Reducing Energy Costs with Intelligent Power‑Save Strategies Using Deep Freeze Cloud’s Management Console

Energy is typically a major expenditure for any business. This is, of course, true for manufacturing plants and factories, but even your everyday office spends a lot of money on electricity. And while that refrigerator and microwave in the break room might be guzzling more than a few watts, the real energy consumers are the computers.

But this is a necessary cost, right? Staff need their workstations to do their jobs — most office workers can’t get by with a pencil, paper and an abacus. However, you might be surprised at how much energy your devices are using for things that have nothing to do with work.

Energy Consumption

Just how much energy does an office full of computers use? The answer, of course, depends on how many computers, what kind of computers and what exactly the staff are using them for. Looking at averages, a typical laptop uses 30 to 70 watts of electricity. With a standard eight-hour day, such a computer might use 12.2 kilowatt-hours of electricity per month and 146 kilowatt-hours of electricity per year. These figures can increase depending on what functions the computer is executing. For example, computer animation or complex visual design might be more energy-intensive, as might gaming, but surely, nobody in your office is using their computer for video games.

If you only have three computers in your office, these energy costs won’t amount to that much. But then, yours is probably a small company, so margins might be thin. For larger companies, an office of two dozen computers can be very energy-intensive. What can an organization do to reduce this energy use, minimizing costs and furthering any sustainability goals it might have?

Power Save

Faronics offers a path toward intelligent power savings. With Power Save, organizations can reduce operating costs by eliminating unnecessary PC energy consumption. Faronics Power Save can reduce computer energy waste by up to 50% without hindering productivity. Power Save is smart energy management, offering flexible settings so you can customize it for different users, times and days with advanced activity monitoring and management.

Power Save intelligently monitors computer activity (CPU, disk, network, etc.) and takes power-saving actions, such as shutting down or hibernating computers when they’re inactive. It’s non-disruptive. You can configure the software to save open documents and accommodate IT maintenance schedules as needed. You can also benefit from features such as flexible scheduling for wake-up, shutdown and restart events. The software also has wake-on-LAN capabilities and a central console for deployment, management and reporting.

Power Save provides tangible financial savings. One client saved $50,000 in energy costs in one year. The software also helps organizations’ “green IT” initiatives by reporting on environmental benefits such as reduced CO2 emissions.

Key Features

Some key features of Power Save include:

• Advanced activity monitoring: Intelligently monitor CPU, network or disk activity and execute power-saving actions only when the activity falls below a defined level. 
• Management reporting: Analyze detailed energy use and savings reports based on local costs, demonstrating rapid ROI. 
• Comprehensive dashboards: Visualize power consumption easily by checking the Power Save and Deep Freeze Cloud dashboards, retrieving useful information for your entire organization.
• Configurable energy management: Customize the software to your needs. Power policies allow for different levels of energy management at different times. With energy consumption profiles, you can fine-tune individual workstation power use.
• Audit mode: Disable Power Save actions while recording events on workstations for analysis of potential energy savings using Power Save reports.
• End-user overrides: End-users can temporarily disable power management for convenience and customize local wake-up from Hibernate or Standby mode.
• Flexible scheduling: Easily schedule wake-up, shutdown or restart events.
• Disruption mitigation: Receive notifications and benefit from automatically saved documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and email drafts prior to the system entering Power Saving Mode.
• Central management: The web-based and on-premise management consoles make deployment, configuration and management a breeze.

Additional Energy-Saving Best Practices

Power Save can bring your energy costs down considerably. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t more you can do to save a few extra dollars. Here are some tips to reduce energy consumption at your office:

• Turn off the lights: Encourage staff to turn off lights in unoccupied rooms, conference rooms and common areas. Consider installing motion sensors or timers for lights in low-traffic areas.
• Use natural light: Maximize the use of natural light by opening blinds and arranging workspaces to take advantage of windows.
• Power down electronics: Encourage employees to shut down monitors, printers and other electronics at the end of the workday.
• Unplug chargers and adapters: Unplug chargers for laptops, phones and other devices when they are not in use, as they can still draw power.
• Optimize heating and cooling: Set thermostats to energy-saving temperatures during non-business hours and weekends. Regularly maintain HVAC systems to ensure they run efficiently.
• Choose energy-efficient equipment: When purchasing new office equipment, opt for products with an ENERGY STAR rating.
• Use power strips: Plug multiple devices into a single power strip so you can turn them all off with one switch.
• Maintain and clean equipment: Regularly clean equipment such as computer fans and air filters to ensure they’re running efficiently and not overheating.
• Encourage telecommuting or flexible work arrangements: Allowing employees to work from home a few days a week can reduce energy consumption at the office.
• Conduct an energy audit: Consider hiring a professional to perform an energy audit to identify areas where the office is wasting the most energy.

Maximize Efficiency and Minimize Costs With Faronics

Faronics offers various ways for organizations to unlock savings. Beyond energy savings, companies can benefit from the IT streamlining that comes with Deep Freeze Cloud, which makes IT management simpler and more efficient. It’s especially useful for organizations with remote or hybrid workforces.

Deep Freeze also offers top-of-the-line cybersecurity. There are a number of features, but chief among them is Reboot-To-Restore. This technology automatically restores workstations to a predetermined pristine set, no matter what unauthorized changes or security breaches may have occurred during a session. Please reach out to our experts today to learn more.