Cut Costs, Conserve Energy with PC Power Management

Most system builders are aware that many households are now moving to multiple PCs, and with the growing number of "always on" servers and media boxes, consumers (and the system builders themselves) have more to gain by working to conserve energy. Not to mention, we're all concerned with trimming utility bills and making ecologically sound decisions when it comes to PC purchases.

This recipe as all about power for PCs: What it costs, how to conserve it and where to look for savings. Read on and I'll show you what I've learned about measuring and calculating energy costs and share some energy-saving tips with you. The recipe will help you trim your own utility bill and save your clients money—and you'll also be doing the "green" thing for the environment as well.

REAL-WORLD ENERGY COSTS

These days, most businesses are taking a hard look at their utility costs, and easily-accomplished first step in enhancing the bottom line. For example, many SMBs are finding dramatic savings when PCs are simply turned off when not in use.

In 2006, the City University of New York began outfitting its fleet of PCs with a program called Surveyor 4.0, which acts like a night watchman to automatically turn computers off when they are idling in the dark. Deploying this software enabled more than 10 percent in savings from the university's computer power bills (or about $320,000 a year, say the university officials). Further, the Wall Street Journal recently reported that a commercial printer in Wisconsin with a similar strategy—is currently saving 35 to 50 percent, or as much as $70,000 annually.

Right now, you're probably thinking: "Hey, that's fine if you have 20,000 PCs, but what about my clients who have only 10? What can they save?" Well, depending on your PC, Verdiem Software reports that their Surveyor software can save as much as $40 per PC annually simply by powering down at night. When you consider that you're not giving up any functionality—$400 a year looks pretty good. And automatically turning off a PC is easy!

To understand the impact of this and other energy saving measures, it helps to understand how energy is measured and how much you're paying for the energy to keep your PC on.

THE COSTS OF ELECTRICITY

Measuring the costs of electricity depends on where you live, how much you use, and when you use it. There are also fixed charges that you pay every month no matter how much electricity you use. The best source for this information is generally found on your utility bill. In most cases, the bill itself will tell you the rate in your area—but if it's not on your bill then look it up on the utility's website. What you're looking for is your cost of electricity per kilowatt-hours (kWh). Your bill might have multiple charges per kWh (e.g., one for the "base rate", another for "fuel"). If so, you'll have to add them up to get the total cost per kWh.

If all else fails, look at the Energy Information Administration site for an estimate. In many cases, this is easier than trying to figure out the confusing utility bill. And it's actually interesting to see what everyone else in the country is paying. If you happen to live in Connecticut or California however—it might be pretty depressing—as you'll see you're being charged some of the highest rates in the U.S.

In March 2006, the U.S. Department of Energy reported average cost of residential electricity in the U.S. was 9.86 cents per kWh. But the cost of electricity varies by region of course, and it's subsidized in some states and at a premium in others. For our discussion about energy measuring and savings, you'll want to consider you local cost for it. In the U.S., costs range from a low of 6.15 cents per kWh (Oklahoma) to a high as 21.94 cents per kWh (Hawaii).

Once you know what your electric power costs, you may find that you have a whole new outlook on conserving it. So, let's take a look at how to measure and calculate energy costs.

CALCULATING ENERGY COSTS

Maybe you haven't thought much about power recently. You see the EnergyStar logo and you set up your machines to hibernate—but have you ever wondered about the actual cost of running one of those PCs? Do you know what it's costing you to leave a computer on 24 hours a day, seven days a week? How much you can save by shutting down? How much more power does a high-end video card pull? You say you don't know? Well, here's how you can figure it out.

The first thing you need to know is how much power your computer draws. You can continue to guess, as most of us have done, adding up the power ratings of the components for a ballpark figure, but the best way is to measure the actual power consumption. You'll find it much more accurate than your estimates. When you see the results, you'll have a new appreciation for power supplies and other component pieces.

Now, to do this accurately, you'll won't need much more than a $30 device like the Kill A Watt. This nifty little device sits between the power source (i.e. a wall receptacle) and whatever load you're measuring. Once you've measured the power draw in watts you'll need to convert that to kilowatt-hours. Here's a look at P3 International's Kill A Watt:

Using this tool here's the method I used to calculate the annual cost of running my own server, which draws approximately 130 watts:

• 130 watts (measured) x 8,760 (number of hours in a year) / 1000 = 1138.8 kilowatt-hours.
• I pay 13.22 cents per kilowatt-hour for power in my area. So here's how I calculate my annual cost:
• 1138.8 kilowatt-hours * 13.22 cents / 100 = $150.54.
• Bottom line: I found that leaving my server on 24/7 costs me an extra $150.54 a year, which works out to $12.55 a month!

As you can see, such calculations are pretty simple, and the Kill A Watt was incredibly easy to use. Before this exercise, I had no idea what my server was costing me. But knowing what I know now, I had to rethink if I was willing or not to pay $12.55 a month for doing that—plus do something green for the environment. It was an easy decision for me—I was very willing.

Certainly, a large part of the cost for running my server could be saved by powering it down when it's not needed, but even more savings can be found with some of the simple tips I'll get into later on in this recipe. But first, I've included some sample costs directly following—which I think you might find interesting for comparison purposes. SAMPLE ENERGY COSTS

If you're like me, when you get a device like the Kill A Watt in hand, you'll want to measure everything in your shop or at your clients' homes and offices! I must offer one caveat to what I've been discussing—because, to varying degrees—most devices "leech" power even when they're off. Worse, others don't actually "shut off"—they just appear that way. I wouldn't lose sleep over this, but it's interesting to know. The following table, using data from the devices themselves, shows what I mean:

MONEY-SAVING ENERGY TIPS

OK, let's get into what we can do to conserve emery for ourselves and for our clients.

Configure the hard drives to sleep during inactivity: You can do this via Control Panel -> Power Options, and it's particularly helpful if you have multiple drives in a machine (saving a solid 4 to 5 watts per drive). Further, do not use a high-end video card. After the CPU, the video card is by far your biggest power consumer. It's not uncommon for even a mid-range video card to gulp down more than 20 watts at idle and much more during actual use. You can see where your video card ranks at this Video Card Power Consumption page. Obviously, with numbers like these, you shouldn't consider a mid- or high-end graphics card for your "always-on" machines.

Configure the monitor to sleep when inactive: Standard displays consume about 80 watts. A good indicator of their power consumption is the heat they produce. Sleep is different than screen savers, which will prevent screens from burning in, but PCs can actually use more energy when they're running a screen saver program. So put it to sleep!

Use LCD monitors : An LCD uses less than half the power of an equivalent-size CRT display. Disconnect peripherals you don't use: Remove or cut power to cards you're not using. It may only a saves of a few watts, but in the end, it all adds up. Drives mounted in external cases can be easily powered down when not in use.

Choose the most efficient components: Certainly, your component choices will need to be based on a lot of factors. But take one example: Intel's Pentium 4 series uses substantially more power than AMD equivalents. Do the research!

Upgrade to a more efficient power supply: A certain percentage of the input power to your PC is lost as it converts power from wall into something the PC can use. The loss is probably more than you think. At typical power loads (~90w), the average power supply efficiency is a disappointing 65 percent.

Further, look at suppliers that follow the 80 PLUS performance specifications, which require 80 percent or greater energy efficient at 20 percent, 50 percent and 100 percent of operating loads. Studies on-site say that the cost of an efficient power supply can be recouped in the first year of operation. One solid examples is Antec, which offers its EarthWatts power supply. This component has a cool feature called the "Power Factor Correction." Here's a look at the EarthWatts power supply:

Also, you might consider using special application power supplies that work at high efficiency—such as the FSP Group's fanless power supply, which offers an 83 percent efficiency at 90w load! If you've upgraded to an 80 percent efficient power supply, you theoretically could drop from 122 watts at 65 percent efficiency to 105 watts at 83 percent efficiency, saving tons of energy and money.

Power down when not in use: Engineers at hard disk manufacturers say that with the fluid bearing systems now contained in all drives, starting and stopping drives won't reduce their useful life. In fact, server drives that hibernate are shutting themselves down all the time when not in use, and waking up as needed. So powering down at night or when they're not needed will not harm your drives and will save lots of energy.

Consider using notebooks: Laptop and notebook computers are built to run more efficiently than desktops, as they're designed to run on minimal power to extend battery life. Laptops are ideal replacements for "always up" operations like firewalls.

Take a look at NAS: New options for Network Attached Storage (NAS) can operate on a fraction of the power consumed annually by a server. Externally mounted drives with built-in networking software, like Maxtor's Shared Storage devices are efficient and flexible—and these devices can pay for themselves quickly. Compare the cost of a couple of watts to run an external case to an equivalent PC server, and you'll see what I mean.

If you're interested in the big picture about energy in our industry, the EPA has finalized their performance requirements known as the Energy Star Computer Specification. Version 4.0 is scheduled to go into effect on July 20.

At a time when energy costs are rising and users have so many options, it's an ideal time to help your clients trim their escalating utility bills and take advantage of new, more efficient hardware. The bottom line is that, by saving energy, you're saving money for yourself and your clients.

ANDY MCDONOUGH is a professional musician, composer, voice actor, engineer, and educator happily freelancing in New Jersey.