Staffordshire County Council is expecting to
cut its energy bills by £40,000 a year and reduce its
carbon footprint with a new program written by a member of
staff.
By the end of August the program will be capable of switching
off all 8,000 of the council's computers after 8pm, ensuring that
no PCs are left on overnight.
Peter Kear, team leader for Staffordshire ICT desktop support,
wrote the software using the scripting tool AutoIt.
The system looks for and turns off any PCs left on between 8pm
and 8am on weekdays and throughout the weekend. It also produces
graphs showing how many machines were left on, how many were
turned off, and what energy savings were made.
Peter Kear said turning the computers off, instead of leaving
them in hibernation mode, will slash the council's energy bills and
reduce its
carbon footprint.
There are currently 6,000 computers covered by the system, which
is being instigated as part of the council's wider patch-management
process.
The council also plans to send staff who leave their computers
on overnight an automatic e-mail reminding them that they need to
switch their machines off each night.
Kear said, "It is about education, as people who turn their PCs
off are more like to turn off their monitors as well. This system
is a safeguard for those who cannot get back to their desks before
the end of the day."
He said there is an exclusion list for PCs that need to be on
overnight. The software is also able to ignore any computers at
employees' homes connected to the system via broadband.
"IT teams have a large part to play in cutting councils' energy
costs," Kear said. "We are also looking at thin client devices
instead of PCs, as they use a lot less energy. We will roll them
out to public-facing libraries and things like that first, before
looking at giving them to some departments."
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