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Companies Waste $2.8 Billion Per Year Powering Unused PCs
snydeq writes "Unused PCs — computers that are powered on but not in use — are expected to emit approximately 20 million tons of CO2 this year, roughly equivalent to the impact of 4 million cars, according to report by 1E and the Alliance to Save Energy. All told, US organizations will waste $2.8 billion to power 108 million unused machines this year. The notion that power used turning on PCs negates any benefits of turning them off has been discussed recently as one of five PC power myths. By turning off unused machines and practicing proper PC power management, companies stand to save more than $36 per desktop PC per year."
I think the fundamental problem is that in the West, energy (specifically watts-hours of electricity in this case) have been so cheap in the last few decades as to be effectively free. This is changing now through worldwide recession and the depletion of the easy-to-get fossil fuel. Once electricity prices start seriously ramping up (which they inevitably will), companies will be giving their utility bills a lot more scrutiny.
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
I could lose $36 worth of productivity in a few days. My desktop and servers stay ON.
Actually, even the ones powered by coal are likely not wasting much CO2. Considering a machine is most likely to be sitting idle at night, and that the coal plants have to operate 24/7 (they can't dynamically lower their power output, that's provided by secondary sources during the afternoon). Power usage generally peaks in the afternoon, and so other power generation stations (those like natural gas that can be brought online quickly) handle the peak load, but, as coal power is cheaper, they try to get as much as possible from the coal. If the base load provided by the coal is greater than the power being consumed, than any additional power demanded isn't really "wasting" electricity. It's just using electricity that has already been generated. Of course, if this amount is great enough to change the power plants operating conditions, it does matter, and as far as the businesses are concerned, this power does cost money, and quite a bit of it.
However, saying the plant is releasing more CO2 for these computers is generally not true.
Phil
This doesn't take into account the vast, vast amount of time, energy and resources wasted by people who don't know how to use the fucking things properly in the first place. Let's start there before we get to titivating with power-management.
I've lost count of the number of times I've had to show people how to do the simplest things, to save them hours of wasted effort each week. This usually leads to me writing explicit instructions and disseminating to those concerned but, ultimately, people just don't care (and I have trained people for a living with notable success, so it's not a "techie-personality pissing people off" thing).
Power-management? How about education. If every office-worker were to spend one day a year going through their daily grind with someone sat beside them who knows how to use their PC's potential (and how to explain it), productivity would double. I'm not just slagging off my luddite colleagues here; I know there are things I could do better, and would genuinely welcome the attention of someone who could show me how.
Sorry to vent my frustrations here, but it's that or do it at work. To put it bluntly: nice study, but frankly you're just pissing in the ocean.
Meta will eat itself
It has nothing to do with loving your company. What people don't realize often is that wasting company resources affects those who work in it.
If the employees are wasting too much power, the money to pay for them won't be taken from shareholder dividends or executive incentives. It will come from salaries.
So, it's not about loving the company. Don't waste company resources because, in the end, it's YOU who pays the bill.
Besides, also think about the impact of waste on the environment.
Umm you forgot that along with "scientific evidence", they also claim the consensus is in and the science is settled so if you question it, you either hate people or work for an oil company.
Don't be so naive. You save the company money, you won't see a dime. Shareholder dividends and executive incentives expand to fill the available budget.
It's sad that it's so easy to come up with ways to save power, but so few places and people actually implement them. I even have a colleague who refuses to turn off his computer, because "a 100 W more or less doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things". He's right about that, of course, but what he and many others don't realize is that doing the little things can actually affect the grand scheme of things. I, for example, use less than half as much electricity as the average household around me, simply because I use energy-efficient products and turn off most things when I'm not using them. It's not a lot of trouble, but if everybody did it, we could easily halve the power consumed by households!
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Exactly. Environmentalism will get more traction if they are honest about their data. We as a general population are use to hearing the doom conditions, as people are trying to push their agenda. So they do their computer models and give the results of the 4th standard deviation of the results.
The more truth is the fact if we reduce our power consumptions for the long term then the power companies can lower their output, as there is less demand. However the fact that your PC is on last night doesn't mean you PC is the cause of so much Carbon in the air. As it would still be there if you turn it off.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
So set up a RTC wake-up to 15 minutes before you usually turn up at work? Go make a coffee in the meantime?
It's not the fall that kills you. It's the sudden stop at the end. -Douglas Adams
Dude, you can shut down a PC at night, and get it running in the morning.
You can not, however, do the same thing with a power plant. It takes much longer to cycle up.
Anyhow, what we would need is a lot of high-efficiency photovoltaic panels, that would create the most power exactly when you have peak demand in the areas where solar is viable to begin with.
Every problem has a solution that is simple, easy and wrong. Selling our Liberty for a little Security is a much too de
It's still wasting company money. Who cares about how much CO2 is put out when really all the company really cares about is how much money they're wasting? For that matter, if we turned our computers off at home, we'd save money on our own bills. I know my power bill would probably be $20-$30 less if I turned my computer off when it wasn't in use.
You are missing the point completely. The point is that if most businesses started switching off their computers at night, the power companies would most likely change their operating conditions.
It might make it less economically viable to maintain such a high base load during the night, meaning it becomes more profitable to shift some of the power production on the sources with a shorter power up/down cycle.
Educating companies about how much money they are wasting is likely to be far more effective than asking them to be green for the environment.
You do realize there are consequences from getting your power from nuclear reactors and then wasting it, don't you?
Higher load means more reactors may need to be built, it generates more radioactive waste, heats up more water, raises the risk of accident, etc.
And since you are using nuclear fuel that much faster, more has to be mined and refined which adds to CO2 loading, chemical and radioactive chemical waste streams.
In addition, since the country is on a grid and utilities can flow excess capability into neighboring regions, you reduce that excess capability and therefore increase the amount of CO2 that some coal or natural gas-fired plant generates.
There are consequences for everything.
And sure, your computer or two doesn't make much of a contribution, but the more people that feel like you and also waste power adds up. That is the attitude that got us where we are now.