We here at OG love to promote green energy or any actions taken to save energy in any form. I personally believe its time we all work towards saving the planet, whether you are an individual or a corporation. Well Ford has come up its own PC Power Management program wherein they estimate to save around US$1.2 million / annum on power costs alone and reduce its carbon footprint by an estimated 16,000 to 25,000 metric tons annually.
This program will control the power settings on windows laptops and desktop PCs which will be shutdown when not in use, especially during the night. A Power Profile will be setup for each system which will monitor its usage pattern and accordingly determine the best time to power down the system and the user will be alerted if at all he happens to be working on the system during that time; also allowing him the option of delaying shutdown in case he wants to continue (overtime I suppose :)). The system will also ensure that it saves any Office doc or anyother info that is not saved on the system, ensuring no data loss in the process.
The software, concurrently will also ensure that the intranet is awake so that it can receive any software updates received hence minimizing such downtime due to such downloads during work hours. Keith Forte, Ford IT project supervisor states, “In the past, as many as 60 percent of Ford’s PC users haven’t shut their PCs off at the end of the business day, resulting in wasted energy. Going forward, we’ll be able to manage PC power consumption more efficiently while minimizing interruptions during the working day as a result of software updates.”
PC Power Management system is developed using Nightwatchman software by 1E Inc. As per this company’s estimates US$2.8 billion of PC power is wasted each year in the US alone. Ford is introducing it by this month in its US offices and and the rest of the world by the end of the year.
Via Gizmag
Update from Editor: This thing looks very similar to a startup that I came across recently. For anyone looking at a energy saving solution (India or abroad) check out – enpower
