Are computer users taking advantage of energy savers they already own?

By Paul Hull

Green is a color that Americans in increasing numbers are beginning to favor—and not just on St. Patrick’s Day. Consumers are averring their support of products that recognize the problems we have already caused for our environment today and for that of our children and grandchildren. But you know American consumers—how we demand products that are more environmentally friendly, products that save energy by being more efficient than yesterday, and how we place limits on what we are willing to spend to achieve the greener goals. In one report we saw earlier this summer, an executive in the apparel and accessories sector said his customers wanted environmentally friendly products, but only if they came from the right designers. The onus for being efficient seems to rest solidly on the shoulders of manufacturers. They are not, however, the only ones who can help solve our energy-efficiency problems.

Can we fight the increasing cost of power by changing our own practices rather than by simply declaring that the manufacturers must make everything better? We consumers can reduce the amount of gasoline use by driving less, so that some of the responsibility for lowering emission problems rests on the consumers’ shoulders, not just with the manufacturers of engines and transmissions. Similarly, in other sectors where energy could be saved, it may be up to the consumer to lead the way, even if serious producers are working hard to offer vehicles and equipment that require less energy to run. Take computers. Can you reduce the costs of running your computers? Do you run them more than you have to? Do you have them running when nobody is going to use them? Do they cost less than their own power?

“While it is important to pursue alternative sources of energy, most have a long time horizon before they can make a real impact,” comments Bob Miller, chief executive officer of ONStor Inc. “In my mind, we in the IT [information technology] industry have to do our part, which is to attack the other end of the problem by reducing consumption and increasing efficiency. As a result of significant technology advances in hardware and software, businesses can now be green while saving the other kind of green: money. To lower skyrocketing energy costs, businesses must focus on energy efficiency as an important component of their decision-making process—not just of their desktop computers but also their computing infrastructure. Both are important, but the fact is that servers and storage arrays draw the most power and are the fastest-growing requirement. This, in turn, drives even greater energy usage by the HVAC systems needed to cool the many square feet of dedicated and undedicated space in which these devices operate.” The energy required by computers involves not only the machines themselves, but also their environments in the office, the school, the home, the county offices, and all those other buildings where computers are standard. In other words, this means everywhere that work is done or entertainment is enjoyed.

One of our nation’s sectors where computers run and run for the benefit of the public is the world of public libraries. “One of the big questions 20 years ago was whether PCs should be turned off at the end of the day,” observes Marshall Breeding, director of innovative technologies for the Jean and Alexander Heard Library at Vanderbilt University. “One school of thought said that computers would last longer if left on. The argument was that the power spike associated with the initial startup was more harmful to the internal components than the wear associated with longer operation. Others argued that turning equipment off when unused would extend the life of a computer. In recent years, the best advice suggests turning off computing equipment when it’s not in active use. The components in current equipment suffer no ill effects from being powered off and on, and organizations can save energy costs by turning them off.”

It used to be, then, that it was possible negative impact on the equipment (computers), rather than the cost of the energy used, that prompted owners to keep their machines switched on. Today, computer equipment costs less and energy costs a lot more, so budget considerations have a different base: the rapidly increasing cost of energy. Last winter, many computer users (such as libraries and other popular entities) were shocked by their energy bills. In some budget meetings, public and corporate, it was decided to postpone the hiring of new personnel until the energy issues could be analyzed and controlled. Much of the waste of energy for powering computers is due to the ignorance of the users (i.e., the millions of people like me) or to the attitude that nothing we do as individuals will have much effect.

Savers? Saviors? Savoir Faire?
Most of us who use computers and bless their abilities know precious little about their design or components. It’s rather like the car or television situation. We love them; think we couldn’t survive without them; but we have feeble knowledge of how they work. Many of us have screen savers. They start when the computer is idle, even for a short time. Screen savers arrived in the early years of universal computers to avoid the burn-in that was possible if an image stayed on the screen for a long time. Most of today’s screens won’t suffer from burn-in, and flat-panel LCD monitors don’t have the problem at all. “Screen savers do nothing to help reduce a computer’s power consumption,” advises Breeding. “Some of them have fairly intensive graphics and actually require more computer processing than spreadsheets or word processors. In some ways, screen savers can be harmful because they keep the user from enabling features that can actually extend the life of a monitor and reduce power consumption.”

Does our government care about energy wasted? There is a program called Energy Star. Manufacturers and their employees are probably aware of it but it may not have penetrated the meetings and budget conferences of many computer users. Energy Star is a voluntary program, a kind of joint effort of the US Department of Energy, the EPA, and manufacturers in many sectors of industry. Products that qualify for the Energy Star must exceed the minimum requirements of energy consumption set by federal authorities. If there are no such standards yet, the products must demonstrate certain energy-saving features. This year, with new specifications, it has become more difficult for computers, multifunction devices, printers and scanners to earn the Energy Star. The “Power Management” features encouraged by Energy Star (they are standard now in Windows and Macintosh operating systems) let inactive computers and monitors go into the low-power “sleep” mode.

Significant among new rules are requirements for accessories. If an imaging product, for example, is sold with an external power adapter, cordless handset or digital front-end, the accessories must meet current external power supply (EPS), computer, or telephony specifications. It has been estimated that Energy Star–qualified office and imaging products use from 30% to 70% less electricity than standard equipment. Using less energy keeps the users’ costs down to the possible extent of $5 billion over the next five years. Another estimate is that computers using the news specifications could reduce greenhouse-gas emissions equivalent to those of some 7 million cars. The Energy Star specification for computers was revised at the end of 2006 and became effective on July 20, 2007. It is certainly a program that is worth investigation by all computer users.

“Energy Star is a good starting point to gauge the efficiency of devices that it covers, but businesses should also compare devices against the criteria set by the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, as well as vendors’ own green initiatives,” adds Bob Miller of ONStor. “Vendors should be able to provide comparative cost-savings figures. For example, businesses using ONStor’s storage solutions for file-based data have seen savings up to 95% in power consumption costs and 90% in space compared to traditional direct- and network-attached storage. Their smaller footprint means much lower cooling costs and associated space savings.”

How Much Are Our Computers Consuming?
There’s no convenient, effortless pill to cure this disease. Computer users have to use their qualified equipment in a sensible way. We should know, understand and take advantage of power management features. Once again (because he writes it so well) we will quote Marshall Breeding of Vanderbilt University on this topic. “In the past, computers were either on or off,” notes Breeding. “Now, PCs with power-management features have multiple levels of activity. When in active use, the computer is fully operational, the monitor is on, the disks spin, and the processor is hard at work. This is when the computer draws its full level of power.”

Breeding continues: “Computers can be programmed to enter standby, a lower power mode that follows a period of inactivity. In this mode, the computer shuts down its processor, disks, and monitor … and then waits. As it enters standby, the computer just stops where it is, without closing programs or saving any data currently in memory. With the touch of a key, the computer instantly awakes from standby and is ready to resume work. Standby works well for short intervals of inactivity. The danger is that an abrupt loss of power could result in lost data because the contents of memory have not been saved to disk. Standby uses some power, though, since a remnant of a computer’s functions has to remain active in order to monitor the keyboard and mouse, and to keep the contents of memory refreshed.”

There is a status known as hibernation (comparing it with the winter sleep of some animals). It is a level of inactivity that draws almost no power at all. “To hibernate, the PC leaves all the programs in their current state and keeps the user logged in, but it writes all the contents of memory to disk,” explains Breeding. “The process of going into hibernation can take a minute or two, and it takes just as long to revive the PC. Hibernation makes sense for longer periods of inactivity.” Then there is shutdown, when all applications are closed: The user is logged out; any background processes are ended; there is exit from the operating system; and the computer uses no power. At the end of the working day in offices and factories, some users shut down their computers. It saves energy and seems to be a prudent step for all of us.

There are circumstances when you may be unable to turn off your computer to save energy. If you are on a network and the rulers of that network back up files and/or upgrade software at night over the network, you will have to leave your computer on all the time if you want your machine upgraded or backed up. A network situation seems the most likely reason for office workers not turning off their machines. “We leave our computers on all the time,” notes Margaret Murphy, manager of a department for a Midwestern city of some100,000 people. “Our computers are constantly busy in our working hours, but we are networked and that determines what we do when we leave the offices.”

My neighbor Jim, an expert with a telecommunications company, told me that sometimes, at the end of the work day, he turns off his equipment and sometimes he doesn’t. He added that he should, because the reason he never used to turn off the computers was that it took so long to get them going again the next morning. “That’s not true any more,” he adds. “Startup is so quick now that it does seem like a waste of energy to keep them on all night.” At an agency for social services, the director tells us that his staff members log off every night. At a hardware store (one of a national chain), we meet the network influence again. The computers at the checkout area stay on, because they are part of a network. At the individual counter for paints, the employee turns the computer off every day. At a gas and electric utility, most of the computers stay on because of the network, but an employee said she put hers into a “kind of sleep mode” before she left for home. In the future, the issue may not be one of personal preference but one decided by the company or institution that pays the energy bills. That improvement in startup time for today’s computers was mentioned by almost everybody with whom we spoke, and that aspect may be a future key to saving energy for many users.

Other restricting reasons could be that your machine acts as a server (Web server, print server or file server) on a local area network or the Internet. You should find out about that from the administrator at your office. Servers differ from desktop and notebook PCs in that they need to be on all the time; their performance would be significantly inferior if they were not. “Organizations that manage large numbers of servers give a great deal of thought to the power they need to operate their data centers,” comments Breeding. “Power savings for them will come more in the selection and deployment of server equipment. Rack-mounted severs, for example, tend to operate more efficiently and use less power than free-standing towers.”

Everyone talks about saving energy costs. An obvious question, asked frequently, has been: How much are we talking about? There seem to be statistics to support anybody’s opinion—it reminded me of conversations about potential savings with solar-panel, engine-additive, and double-glazing salesmen—but we can agree that the individual with one computer at home will save money. Computer power management (CPM) puts inactive computers into the low-power sleep and that can save between $15 and $45 annually per desktop computer. Monitor power management MPM), using the same techniques, should save from $10 to $30 annually. Simple arithmetic should give us an idea of what an office with multiple, individual computers can save. No, the savings don’t look fantastic, not in today’s prosperous business environment. But wait—companies like GE, Ford Motor Co., Citigroup, and Wal-Mart are cutting their energy use for computers, and their costs. As the cost of electricity escalates, savings will increase, and people in New York and California may save more than those in Tennessee and Montana, depending on the cost of a kilowatt. One consideration, if you intend leaving your computers on, should be the risk of damage or loss from outages. If you leave your computer on, you should protect it against the vicissitudes of the power that runs it.

Changes Here, There, and Everywhere?
Assessing and improving our efficiency in using computers is a good step forward, but some experts have asked how many steps we will take eventually, and how soon. Will the computer area look the same in 10 years? Will it take so much energy? “We’ve all heard about advancements in the area of computer energy efficiency and heightened awareness of environmentally friendly technologies,” comments David Driggers, chief technology officer at Verari Systems. “‘Performance per watt’ has become the new mantra, and a deep commitment to energy-efficient product strategies has taken root. It could be argued, however, that we are just beginning to see the dawn of a new era that will bring dramatic changes in the IT industry.” He advises that, with the help of such nonprofit organizations as The Green Grid, the next wave of innovation is focused on taking hot, power-hogging workstations completely off the desk. Companies such as Verari Systems have introduced solutions that provide a graphically rich experience with all the inherent energy efficiencies and advantages of a blade-based data center model but without the heart, noise, and energy inefficiencies associated with locally installed workstations. “The VerariIP consolidated desktop solution supports up to 1,920-by-1,200-resolution DVI signals that can be transported from the data center over an installed TCP/IP network, directly to workstation users,” explains Driggers. “Support for multimonitor, high-quality video, audio, and multiple USB ports is provided via a small appliance on the desktop and allows the user to retain his or her existing experience.” VerariIP can provide a high-performance desktop user (such as a Wall Street trader or graphic artist) with an ergonomic, energy-efficient workspace. Such innovations take the industry’s success in high-performance, blade-based servers and translates it into reduced energy consumption both in and out of the data center. That is a significant new wave in Green IT.

One of our correspondents mentioned an aspect of office habits that may be helped by the use of a computer, because it is more energy-efficient. According to Energy Star, one of the biggest guzzlers of energy is the fax machine. It’s usually left on day and night, with no sleep mode. It also uses, and wastes, paper. (You wouldn’t want to miss those stock tips or special vacation and health insurance deals that drift in overnight, would you?) “Offices can eliminate that energy expense by moving to an Internet fax solution,” advises Steve Adams, marketing vice president at MyFax. “Internet faxing uses the Internet connection the office already has for its computers to send and receive faxes, either in their e-mail or over a secure server. This method also eliminates the expense of an extra phone line required by the fax machine, plus toner, maintenance, paper, et cetera. As long as you can get an Internet connection, you can send and receive faxes with no additional energy required.” (I didn’t know that until this morning, which underscores again that we, the users, must accept some responsibility for finding ways to save energy in our computerized world.)

Manufacturers have been playing their roles well in the quest for more efficient, less energy-wasting equipment. As mentioned above, much of the success will depend on the commitment of the users. Monitors had emerged as especially wasteful of energy and much has been done to change that. One example would be NEC Display Solutions, a leading maker. “NEC markets its monitors under the logo of the EPA Energy Star program, which denotes energy efficiency and minimal power usage,” notes Richard Atanus, vice president of environmental services for NEC Display Solutions. “The company has also been working with state-level agencies, the EPA and others to create a new, voluntary standard called EPEAT that certifies the amount of hazardous and recycled materials in a product, along with its energy usage, warranty, recycled material content and end-of-life program. This effort has included labeling its products for mercury content over eight years. The company contributed to the specifications and provided data for the tables related to Energy Star 4.1, while authoring the signaling method between computers and monitors for the EPA, which has resulted in more than 50% reduction in display power consumption over the years.”

Along with display, storage is an integral part of computer use—a part on which the demands seem to grow every day. EMC Corp. just introduced Symmetrix DMX-4, a system it says is the first high-end storage array to support the new high-capacity 750 GB SATA II disk drives alongside high-performance 4 Gb/s Fibre Channel disk drives. “By placing the right data on the right type of disk drive to meet service levels, customers can reduce the amount of power it takes to store a terabyte of information by up to 91%,” observes Colin Boroski for EMC Corp. “Support for the latest lower-cost, high-capacity disk drives also enables our customers to maximize storage density, which, in turn, optimizes energy efficiency. Symmetrix DMX-4 is the most energy-efficient enterprise storage array in the world, using up to 70% less power than competitive offerings. EMC plans to introduce thin provisioning capabilities for the system in the first quarter of 2008, so that customers will further improve storage utilization and simplify storage allocation, while continuing to improve energy efficiency.” Terabytes! Four-gigabytes-a-second speed! And with less energy expended!! A little research will show us how much manufacturers are contributing to the energy efficiency.

And have you been thinking “thin” lately? (For your computers, as well as yourself?) Thin clients (from established companies like Neoware, just merged with HP) consume less power and generate less heat than “fat” desktop PCs.

“Thin clients do not have moving parts such as fans and disk drives, and they emit little heat, so a company’s cooling costs will be significantly lower, too,” comments Klaus Besier, chief executive officer of Neoware. “Thin clients are a cost effective and energy-efficient alternative to traditional desktop and laptop PCs. A company can reduce desktop energy costs by nearly 90% by replacing their power-hungry desktop PCs with thin clients. A traditional PC operating at 280 watts will use almost 10 times as much to power as a Neoware e90 thin-client device operating at 30 watts.” Work out those (cash) savings if you have 10, 50, 100 or 1,000 computers at your facility.

Power ... heat ... energy ... emissions ... they are all related, and they all merit attention in this first decade of the 21 century. Our research for this article has shown that there is a strong movement by scientific manufacturers to improve the efficiency of our computers, whether we have one or a thousand. Most of the advantages perceived quickly may be financial but the longer-term, nationwide benefits include environmental progress for which we will be thanked by generations to come. In our quests for better profitability, better efficiency, and a better position in our communities, let’s look carefully at those computers and their peripherals.

Paul Hull writes on construction topics for several magazines.

DE - November/December 2007