Companies Waste $2.8 Billion Per Year Powering Unused PCs 348
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."
Turning PCs into a grid (Score:5, Interesting)
Scientists and students alike are allowed to use it freely for their computations. There is a batch submission system, and a whole lot of numerical calculations run on these computers during night. There are a few caveats, though:
All in all, you get lots of CPU, but low reliability. Which is fine for many applications. Additionally, not only you prevent energy wastage, but you also use the hardware more efficiently (so that the brand new quad core of the dpts secretary actually gets used in a reasonable way). :-)
By the way -- our admins hate it, when Windows computers are being switched off. They run the updates at night, as during the day the users are likely to stop an update that takes to long. I was being bashed for switching off computers during night
j.
Re:Same here (Score:2, Interesting)
But give me a pc that won't die on this, and I'll do it.
BUY software to shut down a PC?? (Score:3, Interesting)
The ROI article mentions a product which you BUY to shut down your PCs.
I have a free solution:
shutdown -s -t 0 -f -m
You can schedule that at your server to force all computers to shut down at a specified time.
Something along the lines of
for /f "skip=3 tokens=1 delims=\" %m in ('net view') do shutdown -s -t 0 -f -m %m
Now, you could be nice and change -t 0 to something like -t 45 and give any poor sucker at a terminal a chance to shutdown -a, or at least close programs. (There will be one error at the end for the success notice.)
I do not recommend using that on a network without some tweaking: it will also shut down servers which show up in net view. Just a basic idea, and I do use a modified version of it at a couple of sites.
Even a scheduled wol.exe could run to make sure computers are able to run updates overnight.
Or you could push out a group policy that forces suspend after an hour of inactivity, and sets Windows Update to wake the computer to run. No fuss, no muss.
Now, what did all that cost us?
Dumb Terminals (Score:5, Interesting)
Use dumb terminals, something like sunrays...
Configure them to shut off when idle instead of run a screensaver, when you power it back on it boots pretty much instantly and the user can re-enter their password (or reinsert their smartcard) and be back where they were, all the session state is stored on the server.
No need to keep machines on overnight for updates, because the terminals are dumb enough not to need updates...
Dumb terminals boot instantly, so no need to keep machines pre loaded to save booting time.
Put a power breaker by the door, last one out can turn the breaker off, first one in can turn it on (they used to do this in our computer labs at college)... There shouldn't need to be anything turned on in an office when there's no people there.
On the reg yesterday... (Score:2, Interesting)
So this was on the Reg yesterday, and the comments were all virtually the same, on two variations:
1. The company has to pay people to sit around while PCs power up and down, eliminating any benefit from powering down the PCs since people are so much more expensive.
2. The company pushes updates and such automatically at night when computer/network usage is low, making it less expensive (again, saving money over power saved) than pushing the updates when people turn on their computers in the morning.
I turn most of my computers off at home and work because I hate wasting the power, and I have a problem with my home PC keeping the fan on in sleep mode. On my laptop I put it in sleep mode, plugged into the wall. I have no idea how much power this uses, but I do it so that I get a quick restart in the morning for checking slashdot @ breakfast. It bothers me that I might be wasting a few dollars per month keeping it in sleep rather than hibernate (which doesn't work on my machine - Ubuntu on a IBM T30) or full shutdown.
More co-operation from BIOS manufactures (Score:4, Interesting)
As a Linux user I am used to laptops and desktops never quite working because the BIOS power management only works with Windows.
There are two possible reasons for that. One is that the open source software hasn't been written yet to take advantage of published APIs or, another possibility is that the manufacture is hiding it's APIs to make it really difficult to use anything except Windows to manage the system power.
If it is the latter then in it seems to me highly irresponsible on the part of the hardware manufactures. How to save energy when their hardware is not being used is really not something to be hiding for any reason these days.
I realise I don't exactly represent a significant number of users here. I'm just thinking in terms of what I can do to save energy at my own desktop (apart from the obvious switching stuff off when not in use!) and what's in the way. And Windows-centric BIOS's seem to be the main culprit.
I wonder how many of these computers... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Productivity (Score:5, Interesting)
Never heard of suspend? Hybernate?
s2disk hibernate + WoL or scheduled wake-up w/BIOS (Score:3, Interesting)
Ouch. Dude, if you need to lose 15 to 20 minutes (let alone 45) to restart your PC, something is terminally wrong with your setup. Vista on a 486?
Even in such pathological case, wouldn't suspend or hibernate be an option?
I always power down my (work or home) PC when I expect to not need it for a while. Initiating hibernation takes me 2 seconds, resuming 30 to 40s in the rare instances when the machine is not already up again by the time I get back to it, or if I need to VPN into it.
I'm using Linux (Ubuntu 8.10, doesn't matter much), shutting down via 's2disk'. Basically, it's hibernate, ie all applications etc are saved to disk in whatever state they happen to be, no need to exit any etc... /fast/.
s2disk uses compression by default, so while it may take a bit longer for the machine to actually finish writing everything to disk and power down (who cares), resumes are
Powering back up is usually triggered via the BIOS' RTC alarm, scheduled every weekday shortly before I'm expected to arrive at work. Worst case (say I'm there early), my PC is ready with all my apps running in less than 40s, time I may need anyway to check my voicemail etc.
Remote access via my company SonicWALL SSL-VPN is also a breeze, since this gateway can issue Wake-on-LAN to whatever one wants to get to.
Reducing waste in general is IMHO just being responsible.
"We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children."
Not convinced - but what about Sleep Mode? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:obvious reaction (Score:5, Interesting)
The story says $36 per desktop computer per year could be saved. Now that sound like a lot of money at a company with 500 desktops ($18,000). But that company will have at least 500 employees and probably more. At 10% more or 550 employees to work those 500 desktop computers, that brings the potential salary increases to about $32 a year. If the average person works 38 hours a week and 48 weeks a year (1842 hours), that's about a penny or less per hour raise.
But it gets even worse. The heat cycles of computers heating up when in use and cooling down when powered off will take a small toll on the life of the computer. So I guess the real question might be is if the computer lasts 2 years instead of 3 or 4 or even 5 years, how many of those would need to be replaced because the Co2 emitted from making the things from scratch outweighed the entire carbon savings from the $36 worth of electricity not in use assuming that the power for those computers don't already come from a Co2-less generating facility. My guess is that an early replacement on any of them will offset any environmental savings which sort of makes this idea more hand waving then anything.
Re:Half an hour a year? (Score:3, Interesting)
As annoying as all these useless background and systray apps are, isn't this as much the fault of lazy IT departments as it is the companies which produce these programs? And from all these comments, it would seem this is a problem with *many* IT departments.
Why do the IT people leave all of this stuff on? I have to assume if people complain about it so much that they can't take it off themselves otherwise they would have long ago. So why can't IT be bothered to properly configure the machines they maintain?
Surely most IT depts. configure one machine and ghost/clone it to others for backup and replication purposes and to prevent duplication of work. It's even less forgivable to not get rid of these apps if you only have to do it once.
Re:s2disk hibernate + WoL or scheduled wake-up w/B (Score:3, Interesting)
I can tell you from experience in a large security-conscious organization that such pathological setups are not nearly as uncommon as you seem to think. The combination of antivirus and extremely aggressive login scripts bring fairly modern hardware with XP Pro to its knees on startup.
When I or any of my coworkers have to cold boot, or often even just whenever we dock an already booted laptop, it means a minimum of 5-10 minutes enforced coffee break. If you're actually in a hurry to get something for someone standing in your office, it can sure seem like 30 min.
The worst is when it boots up and tells you 10 minutes later that it's done installing some software update the login scripts had for it, so now you need to reboot. Or rather, that it's going to reboot in 30 seconds, and there's nothing you can do.
Re:s2disk hibernate + WoL or scheduled wake-up w/B (Score:2, Interesting)
Sorry for the followup, just wanted to clarify:
That's 5 to 10 minutes before Explorer or the start menu will respond to mouse events, not 5 to 10 minutes before the apps I need to use are open and ready to use.
After a torturously long OS boot, I get to wait for visual studio to start up, which takes nearly as long. Add on outlook, Groove, etc, and I'd say the original poster isn't too far off on 15-20 minutes before the computer is ready to do any real work.
Power (Score:5, Interesting)
And any company THAT bothered by this would be using more power-efficient PC's anyway. Face it, 99% of staff using a computer as part of their daily work don't need a full desktop PC and certainly don't need dual-core systems with Gbs of RAM. So instead of faffing about trying to recoup some of the loss from buying that terrible hardware in the first place (monetary costs, environmental costs, maintenance costs, etc.) they would be much better off buying some low-power desktops (like the Atom's, Via's etc.) and thus not pumping most of their electricity into heat wastage, fans, office cooling, etc. when they could just have a small 60W or so (maximum) PC that does the same jobs.
Those who are committed to their existing hardware - well, they should have been specifying and testing WOL, ACPI sleep, etc. in the first place if they wanted to make sure it worked in their particular environment. Chances are those stuck on old machines will have more problems trying to get the PC to sleep and to wake on cue than they would have just to buy a new cheap desktop. My pet hate is machines that won't WOL without having first been turned on manually - a power cut overnight (when the machines aren't on) means that the PC's just sit there and ignore WOL packets. And that is on fairly recent hardware (2 years old?). I know it's "wake" on LAN, but a full boot and complete shutdown (not sleep mode) will let it respond to WOL packets forever until the power disappears again.
I would hazard a guess that the following ALL save more power than would be saved by shutting off PC's overnight for a lot less hassle and inconvenience:
- Cutting off background services in Windows.
- Replacing hardware with more modern equipment.
- Disabling, centralising and/or just changing vendor of the antivirus programs to use less CPU, disk-access, etc.
- Replacing 10% of computers with a low-power alternative (even a laptop!)
- Turning off WAP's and other unnecessary networking hardware overnight.
- Turning the room temperature up/down by half a degree permanently (depending on the outside environment)
- Installing doors that shut themselves to keep hot/cold air in.
- Opening a couple of blinds/curtains to let sunlight into some of the less-used but still heated areas (cold-countries only) or fitting blinds/curtains to reduce the heat taken in from outside (hot-countries only).
- Training users to use shortcut keys instead of clicking the mouse for everything.
- Or removing that poxy plasma TV in the company reception which is on permanent loop playing to nobody.
The thing is, we take power so much for granted that when we get told to "save" it, we worry over the little bits (energy-saving bulbs) and completely forget about the larger draws (heating / cooling). $36 / year / PC is nothing, no matter the scale of the company. Even a 100 PC office (which could theoretically save $3600 / year) will probably spend multiples of that on heating/cooling, bringing someone in to do the work, or make multiples of that amount by selling off some of their old IT kit, fitting those light fittings that only switch on if someone is actually in an office, etc.
Getting businesses to understand means providing a valid, comparable reason. That normally means *money*. But even the green-friendly companies will save much, much, much, much more money by just replacing el-cheapo PC World computer with a decent low-power one and then selling off the old kit. If you do it right, you would even MAKE money by doing this (I know it's about £200/unit for a decent mini-ITX machine, and you could easily get that for a recent second-hand machine of good spec).
It's a *waste* of time. The proportion of power you save does not justify the effort to do it, especially not when a tiny, unnoticeable adjustment to a thermostat saves ten times the amount of power, and the hassle associated with implementing power-friendly PC's does not justify the end. Put a sign up and send a memo round to staff to turn off their PC
The Math... (Score:3, Interesting)
The article said:
and
When I multiply $36 in savings per PC times the 108 Million PCs being described, I get a possible savings of $3.88B, or about $1B more than the original article reported. We "waste" $2.8B, but we can "save" $3.88B by turning off unused PCs and practicing power management? Are the savings or the waste over-estimated? One has to be wrong...
Install LinuxBIOS, too (Score:3, Interesting)
One of the reasons the machines don't get turned off is the expensive 5 minutes wasted by boot times. It's an irritating waste of precious time as you return from lunch or start work in the morning, it discourages turning off boxes at night, and it discourages turning off boxes during the day when unused.
Unfortunately, this is partly the fault of Microsoft (who enourage stupid, resource gobbling behavior at boot time like frequent resource scanning by update software and unnecessary disk indexing), and BIOS's that use ancient, proprietary, and frankly broken tools to scan for hardware that hasn't been used in 10 years. The OLPC very successfully uses a LinuxBIOS and booting procedure that cuts this lengthy pause to seconds: it should be on every server and most desktops in the country, but motherboard makers are very reluctant to support it for various reasons. As near as I can tell, it's mostly due to fear of intellectual property issues involving ancient BIOS utilities, and unwillingness to publish their own hardware knowledge associated with their own particular component selection.
I'd love to see ASUS use LinuxBIOS by default. I've actually been asked to do that for deployments: it wasn't mature enough to use yet at that time, but it seems much more stable now and of higher quality than the average new motherboard BIOS.
Re:Productivity (Score:4, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Familiarity Breeds Contempt (Score:3, Interesting)
Once electricity prices start seriously ramping up (which they inevitably will), companies will be giving their utility bills a lot more scrutiny.
I suggest you look at photovoltaics and a little thing called Moore's law. Electricity will be cheaper in the future than in the now. Of course, conservation, including automagically turning off unused computers, is still the best buy. But my computer stays on. 8 months out of the year, it's an efficient electric heater. 2 months out of the year, it's an undesirable heat source and i might turn off the monitor at night if i think about it. The article, not that i read it, didn't seem to account for the heating value of the "wasted" electricity. In most of the country most of the time, electric heat is a pretty good buy compared to natural gas, coal, oil, firewood, personal nuke, whale oil, or other options.