After a hard day in the office, just before closing the ‘shop’ for the day, I took a look at my new office wattage monitor thingy.

1.8Kw

YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING! I screamed at myself, feeling absurdly guilty for living. Then I realised it was the backups causing 20 odd hard disks to spin ‘off their hinges’.

Time for a change

Off I went to checkout hardware monitors, review my knowledge of Microsoft’s PowerCFG commands and all sorts of other, hopefully useful information to reduce power consumption.

First up – make sure every machine, (that doesn’t ‘t need to be on all day), switches itself off after they have finished their tasks. Easy –  run an automatic script on those machines  to shutdown on completion.

Next, change the BIOS settings to start them up, at their allotted time.

Thirdly, set all machines to a ‘power saving’ plan – if at all possible.

 

Finally, at the end of their life, swap out 7200 RPM disks for more energy efficient lower RPM disk – if at all possible.

Net result?

550w saving.

I would say that’s worth having – wouldn’t you?