The Challenge

With more 2,200 PCs across the organisation, finding a manageable solution was always going to be a major challenge.Some PCs are allocated to wards (rather than individuals), with others being used for research, in laboratories, and for support functions such as admin and finance. The concept of ensuring PCs are not being fully powered when not needed was welcomed by all, but the ‘how’ was an area of debate.

The Solution

The team at Epsom and St Helier carried out a small trial to assess functionality of the PowerStudio™. By setting a base line of power consumption without the product they were able to assess the savings to be realised using PowerStudio™ even without using an aggressive power saving policy. Certero’s helpful approach during the trials allowed the team to build a successful business case to obtain the necessary funds for the installation. Payback was estimated at around six months although this could have been improved had a more aggressive policy been implemented. Being an NHS Trust, incorporating three main hospitals, the whole process had to work with the clinicians to come up with a workable policy that would not impact on their provision of clinical care. The simplicity of changing the policies on the fly using PowerStudio was a massive help in successfully achieving the necessary balance of functionality and power saving with minimal fuss.

• Reduction in the number of PCs being left on overnight from 50% to 19% (Most of the 19% are due to PCs having an ‘Always On’ policy) 

• Average electricity cost of a PC reduced from £71 to £46, saving £25 pa

• Carbon footprint reduction per PC – 318kg to 207kg pa

• Based on 1,500 PCs that’s a saving of 167 tons of CO2 pa, that equates to:

• 69 average cars being taken off the road (based on 10,000 miles pa)

• 43 return flights from London to New York

• 10 million kettles being boiled