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Schools get smarter about ed-tech energy use
K-12 districts' ed-tech departments are working to reduce their energy use—and their bottom line
Schools are reducing their environmental impact—and saving money—by reducing the number of servers in their ed-tech departments.
Schools across the country are finding that investing in energy-efficient technology has an economic benefit as well as helping to save the environment.
“We’re estimating saving about $30,000 per year, and that’s [mainly] by consolidating servers,” said Paul Romero, executive director of technology at Rio Rancho Public Schools in New Mexico.
CDW Government LLC (CDW-G) surveyed 756 technology professionals for its 2010 “Energy Efficient IT Report” and found that three-quarters of respondents are working to reduce energy use in their IT operations. If current energy use rates don’t change, greenhouse gas emissions from data centers will outweigh those from the airline industry by 2020, the company warns.
“The power usage in the data center is ever increasing, especially with rising energy costs,” said Mark Lafferty, director of strategic solutions and services for CDW-G. “That seems to be the most popular place to review your energy strategies.”
The ability to bring down costs while improving efficiency and helping to save the environment inspired Romero to pursue energy-use changes in his ed-tech department.
“We looked at it as a good project that could do both very effectively and efficiently,” said Romero.
Romero said that the heat generated by a large number of ed-tech systems cause schools to waste money on air conditioning as well.
“We’re going to really look at energy efficiency as far as projectors [go]. Instead of getting a regular bulb that creates a lot of heat, we’re looking at LED lights so we don’t have to cool the classroom,” said Romero. Romero’s goal is to continue to reduce his district’s servers down to a point where every twenty servers can be replaced by a single unit.
2 Responses to Schools get smarter about ed-tech energy use
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k12tco
November 16, 2010 at 2:03 pm
Missing from this article is reference to CoSN’s Green Computing Leadership Initiative: http://www.cosn.org/greencomputing. This initiative contains a useful computing energy usage calculator specifically for K-12 institutions and offers a green computing certification program for schools and districts.
k12tco
November 16, 2010 at 2:03 pm
Missing from this article is reference to CoSN’s Green Computing Leadership Initiative: http://www.cosn.org/greencomputing. This initiative contains a useful computing energy usage calculator specifically for K-12 institutions and offers a green computing certification program for schools and districts.
itotto
November 17, 2010 at 3:40 pm
Also missing is the question of the energy needed to produce a new slightly more efficient switch that might replace a completely funtional unit. Looking at just what gets consumed paints only a small part of the picture.
While I totally agree with the idea of conserving energy use, I believe the environmental stress of the production of every single new electronic device cannot be underestimated.
itotto
November 17, 2010 at 3:40 pm
Also missing is the question of the energy needed to produce a new slightly more efficient switch that might replace a completely funtional unit. Looking at just what gets consumed paints only a small part of the picture.
While I totally agree with the idea of conserving energy use, I believe the environmental stress of the production of every single new electronic device cannot be underestimated.