Page 1 of 2
For custom system builders who were early adopters of energy-efficiency standards, there's been no looking back. "'Green PC technology' is a huge buzz term in people's purchasing decisions," said Todd Swank, marketing vice president at Northern Computing Technologies (Nor-Tech), a Burnsville, Minn., custom system builder that sells energy-efficient desktop computers and servers. "We were pretty early to the table with these."
System builders say 2007 was a break-out year for sales of PCs and servers that use power supplies that met the 80 Plus energy-efficiency standard. Approximately 400,000 desktop systems alone that incorporate 80 Plus-certified power supplies have shipped, according to Ecos Consulting, the Portland, Ore.-based consulting firm that administers the 80 Plus program.
"We saw a really big [sales] spike in 2007," said Jason Boehlke, channel program manager at Ecos Consulting. But he added that the adoption rate of 80 Plus systems is still only in the 3 to 5 percent range.
All signs point to that momentum continuing through this year and beyond. Demand for energy-efficient PCs for use in homes and small businesses is sure to rise: Residential prices for electricity are expected to increase 2.7 percent this year and 3.1 percent in 2009, predicts the Energy Information Administration, the statistical and analytical agency within the U.S. Department of Energy. And in January, market researcher Gartner Inc., Stamford, Conn., issued a report predicting that by next year more than 30 percent of all IT organizations will have some form of environmental requirement in their top six IT purchasing criteria.
"It's just a growing awareness of energy costs across the board," said Susan Labandibar, president of Tech Networks of Boston, a system builder and consulting service provider, of the key driver for energy-efficient computers. Tech Networks of Boston assembles the Earth line of PCs and servers it sells to small businesses and nonprofit organizations.
Two or three years ago, most custom systems ran at 60 to 70 percent efficiency in their electricity usage and few buyers paid much attention to such statistics. The 80 Plus initiative was launched in 2005 by Ecos Consulting and a dozen electric utilities to encourage system manufacturers to use 80 Plus-certified power supplies that operate at 80 percent efficiency at workloads of 20, 50 and 100 percent.
Last July, the 80 Plus specification became part of the EPA's Energy Star 4.0 energy efficiency guidelines. Today, some 600 power supply products have been certified as meeting the efficiency standard and the 80 Plus organization maintains a list of some 75 power-supply manufacturers (www.80plus.org) whose products have been certified. In April, Fremont, Calif.-based Corsair Inc., for example, said its entire line of power-supply products had been certified to meet the 80 Plus requirements.
