Benefits of Using Automatic PCs Shutdown Across Organization
This article demonstrates approaches that can be used to organize an automatic shutdown across organization and helps to estimate their benefits.
Computer power management is an effective instrument that instantly delivers energy saving instantly and helps to meet increased corporate sustainability requirements by reducing carbon emission. PC power management software can cut your energy bill from $20 to $70 per computer per year by automatic shutdown of PCs that aren't in use. Lowering computer usage reduces system wear and tear, which lowers repair and replacement costs.
Two Approaches to Better Power Management
Standard office PC with LCD monitor uses around 100 watts of power energy. It continues to consume a power even if it's not in use, for example, when it was left running at night or on weekend. The main goal of power management system is to prevent such energy wasting and automatically shutdown PC when it's not in use. There are two approaches that can be used to achieve this goal. You can use any of them separately or use together for a better effect.
Individual PC Power Management and Automatic Shutdown
Power management is a standard Windows feature that allows you to apply one of standard or create a custom power plan. When power plan is activated, Windows places your monitor, hard drives and PC into a low-power sleep mode after a defined period of inactivity. In the sleep mode consume around 10% of energy required in an active mode. You can switch PC back from a sleep to an active mode in seconds by just touching a keyboard or mouse. Applying power plan can reduce power consumption in periods of inactivity as well as reducing cooling costs, noise and prolonging a life of your hardware.
If you need to keep PC up and running until a particular time, for example, to keep file server running until people are in office, you can schedule its automatic shutdown at a define time. In this case you can use standard Windows shutdown utility and schedule a shutdown task using Windows Task Scheduler on every PC that should be turned off. This approach allows you to have a required automation, but it's effective only for a small offices.
Centralized Automatic PCs Shutdown
In large networks reducing of power consumption isn't possible only by applying a power plan in Windows to save an energy during inactivity time. People often keep PCs running at nights and on weekends and they still consume a lot of power. Moreover, according to research by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory more 80% of users turn off their power settings within 90 days since their applying. Only using an automatic shutdown systems that are managed by network administrators from the central location can guarantee that remote PCs will be turned off when required to prevent energy wasting.
Centralized systems for an automatic shutdown of remote PCs can significantly reduce energy wasting across organization. Simple system with the basic functionality can easily created on the basis of Windows shutdown command-line utilities and Windows Task Scheduler. Commercial systems usually don't require any significant investments and can pay by itself during first months of exploitation. You can learn more about automatic shutdown systems in the article How to Schedule an Automatic Shutdown of Remote PCs.
Why Do You Need to Consider a Better Power Management?
Reducing energy wasting should be in a checklist of any company and organization, because effective power management helps not only save money, but also reduce impact on environment. According to government research, companies that implement PC power management on 5,000 PCs can save $350,000 in energy costs annually and prevent nearly 9,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions - the equivalent of planting 1,900 acres of trees or taking 1,500 cars off the road.