Computer Program A Real Turn-off
The Age
Monday March 17, 2008
AS THE world prepares to switch off its lights on March 29 as part of Earth Hour, a Sydney-based IT company has launched a program to get businesses to turn off their computers in a move that could save millions of dollars a year.
With nearly half of all office workers leaving their computers on at night, the TLC IT Group decided to develop a software program to do it automatically.Company director Craig Boyle, who has launched the Computers Off Australia campaign, said companies could reduce up to 80% of the power used by computers left on overnight by putting them into hibernation."What that equates to in a large corporation or government is millions of dollars in power costs when the thing isn't doing anything and more importantly thousands of tonnes of CO2 produced," he said.The software allows a central user to program a switch-off and a switch-on time for office computers. Workers who stay back can reject messages telling them their computer is going to go into sleep mode - even if they are not.The program also provides a calculation of how much power each machine is using, and at what cost."Measuring your power consumption is very, very difficult and the companies we are speaking to are saying it is the No. 1 problem," Mr Boyle said."They are saying, 'we can get the power bill but we can't tell if it is lights, the computers or what parts of the business that are making up the majority of it'."The software allows you to very distinctly say 'this machine in this location is using this much power. This is how much it used today, this week, this year'." He said the software had a return on investment of about eight months on average."If there are 1000 computers and 1000 monitors that are left running and 40% of them are left on every 24 hours then you are talking about a power bill in Australia of around $100,000 a year to run those," he said.
© 2008 The Age