A three year old PC will typically idle at about 70(best)-210W(worst) eg;
http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/corporate/environ/Opti_GX520_DT.pdf
http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/corporate/environ/Dim9200.pdf

A recent study done for the US EPA which went into Energy Star 5.0 indicates a typical energy consumption cycle is approximated by taking 40%x On-Idle + 5%x Sleep + 55%x Off.

So the first machine above has a TEC of 255KWh/yr
The Second machine has a TEC of 753KWh/yr

Of course now we’ve got dual core desktops using 26W idle and less (16W for our fulwood) with a TEC of 102KWh/yr

Good point about going virtual too; for us it was initially a cost-saving initiative, but that is of course synonymous with energy-saving. Most green initiatives in IT also save money – a simple example is swapping out 3-year-old servers for modern energy-efficient ones with a solid virtualisation program; you get a payback within a year in some cases.

Finally, yes you are very right about a lack of comms between the IT dept and the end-users. Some of our customers come to us in large part for the reason that it allows them to give clear pricing to their internal end-users, since they don’t have the means to bill internally for self-hosted kit.

Sorry for being a bit slow to reply – I’ve been busy jumping jumping out of an airplane in in the Himilayas! http://jumpeverest.com

Anyway, I got my figures from a collection of sources; some direct from Fujitsu on their new super-green manufacture plant (at a conference on green IT at Oxford Uni), and some direct from Dell (who we buy most of our kit from). The most helpful source, though, was a paper in Environmental Science & Technology (2004, 38, 6166-6174) by Eric Williams titled “Energy Intensity of Computer Manufacturing: Hybrid Assessment Combining Process and Economic Input-Output Methods”.

I took that paper and applied some of the latest figures from the manufacturers to his calculations. I also did a bit of research on LCDs (his paper talks about CRTs), but there was not a lot of info on manufacturing costs so I it ended up being a bit of an educated guess.

Are you able to give a source for those manufacturing and distribution figures?

Regards

James

langstraatj@halcrow.com

Another key problem is that energy and IT users often don’t speak to one another and don’t realise how they can help each other. That comes a lot from energy not being important at board level, although at prices way over 100% up year on year that is finally changing. But getting back to point one: lots of people don’t know where to start.

you are always get right!

Maico