By: Wyatt Berlinic and Lyndon Chan

Outline Possible interpretations – Global – Home – University – Engineering Our interpretation – Focus on computers in the engineering building – Extrapolate this data to the rest of the campus. Chose this interpretation because we could make the measurements and do actual calculations.

What we did We purchased a blue planet EM100 energy meter from Canadian Tire We then sampled different computers around the Engineering Building for power consumption

Assumptions Computers with the same CPU and GPU consumed the same amount of power The computers are not used 70% of the time Power consumption would not increase by much when in use The cost of electricity is cents/kWh

Power Measurements (Computers) Lab# of computersIdle Power/Computer (W)Total Lab Power (W) Alpha Beta Gamma Delta Epsilon Zeta Tau EE labs Total Xi lab could not be measured, as it is running on the servers

Power Measurements (Monitors) Each monitor uses about 35W of power when the computer is in use and when a screen saver is on. The monitors use almost no power when asleep. We measured 0W. We have counted 231 monitors in the Engineering labs, giving us a total of ~8 kW

Power Measurements (Totals) Lab# of desktopsIdle Power /desktop (W)Total Lab Power (W) Alpha Beta Gamma Delta Epsilon Zeta Tau EE labs Total

Energy Use and Cost Time spanTotal Energy (kWh)Total Cost ($) 1 day (24h) month (30d) year (365d) Time spanWasted Energy (kWh)Total Cost ($) 1 day (24h) month (30d) year (365d)

Comparison of Results A typical household uses an average power of 1kW 1 The computers here use as much power as nine households, and 17 households with monitors The total energy wasted in a year is equal to W light bulbs running all year round

Estimation of University Computers Estimated total number of computers on campus from Student Computing website Since the computers generally have one monitor, we estimate each computer to use 80W 68 labs X 20 computers per lab = 1360 total computers Total power 109 kW Yearly energy kWh Yearly cost $

Power Saving Recommendations Put computers to sleep 30 minutes after logging off Power usage in sleep mode is about 5W including monitors 2 In engineering, kWh could be saved each year saving $10 245

Conclusions A large portion of the university’s power is wasted by leaving computers on all the time This wasted power can be mostly saved by sleeping computers when idle Remote desktop is important, so software could be added to wake sleeping computers

References [1] K. J. Cassidy (2005). What’s a Watt [Online]. Available: [2] M. Bluejay (2011). How much electricity do computers use? [Online]. Available: michaelbluejay.com/electricity/computers.html