Energy Use in the Office PoC (phase 2)

It’s been a while since I’ve talked about Energy Use in the Office.  The small PoC we did early this summer had some pretty interesting results but due to the size of the PoC and time constraints, it’s was unclear as to how the data we obtained would scale up.  So, building on the results from the first phase, we are planning a second phase of this PoC on a much larger scale: We are involving about 1,000 users, and the second phase will not be subject to the limiting time constraints that characterized the first phase.  During this second phase, we will focus on user awareness and enforced energy profile settings. We are also building a real-time energy-awareness user interface that PoC participants will be able to access with web browsers, as well as view on large screens in the building’s lobby and cafeteria.  I’ll keep you up to date as the project progresses.

Making IT Real!

By the way, the second video in the “Making IT Real!” series has been released.  If you haven’t already seen it, you can see it here and in case you missed the first video, you can see it here.

-Mike Breton

IT Technology Evangelist

Back in April I told you about a small proof of concept we were planning to measure energy use in the office environment and then use that established baseline to test different energy saving methods.  I thought it would be good to give you a quick status update on the work done to date.

The PoC is currently underway, and in fact, is nearing completion.  Like I mentioned in April, it is pretty small with just 12 users, but we hope the results will help direct what we might later try on a larger scale.

We started the PoC on Friday May 15^th with meter loggers installed on 6 circuits monitoring energy use for the 12 users in the PoC every 3 minutes.  We ran the metering for 2 weeks before telling the PoC users to establish an uninfluenced baseline.

After setting the baseline, we split the 12 users in to 3 groups, each focusing on a different energy savings technique.

One group receives information on their energy use every 2 days showing how much energy they are using, what it is costing, and a few simple tips on how they might reduce their energy use.  Nothing is forced.  In this group, we are looking at how “Awareness” alone might change behavior.

The second group installed a 3^rd party agent on their systems which allows us to enforce more restrictive energy management profiles than they might normally use.  The software also allows us to record time in state on each system, thereby providing a degree of “soft” individual system metering.

The last group had USB triggered power strips installed in their offices, connected to their docking stations, which automatically power off all devices in their offices that do not need to be on when they are not there.  We connected devices such as; task lighting, displays, and chargers to these strips.

We are in the last week of data collecting now, so stay tuned for some high-level results to be posted soon and possibility a full paper published later.

Please let me know if you have any questions or if you are doing or have done anything similar in your enterprise.

-Mike

I have just returned from the Intel sponsored Eco-Technology Great Debates where I was slotted into the topic of Thin vs. Thick Client Energy Efficiency. I had the opportunity to weigh in on the side of "Thick" clients as the most energy efficient. The bad news is that our team lost; the good news is that we didn't lose by much (29 to 24)! The best news is that all of the teams had some very strong arguments (and even several very entertaining exchanges).

Being a simple data center guy, I learned a lot, especially as it relates to thin client architecture and energy impacts. No contest, thin clients consume less energy at the device level than do thick clients (PCs and Laptops). But is that really the energy efficient answer?

For thin clients, compute and storage are necessarily displaced to the data center. Data centers with thier concentrated IT equipment are typically inefficient to power and cool relative to laptops and PCs which are distributed by nature and cooled by ambient air. Generally data centers require 1 watt of power for cooling and electrical distribution (house load) for 1 watt of IT load (newer data centers are more efficient but still incur additional power costs simply to power and cool). Therefore, every kW of power that is shifted from distributed thick client use to a data center causes more or less 2 kW of impact in the data center! Wow!

With the majority of the world's data centers facing power or cooling capacity constraints and some with no additional grid power available at all, total energy costs extend beyond the simple house load + IT load equation. Expansion and upgrade of facilities increases energy consumption, as well. There are too many areas to detail here but needless to say the total power consumption for extracting and manufacturing data center components, transporting them to a site and construction of new facilities is non-trivial and likely larger per unit of compute than for the typical laptop. This collateral consumption is not comprehended in any calculations of alternative client model power efficiencies of which I am aware..

I also have no specific data on the power efficiency of PCs or laptops to provide rigorous comparison to data center power utilization efficiency. The above arguments, however, do appear to be logical. More work needs to be done to collect the data and analyze these concepts in detail.....

If you want to see the instant replay of all of the debates (including the client debate, liquid vs. air cooling and ac power vs dc power in the data center), click on the web link above and look for the embedded webcast URL at the bottom of the resulting page. There are also a couple of links to other articles on the subject that are well worth reading.

TTFN!