Indiana University Bloomington
IN-3: Innovation 3

The School of Education at Indiana University’s Bloomington Campus embarked on a project to rigorously measure desktop computer power consumption to test methods of energy conservation. This pilot project demonstrated the possible savings that can be achieved by applying auto-shutdown software to all its computers. A GoGreen Gadget was created to show users of the software how much energy, money and pollution they are saving. Working with a graduate student from the Office of Sustainability and the University Information Technology Services office, a controlled computer power consumption analysis was performed over the course of a month. A sample location within the Wright Education Building, the 4th floor North wing, was chosen as a representation of offices within the building. All residents in the building were asked to simply leave their computers on for the month. During the first two weeks, the base line power consumption was measured and recorded by the University’s Physical Plant using electric measurement recorders that were strategically placed on main breaker box of the sample location and at the building level. Also, individual measurement devices were placed on 11 desktop computers. The second two weeks, shutdown policies were applied and results gathered using the same measurement procedures. By measuring the individual computers, we were able to calculate the savings that a single person could achieve by putting the computer to sleep. The measurements at the building wing allowed us to see the accumulated affect for a representative set of offices in the building. Finally, the building-wide measures allowed us to understand the overall impact of the computers against the entire building power consumption. The measurements indicated a 48% reduction in power usage per desktop machine placed in sleep mode. At the building wing level, we saw a 30.9% reduction in power usage, and at the building level, we saw a 3.1% reduction in energy consumption. The School of Education decided to write a “sidebar gadget” that provides up-to-the-minute savings for each person. By providing this kind of relevant information in a quick and convenient way, inconveniences in having the computer shut down were mitigated. The Gadget reports CO2 savings for the individual person (Computer savings), the year-to-date CO2 savings for the building, and the overall IU year-to-date savings. To put it in perspective, the gadget also displays the number of computers reporting through the GoGreen service. The second objective was to remove technical hurdles to implementation. The most frequent objection to putting computers to sleep is the need to remotely reach them and to patch them at night. If the computer is shut down, then remote access will fail and the patches won’t be applied. Thus, the project team created a “wake-on-lan” service to address the issue. When the GoGreen Gadget is installed, a database is updated with the computer name and user name. Then, the user simply logs into a service that will wake the computer from its sleep mode and allow remote access. In a similar fashion, a group of computers, such as a lab, can be awakened and patches applied. The GoGreen Gadget sends statistics to a data base from which overall reports can be developed. We chose to display CO2 savings in the gadget, but from the data collected, we can also derive actual cost savings for the reduction in power consumption. We are in the midst of rolling the GoGreen Gadget Reporting Service out University-wide. Working in partnership, the University Information Technology Services and the School of Education re-wrote the original gadget so it would scale better. Additionally, network changes were made throughout the university to allow all campuses access to the GoGreen Reporting Service. If all faculty and staff university-wide follow these practices, we will achieve significant CO2 reduction as well as cost savings.