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Staffordshire University cuts its electricity bill

by on17 April 2012



PC power wastage plan pays off


Staffordshire University has turned to software penned by Verdiem to control rising electricity costs.

As part of its ongoing Green Initiative drive, Staffordshire University wanted to save electricity being used on its 4,000 PCs deployed across multiple sites. The University installed the Verdiem Surveyor software on 4,000 machines. The software enables organisations to centrally control and reduce the energy used by PCs on their network by up to 60 percent, without impacting either end-users or existing IT processes.

The combination of cutting PC energy usage and reducing overall carbon footprint proves particularly attractive. Jay Burke, Senior IT Officer at Information Services, at Staffordshire University said that Surveyor led to an immediate saving of 60 percent on student PC power usage and 25 percent on staff PCs.

The software allows the University to design ‘policies’ for each different set of PCs according to usage.  Most students would not be aware that the software is running.  The final figure saved was £27,000 per year.
Steve Bignell, Technical Director for Verdiem, said that the software can send the PC in and out of sleep mode or switch it off.

“When switched on, the average PC draws 65 watts of electricity, 3 when suspended (standby), and 1 watt when completely turned off. Each monitor also draws 35 watts when on, two in sleep mode and zero when off,” he said.

On an PC basis this doesn’t equate to massive savings – but when you’re a large organisation such as Staffordshire University and you have thousands of PCs spread out across multiple locations and campuses, these figures combine to create thousands of pounds worth of wasted power.


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