Wednesday, March 09, 2011

Targeting Government Computer Energy Use

Today I attended a presentation by John Scumniotales, the newly promoted President of Verdiem at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra. His company was founded to provide PC power management software. They are now expaning to provide management of network equipment and other ICT devices..

The Australian Government ICT Sustainability Plan 2010 - 2015 (DEWHA, 2010) used a baseline estimate of 630 kWh per annunium per PC, to set a target of 400 kWhr by July 2012. All agencies are required to report ICT energy use annually, starting with this financial year, in their 2010/2011 annual report. So agencies have about 15 months to prepare to report. Verdiem and others sell monitoring software to help with the reporting and to reduce energy use.

John pointed out that about 58% of global commercial energy use is for air conditioning, 25% IT, 11% lighting. For IT 31% was for desktops, 20% networks, 16% servers, 15% printers (it appears this analysis did not include data centres).

He claimed that they Surveyor product integrated with Microsoft Systems Centre. One thing occurred to me was that such systems could monitor intelligent devices not normally thought of as computers, such as electric cars.

John said there would be a brief video version of the presentation shortly. I will post a link, when available (should be good form my Green ICT students).

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