MSPmentor

A lot of people talk about “going green” — but have you ever done the math to see how power management can assist your company — and your customers? Take a look at this quick example, involving the cost of running 500 PC desktops year-round in California.

The retail price of electricity in California is 11.53 cents per kW hour. If you run a Vostro 200 Mini (which is a Dell desktop) in California, fitted with Intel Pentium Dual Core E2160 processor and a 17” monitor non-stop for a year, you would burn 1226.4* kW hours. This will cost you $141.40 per year. Now, assume you have a customer in California with 500 such Vostro Minis. He is going to burn $353, 505 for a five year period just on electricity for these desktops.

Here’s the math:

• 65Watts + 75Watts X 8760 hours / 1000 = 1226.4 kW hours
• 1226.4kW hours X 11.53 /100 X 500 X 5years = $353,505

But the standard business hours 9AM-6PM Monday to Friday contribute just 27% of the overall available time. Take a look:

And in these 45 hours, reports indicate that, only 60% of the time the desktops are actively used. Rest goes in breaks, phone calls, meetings, and discussions. If someone enables strict power management** for the above case, it will result in a savings of approximately $300k

• $353,505 X 0.73 = $258,058 (for non-working hours)
• $353,505 X 0.27 X 0.4 = $38,178 (for 40% idle time)
• Total: $258,058+$38,178 = $296,236

(Note: *Thermal Design Power of E2160 is 65Watts. For monitors its 75Watts. 65+75X8760 hours /1000 =1226.4 kW hour. Refer Wikipedia for TDP of other processors.)

Want to learn more? MSP Center, from ManageEngine, enables you to implement power management across multiple customers’ right from your NOC. Checkout www.mspcenterplus.com for more details.

Note: Devanand is product manager, MSP Solutions, ManageEngine. Guest blog entries such as this one are contributed on a monthly basis as part of MSPmentor.net’s Platinum sponsorship.