Wall-Warts and Vampire Load

January 13, 2008 | Filed Under GreenIT, power consumption | No Comments

clip_image0041.jpgLuggage for family holiday holiday travel includes 3 cell phones, 3 MP3 players, 2 Gameboys, 2 digital cameras, 1 Portable DVD player, 1 video camcorder, and a laptop … each with its own unique AC/DC power adapter.

Energy StarIn the U.S. there are more than 1.5 Billion of these wall-warts in use, with a Billion new ones shipped every year. The U.S. EPA estimates 11% of all electricity used passes through adapters, and 30-50% of power is lost in conversion. The worst is that wall-warts are vampire load, sucking electricity even when there is no device attached to be charged. The EPA has developed regulations governing both efficiency and stand-by mode, but as portable electronic devices proliferate that’s only going to slow the rate of energy consumption growth.

For enterprises, the rapid spread of portable network end-points, small printers, and other “personal” devices means an increasing amount of totally unseen and unmanaged energy consumption, as well as a growing stream of e-waste and universal waste.

Deconstructing Carbon Footprint for IT – Measure Up!

December 18, 2007 | Filed Under GreenIT, carbon, emissions, enterprise, footprint, power consumption, trust | 1 Comment

Carbon TrustA recent report from the Carbon Trust says only 1% of Enterprises in England know their carbon footprint. That brought to mind a presentation at the London Carbonfootprint-IT Summit which made the point that even if an organization knows its overall carbon footprint, reducing it requires detailed knowledge of operations … knowledge that virtually no Enterprise has about IT.

One of our current projects is in the U.S 1% club. Good. But what do you do with a pie chart showing two sources, buildings and transportation, at 50% each? How do you know how the size of IT’s slice on the chart?

Power consumption by Enterprise IT is a bigger number than most believe. But, the only way to know the number is to count it up, piece by piece. It’s a cliché, but true … you can’t manage what you can’t measure. You also can’t get credit for saving money and reducing carbon emissions unless you can show where you started.