Power down

With a 31% power hike looming amid already tight economic times, companies are waking up to the need to be energy efficient at the office.

But the proposed Eskom tariff hikes are not necessarily a bad thing, says Tim James, founding director of Sustainable IT. He says the new tariffs will force people to be efficient. "It`s the only way to realistically drive the right behaviours," he says.

"The energy rates will probably triple in the next five years, and companies have a big wake-up call coming." He says most employees of companies leave their PCs on overnight, and by shutting down computers when leaving the office, companies can save in excess of R200 per annum per PC.

Patrick Gaonach, MD of Schneider Electric South Africa, agrees there`s a positive side to the tariff hikes. He maintains that the previously low energy costs resulted in SA not having much information available on conserving energy. "Before the power crisis, no one thought about it," he explains. After the 2008 load shedding, much more information has been made available.

"Energy efficiency is the best short term solution for SA to solve the power crisis," Gaonach adds, saying that the price increase is a major driver to motivate saving energy.

Andrew McNiven, industry standards server product manager for HP, believes that SA is still behind the rest of the world in terms of taking serious steps to saving energy. "It`s primarily because it doesn`t hurt people`s pockets. The minute that energy prices start to really affect costs, we will soon be in line with the rest of the planet."

SWITCHING OFF

According to the PC Energy Report 2009 about power consumption in the US, UK and Germany, 50% of employees fail to turn off their PCs at night.

James says, based on his company`s experience with large financial institutions in SA, around 90% of local employees fail to turn off their PCs at night.

He says this is often due to company IT departments, which tell employees to leave their PCs on for updates and patches to be installed after hours.

James says with a power management software solution, IT departments can wake up the PCs automatically when they need to update the system. It makes no difference to the employee because the PC is on by the time they get to work.

"It`s a travesty that IT departments ask people to leave their PCs on," he says.

The PC Power Report also revealed over 60% of US and UK employees said they believe their employers should be doing more to lower the company`s power consumption.

According to the study, if a UK business with 10 000 computers leaves them on all night for one year, it will cost £168 000 and emit 828 tonnes of CO2. However, if all one billion PCs in the world were powered down for one night, it would save enough energy to light up New York`s empire state building for more than 30 years.

Powering down a machine reduces its energy use by 80%, claims the study.

The study also says the ICT industry produces the same amount of carbon emissions as the aviation industry, that is 2% of the world`s carbon emissions. Up to 39% of this is from PCs and their monitors.

A study by Gartner has revealed PCs and their peripherals consume 31% of the ICT-related carbon emissions, and the PC Power Report has found that between 74% and 79% of workers in the UK, US and Germany need computers for their day-to-day work.

James maintains that the most significant savings can be made by switching off PCs, but data centres and their energy wastage should also be considered. "Many companies are wasting in data centres," he says. "Turning the temperature in a data centre up by couple of degrees will save money and it will still be able to run properly."

McNiven explains that with servers, design engineers now consider potential savings, and have brought more focus on efficient power and cooling. He also emphasises the importance of sensors, because it is important to measure power use to control it. "There`s an old adage that goes: if you can`t measure it, you can`t manage it."

IGNORANCE IS BLISS

A Gartner study has found that most consumers are willing to participate in an energy efficiency programme, but don`t receive enough information from their utilities providers. Consumers would participate in energy-saving programmes but would not be willing to pay money to receive more detailed information.

Of the 4 000 households surveyed in the UK and the US, 50% said they didn`t even know if such a programme was being offered.

Gaonach says a huge barrier to power management is lack of information on the real cost of power and potential savings. "The first step is to measure and analyse where the waste is."

He states that companies can save 30% of power consumption in any type of building with proper power management practices. The building itself needs to be energy efficient, achieved by factors including good insulation. Then, people need to optimise their usage of power in the building. Lastly, Gaonach explains, many processes need to be automated.

"If you want to sustain the savings, you need to automate. Relying on humans has too much margin for error, and it is not sustainable."

SAVING MONEY

Kobus de Beer, enterprise brand manager of Dell, says the proposed Eskom tariff hikes are necessitating energy savings for financial reasons, although carbon emissions should also be top-of-mind. "From a total cost of ownership and investment perspective, many people are considering it." But he says people should also ask themselves, `How can we save the planet?`

He says the economic situation is fuelling the drive for saving energy and therefore money, but once the economy is in better shape, people will continue to save energy. "People will see how much [money] they can save and keep doing it."

"We are facing massive energy rate hikes," says James. "Wasting energy in this economy is just not acceptable any more. South African companies need to start adapting quickly to a high-cost energy economy and make the right business decisions to mitigate this increased cost."

For small companies, says McNiven, saving energy is more a conscientious decision than a business one. "Power is not a key decision factor for SMEs," he says, because many SMEs rent office space where the energy costs are fixed and factored into their rental.

Neil Cameron, GM of Johnson Controls Systems & Service SA, says smaller facilities may be cautious about implementing power management solutions because they tend to have a longer payback period.

He also says: "South African companies are being very cautious and therefore the current implementations are slow."

GREENING UP

Environmental responsibility is an increasingly important issue for businesses. The draft version of the third and latest King Report on Corporate Governance for South Africa even mentions environmental issues in its chapter on being a responsible corporate citizen.

The King report ties this back to financial gain by mentioning the significance to a company`s reputation. Meaning the financial impact is twofold - preventing needless spending, as well as protecting a company`s valuable reputation.

Gaonach believes that going green is a worldwide issue, both in developed and developing countries. "Energy is the key challenge of the planet," he says.

"Greening is a great growth opportunity for companies," he says. "The return on investment of power management projects is not difficult to calculate. You just need to look at your electricity bill every month."

He adds that with the tariff hike, the sooner companies implement power management, the sooner they will see ROI. "Every time the price rises, you`ve improved your ROI," he says.

Cameron says it`s every person`s responsibility to save energy. "The current statistic is that the world`s average temperature will rise by 1.25 degrees in the next 50 years. The effect on the planet is unknown for now - however, the current activities of the `today` generation will affect our future generations."

However, he says the more short term problem of an imminent power shortage will be the one to make people sit up and take notice. "It will affect how we develop as an emerging market and has a direct impact on investment and the eradication of poverty."

HOW TO SAVE

De Beer says power usage needs to be controlled in three ways.

Firstly, with energy efficient hardware that uses less power, but produces the same output. Secondly, he suggests software solutions that automate powering computers on and off so that employees don`t need to leave their PCs on at night. Thirdly, he says people simply need to develop good habits, such as switching off lights when they leave the room and using the battery power of laptops rather than a PC that is plugged in permanently.

James suggests the following: Screens should be placed into standby after a period of 15 minutes inactivity, and PCs should be placed into standby after a period of 45 minutes inactivity. PCs need to be automatically powered down completely at the end of the business day based on a specified time, and should then be woken up at defined times during the evening for patching and maintenance purposes. It`s also important for a company to report on cost, energy and CO2 emissions savings.

"By turning PCs off, we prevent significant carbon emissions and improve the green credentials of our businesses," says James.

Cameron mentions incentives and how they would encourage people to be more frugal with their energy use. "We could save significantly more if legislation would change to give added benefit to facility owners who reduce their consumption via energy rebate schemes such as those implemented in Europe."

WHAT THE COMPANIES ARE DOING

Dell has said it powers nine of its worldwide facilities with renewable power. It gets 26% of its global electricity from renewable energy, which is up from 20% last year. The company has committed to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by 2015.

Johnson Controls will be putting energy efficient chillers in place at the Absa Towers West offices in the centre of Johannesburg. The company will be installing its YCIV air-cooled Variable Speed Drive chillers with environmentally friendly gas, which can save up to 30% on energy usage. Cameron says: "75% of energy consumption worldwide is related to commercial buildings and 45% to 55% of this is used to run air-conditioning systems."

In June, HP announced new additions to its eco-friendly programme, HP Eco Solutions. Most notable is its commitment to save a billion kilowatt hours by 2011 through product design strategies. Another is its plan to improve the energy efficiency of its printing range by 40% by 2011. HP has also 26 PC product families that conform to the new Energy Star 5.0 specifications.

Schneider Electric has opened an office in Richard`s Bay with a fully functional training facility. The office also offers electrical services such as power quality and network monitoring and measuring systems.