Saving £9k a year by turning off PCs
Sunbury Manor School expects to see its electricity bill shrink by 70% after installing Powerwise from desktop management firm Modus Interactive.
The school, located in Surrey, has over 1,000 pupils and 130 teaching and support staff with access to 450 PCs. The school hopes that by using Powerwise it can achieve savings of 70% on its annual electricity costs associated with PCs, which the school estimates will result in savings of £9,000 a year.
Using the platform, the school can centrally manage a PC so that it shuts down if not used for a certain amount of time.
Luke Nicolaou, IT Manager at the school, said: “Previously we used various scripts to turn off our classroom PCs at various times, but it was never 100% reliable. With Powerwise we have greater flexibility and control over all PCs to ensure when a PC is inactive it’s put into its appropriate power saving mode. Powerwise also gives us the capability to ensure PCs are on when needed, either for users, or for us to carry out automatic updates.”
Powerwise enables IT administrators to remotely monitor PCs, so they can know whether they are on or off. The platform can also produce reports, which helped the school estimate the potential cost savings.
“With the built in reporting we have been able to see what power usage we have been achieving and then predict what we will save, with continued use of the reporting we can monitor our savings in both cost and emissions,” said Nicolaou.
The school also hopes to make savings in other areas with the platform. Turning off PCs that are not in use should reduce the amount of cooling needed, Nicolaou added.
“We are hoping for further savings in the future by monitoring idle time data to tighten up profiles where possible, and we should also see indirect savings with the air conditioning in our ICT classrooms being used a lot less,” he said.
Sunbury Manor School’s head teacher, Mrs Duncan, said: “We are just so impressed that something so user friendly cannot only save us on energy costs, but can also contribute to the eco culture that is so strong. It’s one of those things that you think ‘why didn’t we do this before’. There have been no disadvantages, and when I walk away from my desk I feel much better knowing that it will power down if I happen to be away from the computer for a while.”
