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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'm at work, enviro-conscious, and I love my company. So I'll turn my workstation off right n
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
what exactly are these programs doing which takes such an incredible amount of time before they become useful?
Initializing DRM layers, generating transparent overlay effects, decreasing the spin speed of the hard drive and generating a nice Vista logo on the desktop.
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
Is THAT what they're pushing as minimum spec for Windows now?
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.
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.
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
Why "5 minutes"? I would guess that if you turn off PCs after the workday and don't turn them back on until the next morning you save more like 15 to 16 hours of run time.
That's 960 minutes per day x 230 work days = 220,800 minutes. Or 3,680 hours per desktop per year. That's not counting in the 48 hours every weekend (52) which equals an additional 2496 hours, plus however many holiday days at another 24 hours each. If there are seven for whatever business, that's another 168 hours. And if the worker takes off two weeks each year, that's an additional 336 hours.
Grand total is 6,680 hours of wasted run time as an estimate.
For the people who run the fancy screensavers, the power used is fairly large. A blank screen is the best. That lets the monitor go into low power.