Hot Buttered IT

Learn how to save significant amounts of money by turning off your personal or business computers. Also included is the cost calculation to determine how much money you are wasting by leaving your computers powered on.
 

Reducing the amount of time your computer is powered on increases the lifespan, saves you money, and reduces the amount of harmful CO2 in the air. Talk about win-win-win! Most organizations and a lot of consumers leave their computers powered on 24/7/365 (24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year). Many of you may wonder how much electricity you are using and what the cost is on an annual basis. 

Just how much power does your computer use? That is not an easy answer, but if your computer is 3 years old, it is likely using on average 120 watts of power. While new computers may use less, a high end graphics card and other add-ons will boost the power usage. Do not confuse your power supply rating with power usage. If you have a 400 watt power supply, this is only peak amount of power it can dish out, and not actual power usage.

To determine the cost of leaving your computer turned on, you will need:

1. the amount of hours the computer is powered on each day
2. the cost of electricity per Kilowatt hour (kWh)
3. the amount of watts used by your computer (do not include your monitor yet)

Here’s the calculation for a computer on 24 hours, at 13 cents per Kilowatt hour, using 120 watts of power on average: = 24 X 0.13 X (120/1000). Note the 1000 number is needed to determine the amount of watts (120) it takes to make one Kilowatt-hour (kWh). This equates to 37 cents each day. It doesn’t sound like a lot, however, multiply that by 365 days and the computer is costing you an additional $137 each year.

But wait! if you are an I.T. manager overseeing a large fleet of computers, BECOME A HERO! Leaving 500 computers powered on 365 days costs your company over $68,000! Add 500 LCD “Green” monitors which average 35 Watts, your electricity bill increases another $20,000 to over $88,000 each year. Now spread that over 4 years and you have some eye-popping costs.

Here comes the hero part: Let’s assume you can reduce the power consumption for each computer and monitor to only 10 hours each day. You could reduce your company’s electricity bill by $54,000, or over $216,000 over 4 years. Simply change the calculation to:10 X 0.13 X (120/1000) X 365, where 10 is the amount of hours the computers will be turned on each day. Also, change the .13 if your cost per Kilowatt-hour (kWh) is higher or lower than 13 cents (look on your utilities company’s bill - it should your cost of electricity per kWh - and don’t forget to factor on all those taxes!)

Is the $216,000 savings a best case scenario? Absolutely! Some employees may already power off their computers and monitors before leaving, but from my experience, most do not. In fact, a report I completed for 500+ PC/Mac organization showed that nearly 90% of their computers were never turned off by staff departing for the day.

You will also need upper management buy in so they have an edict which will more or less force staff to shut down their computers before leaving each day. With cost savings like this, not only will an organization be foolish not to take on this “Green Initiative”, it becomes a great marketing tool for organizations to tell the public. “We are reducing our greenhouse gases by this much.” And, due to cost savings, perhaps a few staff will keep their paychecks, the computers will last longer (especially the hard drives and fans), and save some green by going green. So what are you waiting for, BECOME AN I.T. HERO!

My next post will include an easy way to power-on the computers each morning before staff arrive. This allows staff to login immediately, and allow I.T. staff to push out software, updates and patches.

-Simon

Related posts:

1. Who needs Wake on LAN to Auto start a PC?

Tags: Environment Friendly Tips, Money Saving Tips //