Recently in Power Management Category

HP, for instance, relies on SynapSense for its Environmental Edge monitoring system. SynapSense, a startup launched by Intel's Peter Van Deventer and UC Davis computer science professor Raju Pandey, makes the wireless sensor technology that feeds power and cooling data to real-time visualization software. Armed with this information, administrators can save power by reducing cooling to levels that allow equipment to operate safely without overheating.

Power management is often described as a low-hanging fruit in establishing a green IT strategy. It seems dead simple: set your desktop and PCs to sleep or power-down after X-number of minutes and bask in lower energy bills. But tell me if this scenario doesn't sound familiar...

You're working late and need some coffee to stave off a TPS report-induced coma, so you make your way to the break area. A stroll through your nearly-empty office is a light show of screensavers and monitors stuck on the last websites your coworkers visited (nothing NSFW, I hope!). It's decidedly wasteful and unfortunately also very prevalent; just look out the windows of an office tower at night into a neighboring building to see what I mean.

Luckily, it's also something that can be remedied with a nudge from management and some legwork from IT departments. Fairmont Hotels & Resorts' VP of Technology, Vineet Gupta, gets it and his efforts to reduce energy consumption at the hotel chain is a promising start:

A key part of the initiative, which is scheduled to roll out this year and be fully implemented across all properties by the end of 2009, is a centrally managed power-down schedule that automatically shuts down all internal desktops and laptops after one hour of activity.

Fairmont estimates the power management will reduce energy consumption by 2,692,683 KwH and save 1,356 tonnes of CO2 annually.

He doesn't trivialize the challenge that it poses to IT departments, saying that it "requires a lot of effort." It also requires some "buy-in" from other sites, and in this case they're sprinkled worldwide.

Nonetheless, the results speak for themselves. There's no mention in the article of how they accomplished it technologically, but it's safe to assume that they're Windows workstations. In that case, there are plenty of centralized power management solutions with more sprouting up all the time, not to mention Group Policy options for admins versed in Active Directory.

Side note: Fairmont manages The Plaza in NYC (pictured above) among other swank resorts. Kudos Vineet!

Source [via @greenittools]

Luckily, it didn't take them very long to open the floodgates. If you entered your email address, you got an alert that Hohm Beta is up and running. The text of that email is below...

Here's the text of that email:

Microsoft is delighted to announce the availability of Microsoft Hohm. You are invited to sign up for Hohm and learn how you can start saving energy!

Microsoft Hohm is a free online beta application that helps you save energy and money. With Microsoft Hohm you can better understand your home energy usage, get recommendations to conserve energy and start saving. As with any recommendation engine, Hohm will provide increasingly more accurate and relevant suggestions for energy conservation as its users contribute home energy input and feedback. One of the objectives during our beta period is to refine our tool and further increase the value our product can offer to you. We hope you will help us!

Sign up and start saving now. It's free: www.microsoft-hohm.com

Follow us here:

Blog: http://blog.microsoft-hohm.com

Give us feedback: www.getsatisfaction.com/microsoft_hohm

Follow us on twitter: http://twitter.com/microsofthohm

Become on Fan on Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/hohmfb

Regards,
The Microsoft Hohm Team

As noted above, Hohm's "recommendation engine" is reliant on crowdsourcing, so the more people that sign up and participate, the better it gets at delivering recommendations. With that in mind, are you going Hohm?

Researchers at the University of Hertfordshire are showing off InterHome at Microsoft Imagine Cup taking place right now. The modular home automation project has a lot of neat elements that meld X10 integration, motion sensors, mobile technology, and Web support to convert your home into a comfortable secure space for its occupants.

It may look like a doll house now, but it has the potential to save households in the UK up to £300 a year in energy costs. This is because the system 'learns' from its occupants' routines and can detect patterns, like when you leave the house. If you forget to turn off the lights, for instance, InterHome can send an SMS alert, which you can reply to and instruct the system to take action.

[via Engadget]

As it stands now, Hohm seems to have an edge over PowerMeter. Hohm is looking more like a platform that not only monitors how much electricity a home is consuming, it will eventually lead to active and/or automated management of smart appliances and plugs.

Google, on the other hand, has Microsoft beat in the number of partner utilities for PowerMeter. Either way, under these programs the electric bill will no longer be a monthly mystery to many consumers. And that is a great way to spur conservation and smart energy use.

If I may make a suggestion: sooner rather than later, please.

Like many tools and dashboards, the online service allows users to input their homes' features and usage statistics to generate recommendations on saving electricity. But there are a couple of tricks to Hohm that set it apart.

First, if a user declines to input values or doesn't provide a comprehensive home energy profile, Microsoft will derive recommendations based on data from other users and national averages. A nice feature, but the next one is even better. Microsoft is partnering with utilities and providing them SDKs to allow users to upload consumption data straight into Hohm for a more precise energy measurement and recommendation platform all round.

After all, you can't manage what you can't measure (I'm sure you've heard that from one IT vendor too many). Partner utilities include Puget Sound Energy, Sacramento Municipal Utility District, Seattle City Light and Xcel Energy.

Better still, Microsoft is working with Itron and Landis+Gyr for smart meter integration. It will be interesting to see how Microsoft and Google battle it out in this arena.

Also of note, Microsoft states that Hohm runs on the company's own Windows Azure cloud computing platform; is based in part on "advanced analytics licensed from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the U.S. Department of Energy;" and also uses Bing search. Wonder how they came to that decision...

Currently in beta, interested parties are asked to supply an email so that Microsoft can contact you when it becomes officially available, presumably very soon. You can also watch a Microsoft-supplied video of what Hohm looks like in action after the break.

1E is already providing centrally managed power management for PCs, but now the company is eying servers.

I know what you're thinking: better to let those servers just do their jobs. But 1E thinks there's plenty of potential energy savings if organizations had a better grasp on which servers are pulling their weight. eWeek Europe reports:

One of the features of the technology are analytical tools to measure performance of individual servers in a data centre and assess which ones are actually carrying out useful computing tasks.

"Ten to fifteen percent of servers can be decommissioned in any data centre but its hard to know which ones - we will tell you which ones," he said.

Google's PowerMeter efforts, which aim to put power monitoring and management tools in the hands of consumers, are causing some unease among utilities. So the tech giant is trying to smooth things out. Earth2Tech reports:

Some utilities have indicated to us that they've been uncomfortable with the fact that Google is building software and web tools for energy management and smart meters called PowerMeter. In their eyes Google's strong brand could dominate their relationship with the customer. But that hasn't stopped 'Don't Be Evil' Google from reaching out to the traditional utility industry and the incumbent meter makers, and some are starting to respond positively. On Tuesday night Google announced on its blog that it has partnered with a list of eight utilities as well as meter maker Itron to provide PowerMeter to their customers.

Nice to see industry players getting along. You can check out the PowerMeter Partner Page for more info.

Google is also getting cozy with equipment makers like GE and the above mentioned Intron to ensure that the project is a success.

Jenaly Technology Group's CTO, MJ Shoer, explores some Green IT basics by focusing in on three ways businesses can improve their impact on the environment and cut the cost of their tech operations.

Covered are server virtualization, electronic documents (aka paperless office), and one of my personal favorites, power management.

Another green technology is power management, which allows computers to sleep or hibernate when not in use. Unless you access your computer remotely from home or when traveling, it does not need to stay on every night and all weekend. That consumes electricity and generates heat, which necessitates cooling, although this could be considered a good thing during our coldest winter months. All newer computers allow it to power down when not in use and still allow critical proactive maintenance tasks to take place over night by "waking" the PC when these activities need to take place and then powering it back down when complete. It's also important to keep in mind that even when powered down, a computer still draws electricity, though a much smaller amount.

Among the lowest of hanging fruit, power management is something that both users and administrators can easily participate in. And with Wake-on-LAN, those maintenance and remote access duties (via VPN and other remote desktop software) don't require a PC to remain fully powered all day.

Basic stuff, but it's a good foundation for firms looking to cut those energy costs.

Source: Seacoast Online

My personal favorite is the Saver Clip.

Source: Ecofriend