ICT Electricity Use - Mapping it - Reducing it

Chris CartledgeIndependent consultant

c.cartledge@sheffield.ac.uk

2 September 2008

Summary• Electricity costs high and increasing

•ICT uses a lot of electricity

•a Real Cost to your Organisation

• Estimate the Footprint

•baseline for cost savings

• Plan reduced costs

•save money, reduce CO2 output

• Some Sheffield outcomes

2 September 2008

Electricity is expensive

• University of Sheffield bill nearly £5M• £800 per employee

• increasing by about 20% this year

• IT electricity is significant• even if it is not your budget

• it is a Real Cost to the Organisation

• we should ALL be working to minimise it

• We do need to do the sums

2 September 2008

Official information helps awareness• Leaving a computer

on overnight for a year creates enough CO2 to fill a double-decker bus

2 September 2008

But more is needed...

• A photocopier left on standby overnight wastes enough energy to make 30 cups of tea

2 September 2008

Old postersmore readableand still available

2 September 2008

Cost

• Electricity• 10p per unit (per kilowatt hour)

• perhaps plus VAT (5%)?

• perhaps plus climate change levy?

• increasing, so say 12p per unit

• Air-conditioning• in a cooled space 18p per unit

2 September 2008

Cost per year• Much equipment is run all year

• for 365*24 = 8,760 hours

• nearly 10,000 hours

• 1 watt of equipment for 10,000 hours• uses 10,000 watt hours

• which is 10 kilowatt hours (units)

• which costs about £1.20

• or air-conditioned, about £1.80

2 September 2008

Your Business Footprint

• Tool and guidance to help

• Get list of devices and power use

• Get time switched on

• Multiply power by time to get consumption

• Sum over all the devices

• Result will be approximate!

2 September 2008

People need to be involved!• Local information needed for ROI

• to measure progress

• Getting numbers not always easy• tool provides typical values

• People need to be involved

• Do not strive for too much precision...

• Point is to change practice

2 September 2008

Getting list of devices• Inventory

• Purchasing records

• Insurance records

• Network information • DNS tables/ Printer tool (Jetadmin)

• Survey• Questionnaire/ Visits

2 September 2008

Power Use

• Manufacturer's figures, where they exist

• Measure devices• instantaneously

• or over a period

• Use meter readings

• Remember aircon,UPS

2 September 2008

Keep it simple: At Sheffield

No allowance for:• manufacture, disposal, consumables

• franking machines, money counters, laminating machines, lab equipment, etc.

• outsourced printing work

• equipment in NHS and commercial units

• PCs and printers in student bedrooms

• portable PCs brought onto campus

2 September 2008

Time switched on

• Most devices mostly idle

• Survey (a sample)• For PCs activity monitors software

• Monitor equipment

• Count pages (for printers)

• Monitor room use (for AV)

2 September 2008

University of Sheffield• PCs

dominate!

• Nearly £1M/year

• About 20% of toral electricity use

• Ignoring HPC

PCs

Servers

Imaging

AV

Telephony

Networks

2 September 2008

Typical Item – PC

• Uses (with monitor) ~ 100w

• On all day, £120 electricity per year

• Over five years, more than capital

• In use for 40 hours (out of 168)

• Power down when idle saves 75%

• Energy efficient PCs save 50%

• Sheffield doing both...

• Thin client?

2 September 2008

Typical item – server• 1u Dell 1950, 2 Intel X5355, 8 cores

• Capital cost £4000 (inc VAT)

• 18 watts (standby) “off”

• 227 watts idle, 310 watts intense

• In a machine room ~£600 p/a

• Electricity over a 5 year life £3,000

• More efficient servers save 20%

• Sheffield specifies low power processors

2 September 2008

Printing strategy• Practice differs:

• 1 printer per senior member of staff

• Shared printers for all

• Ratio perhaps from 1 laser printer: 2 staff to 1:5

• With 6,000 staff a policy change could save 1,000 printers, £10,000 p/a

• Better might be a “No Print” strategy

2 September 2008

Typical items - phone• Avaya digital phone

• 1,000 phones from one 1kw cabinet

• Less than 2 watt/phone, £2 per year

• Cisco IP phone• 5 watts per phone

• 3 watts per ethernet port (unless shared)

• 8 watts total, £8 per year

• Sheffield has about 10,000 phones!• has not gone all IP telephony..

2 September 2008

High Performance Computing

• Expensive

• Not for everybody

• Sheffield not big, but growing...

• Already 14%

• Efficient servers

• Campus grid?

HPC

PCs

Servers

Imaging

AV

Telephony

Networks

2 September 2008

FigureskWh/y %tage Without HPC

HPC 1,208,617 14%

PCs 4,164,477 48% 56%

Servers 1,520,736 18% 20%

Imaging 835,659 10% 11%

Networks 687,362 8% 9%

Telephony 202,356 2% 3%

AV 61,598 1% 1%

Total 8,680,806

2 September 2008

Costing Purchases atSheffield• Capital cost

• + maintenance and support

• + electricity over lifetime• even though it is not ITC budget

• it is a real cost to the organisation

• Extra capital to save electricity?• rebate from bill payer?

2 September 2008

Some Sheffield Savings• More efficient PCs should save

• ~£200,000 p/a

• Automated switch off• about 23% of PCs saving ~£50,000p/a

• declining with new PCs to ~£25,000

• HPC – High Efficiency processors• 60 nodes saving ~£3200p/a

• Increasing: electricity up 20%

2 September 2008

The future

• We must press suppliers!

• energy efficient equipment should not command a premium

• suppliers will only change if the market requires it!