google's homepage to black? Like this? Though I have to wonder if they can really claim all that much in savings - for LCD's is there really a significant power savings for black pixels vs. white? Does anyone know what the difference is?

Re:Tesla, Insight and the color of Google homepage

[zippthorne]

I suppose that depends on whether dark is the powered-on or powered-off state for the crystals. Probably a better option would be to pick a relatively dim, low-contrast color-scheme, so the backlight could be powered down. Assuming the display is capable of powering down the backlight in that circumstance.

Re:Tesla, Insight and the color of Google homepage

[Zerth]

Actually, black pixels use more energy than white ones in an LCD that is default-permissive, as it takes energy to cause the LC in a pixel to block light.

Now if you have an LCD that is default-blocking then it'd be more efficient, but the difference for a 19 inch screen is about 3/4 of a watt. Having your screen saver turn off your screen or reducing the backlight a few steps would probably save more energy.

More obvious: turn the PCs off at night

[petes_PoV]

Even when they're doing nothing, the PCs in an organisation pull 40+ watts. From 6pm to 8 the next morning is 70 useless hours a week. Add in weekends and over 100 hours you'll save 60% of the power used by your most common asset.

The only IT issue here, is how to roll out patches/updates - but any IT manager with a grain of talent can sort that out.

Re:More obvious: turn the PCs off at night

[Grishnakh]

The only IT issue here, is how to roll out patches/updates - but any IT manager with a grain of talent can sort that out.

You say that as if IT managers with a grain of talent are commonplace.

Re:More obvious: turn the PCs off at night

[gbjbaanb]

The only IT issue here, is how to roll out patches/updates - but any IT manager with a grain of talent can sort that out.

Hey, the London Stock Exchange called, they'd like to talk to you.

Re:Telecommuting - not necessarily

[petes_PoV]

If it means yo have to heat or cool your residence because you're there during the day (whereas if you were at work you wouldn't have to) the savings may not be as big as you thought.

Worse, your employer may not pay you for the extra power you use - most won't even consider it. Plus, you're effectively giving your employer a cube-sized chuck of your house for free, try asking them for rent and I could hear them laughing at you from here!

Smaller computers

[Yvan256]

It seems a lot of new small computers are coming out these days, some of them even are Atom-based.

You may need a 500W Core 2 Quad + SLI videocards for your home gaming, but I'd say 99% of corporate computer users will be fine with an Atom, 1GB RAM and integrated intel GPU.

These things have 60-80W power supplies, and that's their maximum load. I'm sure they use far less than that under normal operation.

GEEK POWER!

[st33med]

Finally, people are listening to us when we tell them their computers suck watts. G33| P0\/\/3R 4CT1\/473!!!!

Seriously?

[Mashiki]

Is everyone buying into mumbo-jumbo and super-hype still? Yes I'm that cynical.

I suppose if you need to have feel good projects, tell them to go plant a forest and sell it later for profit, then plant a new one. On top of that they can sell carbon credits for money. It becomes a company project that way! Or invest in a wind/solar farm. As well as the usual common sense stuff, if you're in a semi-large building see what you can do to push geo-thermal retrofits at the next upgrade for heating/cooling.

Cars/trucks/etc, not much a do. Skirting for fleet trucks however will reduce drag, and increase fuel efficiency. Cars, if it's a short trip 2km walk/ride a bike unless it's important/heavy to carry. Or unless the car has 2 or more passengers.

Re:Seriously?

[zippthorne]

Cars, if it's a short trip 2km walk/ride a bike unless it's important/heavy to carry. Or unless the car has 2 or more passengers.

Indeed, if your commute is less than 2k and you still drive all the time, don't start bitching about your "glandular problem" every time the word "boombalatti" comes up in your presence.

Frankly, I think a lot of societal ills could be solved if we'd just stop considering it "impolite" to make fun of people's shortcomings.

Totally not negligible

[Bishop Rook]

Yes, that's like 12 kWh per week! Why, at 10c/kWh, that would be almost $5 per month.

And most cheap ass computers come with power supplies at 300W peak, but the average draw is closer to 100W. For an average small LCD panel it's around 50-100W. So you're looking at 150-200W of draw, not 300W. That's if they're not using a laptop, which would be probably around 20W.

But that's beside the point, because even if your employees are working from home, you still need to be running your servers. Having remote workers does save on travel time and gas usage though.

Conspiracy Theory

[Rie Beam]

It all makes sense now...bear with me...

Linus Torvalds gets bitten by a penguin...

Creates an operating system and adopting said penguin as a logo...

Insures that said operating system is openly available to anyone who wants it...

The ability to create a free server from one's house increases...

The number of living penguins as a result of melting polar ice decreases...

Put it in India where no one cares

[gelfling]

Put all your datacenters in India, China, Malaysia and Africa where no one cares how much they pollute.

Re:Telecommuting - not necessarily

[swillden]

Worse, your employer may not pay you for the extra power you use - most won't even consider it.

Stack the additional power you use up against the money you save in fuel and vehicle wear and I'll bet telecommuting comes out ahead for the vast majority of people. Not to mention the time you save.

Plus, you're effectively giving your employer a cube-sized chuck of your house for free, try asking them for rent and I could hear them laughing at you from here!

Most people can move 30 miles further from the office and get 50% more house for the same money.

Even if you don't move, I for one am more than happy to trade a little space in my house* for the flexibility that comes from working at home. I see my kids when they get home from school, and I can pop down to the school whenever there's a program or whatever.

* In the interest of full disclosure, I don't have to give up any space in my house. I like having a den/office, so I'd set that space apart anyway. This way I just use it more, and I've gotten my employer to spring for a better chair, a better phone, etc.

Re:IT Wins? Responsibilities & Liabilities?

[davidsyes]

Well, this is where smart-product manufacturing has to step up even more. Consider how many companies' IT & Facilities departments still do not properly implement energy saving features/policies, still allow wasteful old CRTs (some using the excuse that they've been paid off, still work, and "you don't NEED an LCD to do the work we pay you to do" (with that fetid attitude, failing to take into account that coming from homes with LCDs to work in an environment with a funky, outdated, crappy CRT is an insult, and a lame excuse for not spending company money on energy efficiency and worker productivity... I dare say that having to shift from LCD at home to CRT at work stymies and in subtle ways affects attitudes and productivity, but that is my own opinion...)...

I don't know about data center air cooling systems, but the ubiquitous air conditioner for homes is something the utilities and some other companies need to see timer/load controlled by entities other than home or small business users.

Yesterday, I was listening to Quest, on KQED... and the topic was on reinventing the air conditioner, which i'm paraphrasing below.

Most of the residential home units in the US were designed with a one-size-fits-all mentality. In the past 40 or so years, California's population has grown greatly, and some "eight San Jose's worth of population" is expected in the not-too-distant future. California's homes grew some 30 in area, and that's more volume to be kept cooled by people who cannot stand the increasing heat. The "Load from Hell" happens to the California utilities when working people get home and flip on their AC's almost all around the same block of time. The carbon foot print is expanded partly because California's utilities have to maintain wasteful, less-regulated, more-polluting feeder plants to make up for damaging/load-dropping surges in demand for residential AC units.

Worse, home AC units in their one-size-fits-all design operate inefficiently because they are optimized to work in all parts of the US, regardless of local climate. California-Oregon, Kansas-Iowa, and Georgia-Florida areas have differing temperatures and humidity effects/affects and now (well, in a few years) are going see adapted/diversified AC units going into new and into retrofitted homes.

Again, that was all from memory from listening to yesterday's Quest report on KQED (as i rode the public transit to work). I submitted to the firehose, but might not get picked up, so:

http://www.kqed.org/quest/radio/air-conditioning-reinvented

http://www.kqed.org/quest/blog/

IT centers' and data centers' increased responsibilities don't have to be headaches. We will just need more public policy (regulation?) or industry incentives to see manufacturing produce products that are increasingly more efficient, remote-manageable (for discounts on utility bills), and audited systems so that the national energy waste can be curtailed if not rolled back.

Heat is not a waste product.

[Colin Smith]

Perhaps you realise that heat is not a waste product.

We actually pay electricity companies and gas companies to heat our water and buildings for us.

Then we pay them some more to run our machines.

Then we pay them some more to run air conditioners to get rid of the heat our machines produce.

 

Re:Heat is not a waste product.

[EvilIntelligence]

One person's waste is another person's resource. In the case of data centers, heat is a disastrous problem that must be dealt with. There's not much to do with it besides push it out of the room. Could a system be built to push that heat back to a boiler and heat water so we don't need a gas or electric hot water heater? I guess so. But that begs the question: who will pay for the research to do so? Companies run on profits, not "eco-friendliness". No company will ever say "Hey, let's reuse some heat from the servers to boil water in the break rooms. That will be profitable!" Sorry. Reality sucks. But it's here to stay.

Re:Heat is not a waste product.

[MrSteve007]

You are correct that the heat is not a waste product and should be dealt with accordingly. I've re-ducted the 'waste' heat from our company's servers to help heat the rest of our building during most of the year.

Here's an article I wrote about the effort: http://www.djc.com/news/en/11202007.html

Next week, the EPA is even giving us a national award for the effort.

It all depends

[weston]

Ahh, more responsibility, additional liability, same pay scale.

There's no opportunity that isn't potentially like this -- that isn't at the very least *new* responsibility, *potential* liability, and potentially even less rewarding than what you've currently got. So, if risk isn't for you, don't answer when opportunity knocks.

I think this is a potentially interesting opportunity. IT is essentially a subset of operations / infrastructure at the moment, and it contains a lot of smart people. I think right now one of the biggest liabilities becoming any kind of IT pro has is that people tend to pigeonhole you, especially, it sometimes seems, people with the soft skills that seem to make up management.

Any opportunity to move beyond that paradigm is a general win, I think. And for IT pros who *do* have some degree of soft skills, negotiating compensation for additional responsibility and risk is probably also within the realm of possibility.

If it's not, your problem is quite possibly the place you work at.

Simple

[geekoid]

1) By a few acres out near the edge of the community.

2) Build one Solar Thermal collector.

3) Profit.

Let me restate your post in less words.

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't possibly make a difference, so don't even suggest trying!

PS: I like nuclear power.

Re:Let me restate your post in less words.

[silas_moeckel]

I think it comes down to stop wasting time and money on the conservation of energy and start making more of it, lots more of it. Nuclear power is the only currently viable method that does not significantly contribute to global warming etc etc etc. If we start making lots of electricity and make it cheap everything else will come to use it. Oil was cheap for a long time that's why we used it for energy. Show me 1 cent a kwh electricity and you can bet everybody with switch.

Re:Let me restate your post in less words.

[HisOmniscience]

The problem is that some people are terrified of nuclear power and do everything possible to stop it. I personally don't understand this irrational fear, since I grew up near the Savannah River Site, and most people in my community were comfortable with nuclear, but that has come from a long term relationship with the site, which is different from the rest of the US, which only remembers Chernobyl and Three Mile Island (even though Three Mile was a success). So, despite its benefits, nuclear will not be used as it could/should.

Re:Let me restate your post in less words.

[xaxa]

It's worth pointing out that in Europe many, many people were directly affected by Chernobyl, and still are. For instance, there's a large area of northen England / southern Scotland that *still* isn't allowed to be used for farming -- the produce is too radioactive (in 2006 they tested animals from the area and decided they were still too radioactive).
The restrictions for Northern Ireland areas were lifted in 2000.

http://www.foodproductiondaily.com/Quality-Safety/UK-sheep-above-radioactive-safety-libits-due-to-Chernobyl

It's all very well saying accidents won't happen, but they said that last time. And when they do happen, they can affect people for many years.

(I was recently reminded of the petrol/kerosene fuel storage depot in Hertfordshire, a few miles north of London, which blew up, causing the largest ever peacetime explosion in Europe. The sky was purple from the smoke and vapours for the rest of the day, and it made a mess of the area around the depot, but the lasting effect seems minimal. Even with toxic chemicals, the effects would probably have been confined to the local area.)

Re:Let me restate your post in less words.

[hesaigo999ca]

I tend to agree that nuclear is the way to go, but we need to advance light years in this dept. before we go any further. Step back once second and look at the mutation rates / defective birth rates in the area of a nuclear reactor....this is why we place them so far off in the middle of nowhere....no one wants to live near a nuclear reactor....if it blows, well we all know what happens with that.....but what if we had small fist size nuclear reactor in the basement we could do a diagnostics on everyday. a small contained reactor that sat in your house giving you power...

We would evolve as a species where everybody would need a plumber/nuclear biologist on call should anything break, but the way of life would be quite different....no problems getting energy in hard to reach places...we could all live in the middle of nowhere and not have to worry about not having power or some stupid excuse why they can't get you your electricity.

Anyways we are nowhere near this state of affairs, and wont be for another 100 years, but I do like where the future is going.

Re:Let me restate your post in less words.

[ckaminski]

I live in the most populated areas of Massachusetts and I have no fewer than three reactors within 50 miles of me. Let's see your data on birth defect/cancer rates, please.

Comparing an American/European PWR to Chernobyl is scaremongering.

Re:Let me restate your post in less words.

[Xacid]

You actually get more REMs from the sun than living next to a live reactor.

Re:Let me restate your post in less words.

[hesaigo999ca]

How many kids you got?

Re:Let me restate your post in less words.

[ckaminski]

Me personally, zero. But my group of friends collectively has somewhere around 50 kids, only one of which has developed anything remotely cancerous (brain tumor @ 2yo).

Re:Let me restate your post in less words.

[hesaigo999ca]

And they have been living near the reactor 1 month,
1 year, 10 years, 20 years etc.

It is also possible that some people are more susceptible then others.
Not everyone gets cancer from holding their cell phone to their brain...
but it is a proven fact that it does cause cancer after a certain amount of exposure.

Re:Let me restate your post in less words.

[ckaminski]

Their entire lives. Almost no one I know would choose to MOVE to Massachusetts to raise kids. Bleck. Babies AND snow? Fuck that.

As for it being PROVEN that cellphone's cause cancer? I'm skeptical. There's been lots of bitching and moaning back and forth for the better part of a decade; I'd say it's far from "proven."

<quote>
It is also possible that some people are more susceptible then others.
</quote>

You are certainly right about this. But if my geiger counter going off at the fence of the reactor site isn't any higher than it going off while I'm sitting in my backyard 50 miles away, is it really as dangerous as you say?

I'm choosing to argue with you, because this "radiation" obsession is about as rational as my friend who won't eat irradiated spinach (salmonella) or who's terrified of so-called Frankencorn.

Nuclear power plants present real concerns. Transport presents real risks. Deactivation is a concern. Reprocessing is a concern. Security is a concern. But this chicken-little syndrome about everything nuclear has to stop.

Depending on climate...

[Kalendraf]

...one of the larger energy problems for large brick'n'mortar buildings continues to be heating and/or cooling. There are a lot of companies that occupy older buildings that have very poor thermal qualities. A large chunk of a companies facilities budget might be spent purely on heating and cooling costs. Replacing the building may not be an option, and overhauling them can be challenging. In the days of cheap energy, it was often more cost effective to just live with those costs. However, as energy prices rise, the cost effectiveness of modernizing the buildings becomes more attractive.

I'm not sure IT is well-suited for overtaking such an endeavor. It seems that whatever facilities management departments in a company are currently dealing with the heating/air-conditioning issues would be the ones most likely assigned to this kind of effort. However, this would also offer an opportunity for knowledgeable and forward-thinking individuals to contribute in those areas. Hopefully the companies facing these challenges understand that.

Optimize software

[suck_burners_rice]

By optimizing software to complete a process with less instructions to execute, energy is actually saved. Many of the high-level frameworks that provide hundreds of layers of abstraction, and many programs that are implemented as scripts which must be parsed during execution, really serve to expend energy unnecessarily when the same result can be achieved through less steps. Thus, it should be "back to basics" and the techniques described in Knuth's works should be employed to compute the number of operations and reduce them whenever possible. Yes, because computer time is cheap compared with human time, you should slop together code and get it going, but now that energy costs are going up, it may actually become more economical to spend more time optimizing code.

Its a hard nut to crack.

[miffo.swe]

For every spare cpu cycle that gets released some schmuck developes another high level platform that eats them away. The biggest untapped area of energy savings are in making our software more efficient. While we can shave a couple of percents in hardware there are very big gains to be had in software.

Breaking the trend of hardware companies making more efficient computers that software quickly eats up is hard.

Multiseat and thin client

[Anonymous Coward]

Using multiseat and thin client computers can save more than 80% of energy cost.

Multiseat
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiseat

Thin client
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiseat

People simply don't need a 3GHz four core CPU for Word Processing.

Somebody will get smart

[WindBourne]

Locate major centers on the great lakes in major cities where you can use the lake to cool. Low energy. Combined with cheap nuke power,viola.

I don't get it.

[Pedrito]

"Reducing energy consumption really represents an opportunity for IT to change their relationships with the rest of the business," Mines says. "Now, IT can pull their chair up to the table of strategy making for the firm, becoming an enabler at a strategic level for the company."

Does that come with a pay raise? I mean really, it's Information Technology, not energy management. What do they think? Hey, they know computers, so give them our electricity bill problem. This is stupid. And what, we can't pull our chair up to the table now? Why not?

This articles doesn't make sense to me. Okay, they mention saving energy by telecommuting and that definitely saves gas, but in terms of electricity, that's just shifting the energy usage to someone's home instead of the office. It might save the company money, but it's not necessarily helping the environment out, and you have to factor in some lost productivity in this. Also, this isn't really an IT issue, it's a management issue about whether or not they want to allow telecommuting. IT only comes into play in enabling it.

I don't know about others, but I'm a software developer. I want to write software. I don't want to be managing power consumption and coming up with plans to help people telecommute. People throw enough shit jobs at me that have nothing to do with programming and now they want to throw more shit at us? Sorry, I'll pass, even if it means I don't get to sit at the grown-ups table.

A management nightmare

[hellfire]

It's easy for slashdotters to recommend telecommuting because, like driving, 98% of slashdotters act like they are good enough for telecommuting. That's patently false, because it's loads more difficult to manage most people via telecommuting.

The biggest barrier to telecommuting is bringing on entry level people who don't understand their job yet. Management and entry level people work best and most efficiently when seeing each other face to face. In a business, if it takes longer to ramp up an employee, or they are doing very poor as a remote employee, that goes to the bottom line as well, despite energy savings. I know it sucks that people aren't able to immediately telecommute, and it's true that some telecommuting is better than none at all. The problem is, just like everything else surrounding this energy issue, telecommuting is not the single panacea that one would believe.

I would in fact have IT work with HR and come up with a rough estimate of who might have the ability and willingness to work remotely and try to come up with a target figure. Then work with departments to determine who can and who can't work remotely, and come up with incentives for those who are able (but not necessarily willing). "Able" is of course a subjective term, which is why you need to involve HR. Don't let the IT asshole who can't figure out what TCP/IP means work from home as a network admin.

Re:A management nightmare

[AmericanInKiev]

This is not true, perhaps as often as it is true.

I bring 40 new people on every day (ok sometimes its the same people) Never see them, never train them, It's simple work obviously, but I have management systems which verify their work, tell them when they're wrong, and they tell me when they have an issue. I manage people differently than your average manager. I manage Heuristically, not personally; ergo, I don't waste time, energy, or money in face to face or silly corporate meetings.

It's not a fun place to work, unless being with your kids is "fun". These are single mothers with kids in many cases, who might otherwise not have a job.

Re:A management nightmare

[plasmacutter]

The biggest barrier to telecommuting is bringing on entry level people who don't understand their job yet. Management and entry level people work best and most efficiently when seeing each other face to face.

which is why I like a middle of the road idea of "office cells".

Rather than one huge central office for a city, you have smaller offices in the 'burbs.

In each you can (depending on the size and workflow of the firm) have a single department or "just large enough" subsets of each department represented.

Connect the offices via telepresence and VPN and you have much shorter drives, cheaper real estate/property tax costs, but without the downsides of isolated workers.

Re:A management nightmare

[plasmacutter]

what is your business, i'm quite interested.

Re:A management nightmare

[AmericanInKiev]

Crowdsourcing image cognition generally.

Re:A management nightmare

[don.g]

...solving captchas for, if not fun, at least profit?

Re:A management nightmare

[AmericanInKiev]

Ha,
I have no idea how solving captchas is profitable.
Our projects are far more complicated.

Re:Telecommuting - not necessarily

[shadowpuppy]

What space? I have a computer attached to the TV for home entertainment purposes and a small laptop. Then I use synergy (the tool not the buzzword) to share the laptop mouse and keyboard. I sit in the arm chair with the dog next to me. It works out really well.

At least IT boxes don't need gas...

[Trip6]

IT boxes need electricity but not petroleum products. We'll see electricity generated via alternative sources sooner rather than later - look for a resurgence in nuclear (the best choice IMO) as well as advances in wind, solar etc. If something needs petroleum products to be manufactured (e.g. tires), or operated (e.g. most cars) there's not much alternative except to invade the countries that have it.

Re:At least IT boxes don't need gas...

[FriedmannSolution5]

good point. a DIY open-source solar project possibly suited to small offices: http://www.solarnetwork.net/

Atom sucks amd is better for very low end.

[Joe The Dragon]

The Atom will be slow to run vista. 1gb of ram is to small. The Atom chipset uses a lot of power and dose not have DVI or gig-e.

A low end 740g / 780g / 790gx board + a low end amd dual core is better and they have good on board video for corporate use / vista areo and you can get board with side port ram so you are not wasting ram.

1gb is too small and the new office 2007 needs a bit of power / ram.

Replace the CRTs

[Tmack]

IF the management balks at the cost of spending $200 for some cheap 19" LCDs to replace the old 17" CRTs that "still work just fine", point out the electrical cost, then point out that the wattage difference is also extra heat for the chillers to pull out, which adds even more cost: the LCDs pay for themselves in electrical and hvac savings, not to mention employee happiness and keeping the office looking somewhat with the times (does wonders to recruitment when potential hires see LCD monitors instead of ancient CRTs).

If they still refuse, just walk around and turn OFF all the CRTs left burning all night with screen savers. I used to do this in the NOC, turned off 10-20 CRTs as I left for the night that were doing nothing but heating and lighting the room...

Tm

The real question is

[ashfields]

How can IT Businesses solve the Permanent Energy Crisis? Answer: provide more computing resources for fusion power research.

Operations Research reimagined

[robkill]

How is this really different from what Industrial Engineers and Operations Research people already do? Fedex, UPS, airlines and the like spend a lot of money planning routes for cost efficiency, taking into account time, fuel, labor, and other costs, including load balancing among drivers. Essentially it's another cost minimization problem with a slightly different set of variables. As more companies seek out solutions, it will become another specialized consulting field, where experts in building design, HVAC, electrical engineering will be hired for planning. Ideally, an in house IT department should not have to worry about this during normal operations. It would be only need to be addressed when one of the conditions underlying the original plan is no longer true, (e.g. growth beyond original plans, major hardware changes/upgrades etc.)

How exactly is IT inefficient?

[Simonetta]

Just exactly is information technology energy inefficient?

Is it through the use of thousands of PCs in a large corporation each using 400+ watts of power (PC and CRT combined)? Switch to laptops and large screen LCD monitors.

Is it because the output of the IT department isn't doing enough to reduce the overall company energy bill? Well, yes, the purpose of the IT department is to look for ways to reduce bottlenecks in the production process. Which means that it looks for ways to speed up production, which means using more energy.

Maybe they're trying to say that the IT department is using too much energy driving to work and they should just all stay home and work in their pajamas from their kitchen tables. Hell, maybe the IT department simply drinks too much coffee.

Sure they can order the IT department to tweak and focus and get their energy consumption down. After a whole year, the IT department just might save enough energy to match one trip in the corporate jet carrying a couple executives across the continent for the purpose of getting drunk with another couple of executives from another company. Nothing like real 'face time' when you need to close the big deal.

Let's face it. Everything that American management says is basically full of shit. Sometimes they actually know it and must say it anyway. Usually they don't. For that matter, much management statements from any country are BS. But the Americans are the world-masters at total corporate double-think and nonsense.

Dilbertize them and ignore them. In twenty years the smart managers will be still around and the vast majority of dumb ones will be most likely be dead. Simply because they don't know what to do to keep themselves alive and no one's going to go out of their way to see that they survive. You should survive, though. And don't be concerned about being green.
You can't be lean, mean, serene, and green all at the same time.

Re:How exactly is IT inefficient?

[Anonymous Coward]

Position whore.

Re:How exactly is IT inefficient?

[sumdumass]

Sure they can order the IT department to tweak and focus and get their energy consumption down. After a whole year, the IT department just might save enough energy to match one trip in the corporate jet carrying a couple executives across the continent for the purpose of getting drunk with another couple of executives from another company. Nothing like real 'face time' when you need to close the big deal.

I doubt they would save that much energy as it translates to costs. Your right on about everything else but let me tell you about some "energy" conservation issues I recently came accross.

I have a company I administer that was recently told that their electric bills were so high because of the 35 workstation computers and 5 servers they are using. They were told to get something more energy efficient and that would solve their utility bill woes. So I was instructed to purchase 35 new workstations and see if I couldn't consolidate the servers. We rotate half of the computers out every 2 years with the oldest one being about 3 years old at that time. Well, replacing all the workstations at once costs us roughly $30,000. Then you have to figure the 15 to 20 man hours configuring them for the domain, stripping the BS that came with them to lower the price out and adding all the company specific software to them (including the office programs and so on). In the end, I think the bill totaled around $38,000 (including new LCD monitors). They financed that at something like 5% for 3 years because it already blew our IT budget. The net savings in the energy bills were less then 1% of the total energy being used throughout the entire building. It lowered the bill by around $50 per month. Now granted we would have probably spent around $12000 or so of that in the next year for upgrades anyways and finally in the third year of the loan, we would have repeated it, but we wouldn't have been paying interest on it or anything like that. So for a $50 a month savings, or roughly $600 a year in energy use, they spent $38,000 and will end up paying roughly $3000 in interest over 3 years in which the interest alone is about $390 more per year then anything they saved.

At another site, we had this enterprising young go getter who thought he would save some energy by opening the windows and turning the AC off now that it is getting cooler and more comfortable outside. What he didn't plan on is that the server room is a sealed box with no windows and the AC unit specifically for it was the first one he turned off. I started getting calls that things were running slow at about 10 am the next day. This is a small site with only about 20 users locally and around 20 who remote in from either home or satellite offices. After logging in remotely to check out what was going on and finding nothing obvious, I decided to head down and take a look. I was met in the parking lot by a couple of fire engines with lights and sirens going as they pulled in. No, nothing caught on fire but something in the servers was over heating bad and when they opened the door to the server room, they said it felt like it was 200 degrees F in there and the digital thermometer on the AC unit was pegged and reading --- so they assumed it (or something) was on fire. Well, we have a halon suppression system and a couple of Co2 extinguishers and I had to fight with the fire department not to use water and let me open the cases of the servers (which were pretty hot). Then I noticed that the stand alone AC unit was turned off. We use 5 servers in there for normal stuff and two for sans with 3 that do nothing but duplicate everything. There is the one workstation (which was locked up or frozen by the time I got to it). Each of the servers have a raid controller with at least 5 hot swappable SCSI drives and some have as many as 20 if that gives you an idea of how much heat is generated from the electricity used by these things.

Anyways, the fire department used a thermal camera and found hot spots in the walls a

If only...

[Anonymous Coward]

...our government had listened to Albert Bartlett.
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=8B035434B7486E24

We could have seen it all coming.

It seems more like wishful thinking

[Moraelin]

Actually, if I understand the summary right, it says more like: well, we IT guys will teach the rest of the company too to be greener and more efficient and do more with less! And they'll listen to us! 'Cause we're smart and high-tech like that! And we have computers too!

Which, honestly, sounds to me like someone's wishful thinking and delusions of grandeur.

1. If IT is only 2% of a company's expenses, then they probably have some other stuff there which involves physics or chemistry. Like, you know, melting some steel, putting some serious amps through molten bauxite, or some tanks where all sorts of chemistry happens at high pressures and temperatures.

1.A. A lot of that is _hard_ to make more energy efficient. You can't, for example just cover a steel plant in thick thermal insulation, because then the air inside would reach a thousand degrees withing seconds. Or you can't melt steel with half the energy, because honestly there are some physical constants of the universe you'd need to change. Not saying it's impossible to come up with something better, but it isn't trivial stuff either. Partially because...

1.B. They do that already. Don't imagine that there isn't already a strong economic incentive to reduce your costs. In fact, it's the #1 thing you can promise, to get Wall Street to like you more. There are some smart engineers out there working on just that kind of stuff already.

1.C. Let's not kid ourselves, we may be smart guys and gals, but nobody knows _everything_. The idea that some guy sitting at the computer all day would also know enough to optimize an assembly line or cracking tower, just like that, if only someone would listen to him, are close to nil. It's a different domain. Chances are you, or your IT coleagues don't even know what that assembly line is like and how it works. You'd need to put years into just understanding that, and the science behind it, and, frankly, there are people more qualified than you there. We still _do_ produce other flavours of engineers, you know?

2. Well, I can't see many upper-level managers changing their processes just because the IT guy said so. Even _if_ the IT guy happens to be right. In a lot of places they're so caught up in their power games, and showing who's more important than who, that... well, to say the least, what makes you think they'd just give _you_ some of their power? Or better yet, give you power over them? Heh. Dream on.

Not a crisis

[Anonymous Coward]

If something is permanent it can't be a crisis. A crisis, by definition, has to be worse than the baseline.

Re:Telecommuting - not necessarily

[AmericanInKiev]

I think you misunderstood my point.

People who go into an office today - and managers who look, touch and feel, are dinosaurs in a telecommuting age.

The connected workers will emerge in new businesses which choose managers and employees, as well as a payment and incentive plans, based on the connected model.

Then, more likely the brick and mortar business will downsize and outsource - into these new businesses which are connected.

These arguments about how one "prefers" to talk to people face-to-face, or yielding a part of your house, are moot. I don't see people making that choice.

P.S. the connected worker may not live in your city, country, or continent.

Bwahahaha!

[Anonymous Coward]

"vast knowledge of company networks, equipment, and work processes..."

*waits for IT to save him, while browsing on company mandated (much safer!) IE6 on WEP encrypted network*

Low-hanging fruit?

[extrasolar]

Overall, if you look at not disrupting normal functioning of society, aren't we already pretty darn efficient as it is?

The problem is that we've run out of low hanging fruit and we're pretty much doomed until we can evolve to stretch our necks out like a giraffe.

Re:Low-hanging fruit?

[Ambitwistor]

Overall, if you look at not disrupting normal functioning of society, aren't we already pretty darn efficient as it is?

Not particularly. California, for example, has half the per-capita energy consumption as the rest of the U.S., due largely to several decades of conservation and efficiency initiatives. Their per capita energy use has remained flat since the 1970s, while other states have increased theirs. And they've done it at a cost of just a couple cents per kWh, which is much cheaper than not improving efficiency and building more power plants instead.

Not necessarily

[Minozake]

The maintenance staff may be able to help in that area. Either by making it
more sensitive or installing a switch. Assuming, of course, that the professor
holds the hall most of the time.

I thought occupancy sensors had an override switch or something.

It also assumes carbon is a pollutant

[unassimilatible]

I thought the debate wasn't over on Slashdot whether the gas we all exhale - and plants "inhale" - is a pollutant that causes global warming.

Again, I'd like to see some empirical tests of these climate models before we recreate civilization as we know it. Which, of course, will take 1000's of years to prove right or wrong.

Re:It also assumes carbon is a pollutant

[Descalzo]

Well, anything that is present in enough quantities to disrupt something can be considered pollution. Dirt can be a pollutant if it gets washed into a pond and blocks out the sunlight so the plants cant grow and the plant-eating bugs die so the fish don't have any food. Likewise, carbon dioxide can be considered a pollutant.

Virtualization solves the data center problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Virtualization in the data center, coupled with Moores law as it applies to increasing CPU performance will take care of part of the problem. Today I can buy a dedicated hardware appliance that runs over 60 virtual machine workloads, costs about the same as a Dell server, and uses a fraction of the power and cooling.

On the desktop, thin clients are long overdue, and with lower cost devices from a range of suppliers (I like these ones) a desktop costs you only 5 watts these days.

AG.

Pah, Asian countries

[patio11]

Here in Japan (which is only an Asian country when it wants to be and, most of the time, it doesn't), they teach kids to do mathematics by visualizing a calculator. Its only in Asian-all-the-time-countries like Thailand where you're too poor to afford a good imaginary calculator that you need to revert to the old imaginary abacus.

And if you think Japan is advanced, I hear eight year olds in the US are starting to do imaginary Google searches on their imaginary Wikipedia... creating the fastest lookup of worthless trivia about Matter-Eater Lad ever seen in the history of the human race. [needs citation: OK, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matter-Eater_Lad , there, are you happy?]

Abacus skills != mathematical insight

[dafrazzman]

It helps them to visualize numbers and visualize the processes of arithmetic. Probably an education emphasizing the use of wetware a little more would lead to the creation of more visionaries in the 'Westen World'. Yes, I know, old stuff (Computer Power and Human Reason by Joseph Weizenbaum, 1976). CC.

Not so much. Take young Gauss. Instead of using crazy number crunching skills to add all the integers between 1 and 100, he visualized doubling and reversing the list, noticing that this equals 100(101), coming up with the formula n(n+1)/2 for finding integer sums.

So which has more vision? Crunching numbers, or finding an ingenius shortcut? Seriously, who would have thought of that? Certainly not somebody whose greatest skill was with the abacus. In fact, his daughter famously said that he could only count to 4, "after that came n." Gauss was the greatest mathematician in his era (and some consider him the greatest of all time), and he probably never used (or needed) an abacus. Point is, being a human calculator will give you no more added vision than, well, a calculator.

Disclaimer: This anecdote on young Gauss is mostly apocryphal, though it is widely believed to be true in the mathematical and historical community (although his daughter's quote comes from reliable sources). Opinions may vary.

Re:Abacus skills != mathematical insight

[hesaigo999ca]

I love math!

Re:Abacus skills != mathematical insight

[MemoryAid]

I got it: 5050!

(It's 5,050, right?)

Or was I supposed to solve the formula... 1/2 n^2 + 1/2 n

Whatever. Do I get a cookie or not?

Re:Abacus skills != mathematical insight

[dafrazzman]

It's not really relevant, but yes, it is 5050.

If I gave cookies away for that, I'd run out fast. Better luck next time.

IT's vast knowledge ? Probably an oxymoron...

[chthon]

You are extremely lucky if you have such an organisation. Our IT department can hardly find its own nose to poke in.

Global load balancing

[An dochasac]

We all learned it during the 1970's "energy crisis", the problem isn't lack of energy. The problem is that the energy is in the wrong form in the wrong place at the wrong time. IT does have a solution for that, Global demand load balancing. Outsource your IT demand to a server in Iceland or somewhere else where energy is cheap and clean. Putting your PCs and servers in big cities where both energy and real estate is expensive is already as out of fashion as 10$ oil, Microsoft Windows and Reaganomics.

Ban those space heaters.

[Anonymous Coward]

And when the PHB decrees the boiler gets shut down for the summer until Oct 15, and the system tries to use that "hot" outside summer air for heat, and its 50 degrees (F or 10 C for the rest of you) outside, enforce that ban strictly. Then look at how that energy saving is balanced by zero productivity and increased health care costs.
I'm sorry, the building just BSOD'd.

Re:Ban those space heaters.

[R2.0]

I'll see your case of the sniffles and raise you third degree burns - cubicle electrical systems are NOT designed to take those loads.

Yes, building operators do stupid things - they are people too, and my point is that real energy conservation comes from people control. That doesn't apply only to office drones.

WTF?

[VoidCrow]

Why the 'Permanent Energy Crisis'?

Junk journalism?

I sure hope...

[Number6.2]

Bangalore is up to the challenge! Is there anybody left in the US working "big IT"?

Watching the big Lay Off Clock...

They *all* die, but not of heat stroke :) :)

[curri]

Actually, all people die, eventually :), but people don't really die of heat stroke. I grew up in the Yucatan, with max daily temps of about 40C (104F) most of the year, and *never* heard of anybody die of heat stroke.

OTOH, people used to put the oddest things about cause of death before modern medicine :)

Re:They *all* die, but not of heat stroke :) :)

[sumdumass]

104f isn't that hot if you don't over exert yourself and drink plenty of liquids. Something that is really dangerous in which the Yucatan is known for is the humidity. The humidity stops the body's natural cooling from working as efficient and can allow it to over heat.

Do you ever wonder where the "Mexicans are lazy" stereo type comes from? I know it is country intuitive to anyone who has had to work with them. It is because they take a lot of "cool down" rests and sometimes a lot of naps which bring the body to a state where it is creating the least amount of heat possible. In the middle east, they deal with the heat by placing layers of clothing on top of other layers to create a pocket of cooler air next to the skin. I have a friend from Egypt who came to visit and showed me this a couple of summers ago when the temp reached over 100F. The US military when in the regions used the cool breathable clothing and relies a lot on hydration and the natural perspiration for cooling.

Make no mistake, heat stroke isn't some medieval condition used to explain sudden death in hot environments. It is where the body creates more heat then it can expel and raises the body temperature to unsafe levels. A temperature of 105f can and is often deadly. At 103f, you can cause brain damage and is very serious. Different regions have different ways of dealing with heat and some are more efficient at expelling it then others. You learn to live that way when your in the environment for an extended period of time. The problem is that most areas that are inhabitable, have mediocre and relatively comfortable climates 60% or more of the time and only reach the super hot days in which heat stroke is a compounded issue a few days of the year.

Also, I did some checking. The average highs for the day in Yucatan is more like 95f. Believe it or not, that is still safer then when the outside temperature is higher then the normal body temp(98.5F) because it still allows for cooling. On the 104F days, you don't want to be exerting yourself a great deal and you want to stay hydrated. We as a species can handle temps greater then 104F but we need to take precautions like staying hydrated without over hydrating, making sure we have salt (electrolytes) in us which is expelled in our sweat -lower the boiling point of it and allows it to evaporate more easily (it is also crucial for cells to function but we sweat the salt out to aid in cooling) without having too much salt which creates a water retention problem, and not over working our bodies. Sometimes, something as little as walking can cause a tremendous build up in body heat when the outside air temp is hotter then the normal body temp.

Quick way to save gazillions

[DirkGently]

Your company building a new datacenter? Screw California. Put it in a northern state -- Any latitude above Chicago should do. All of a sudden, your cooling bill is effectively cut in half. Likely more, considering that, in the north, 90F is the exception and not the norm.