Green Campus Computing

Site 3 URL's that talk's about "Green Campus Computing" and suggest ways the university can adopt this concept.

First, let me define what is green computing. Green computing is the practice of using computing resources efficiently. The CIO portfolio has launched an initiative to begin 'greening' the IT infrastructure at the University in order to create a more sustainable provision of IT services that do not harm the environment or use unnecessary resources.

Now, let me site 3 URL that talk's about it and ways that they did for applying the "Green Campus Computing" concept.

The first one is from the site http://www.colby.edu/about_cs/campusinfo/eag/projects/pagcfm

Green Computing Personal Action Guide

Computers have fast become one of the largest consumers of electricity on college campuses across the country. The EPA has estimated that using the ‘sleep mode’ on equipped computers nationwide would reduce their energy use by 60% to 70%. This could save enough electricity each year to power Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, cut electric bills by $2 billion, and reduce CO2 emissions by the equivalent of 5 million cars. If the Colby community turned its printers and computers off overnight and on weekends, over $42,000 would be saved annually.
What Can You Do?

1. Turn off your computer! A modest amount of turning on and off will not harm the equipment. Leaving it on all night and all weekend wastes energy. If the computer will be idle for more than 16 minutes, it would consume less energy to turn it off and on again - this does not damage the computer or shorten its lifespan.
2. Group your computer activities and try to do them during one or two parts of the day, leaving the computer off at other times. Break the habit of switching the machine on every morning.
3. Turn the monitor off. Screen savers consume as much electricity as the monitor does when in active use.
4. Buy only “Energy Star” computers and accessories. What’s Energy Star? Visit -
www.energystar.gov/products
5. Set your computer to ‘sleep’ or ‘stand by’ when not in use for a certain period of time. Consult your control panel for setting options.
6. Don’t turn your printer on until you are ready to print. Printers consume energy even when idling.

Second, is the site from http://greencampus.winserve.org/greencampus/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=23Itemid=40

PUTTING YOUR COMPUTER TO SLEEP

When you're not using your computer, you can save energy by putting it to "sleep." When your computer is in sleep, it's turned on but in a low power mode. It takes less time for a computer to wake up from sleep than it does for the computer to start up after being turned off.

You can put your computer to sleep right away by choosing Apple menu > Sleep. You can also choose to put the computer to sleep automatically when your computer has been inactive for a specified amount of time. You can also set only the display to sleep. If your computer is in the middle of a task that you want to let finish while you are away (for example, burning a DVD), you should set only the display to sleep.

Lastly, the site from http://chronicle.com/free/2009/01/10296n.htm

Campus Computing Goes Green to Save Money

Relocate a college's server computers next to a solar-power generator. Replace AC power with DC power. Cool the servers only where they get the hottest. Put the servers in the ocean and power them with waves.

Those were a few of the ideas discussed last week at a conference, "Greening the Internet Economy," that was designed to address the problem of the soaring financial and environmental costs of information technology. The event, held by the University of California at San Diego, offered a sampling of a new generation of technologies that promise to help colleges make their IT departments both more efficient and more sustainable.

Many of the participants emphasized the importance of systems that could more intelligently measure energy use on the campus. In recent years, colleges have been hurt by the rising costs of powering and cooling their data centers, in part because those costs are difficult to measure and poorly understood (The Chronicle, January 9).

At San Diego, researchers have started work on hardware to help colleges and other organizations understand how to make their servers more efficient. The device, called the GreenLight Instrument, will deploy sensors and software to measure the energy use, humidity, and other variables in various parts of a Sun Modular Data Center, a popular, self-contained complex of servers.

The goal is to encourage engineers to try different computing strategies to reduce electricity consumption, said Thomas A. DeFanti, principal investigator on the project and a senior research strategist at the university's California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology.

"Right now there isn't enough information for somebody to make a definitive decision: Where do I save my money? Do I eliminate disks in my computers, or do I stop them? Do I use more RAM or less RAM?" said Mr. DeFanti. "Nobody has detailed information on this."

Campus Computing Goes Green to Save Money

Relocate a college's server computers next to a solar-power generator. Replace AC power with DC power. Cool the servers only where they get the hottest. Put the servers in the ocean and power them with waves.

Those were a few of the ideas discussed last week at a conference, "Greening the Internet Economy," that was designed to address the problem of the soaring financial and environmental costs of information technology. The event, held by the University of California at San Diego, offered a sampling of a new generation of technologies that promise to help colleges make their IT departments both more efficient and more sustainable.

Many of the participants emphasized the importance of systems that could more intelligently measure energy use on the campus. In recent years, colleges have been hurt by the rising costs of powering and cooling their data centers, in part because those costs are difficult to measure and poorly understood (The Chronicle, January 9).

At San Diego, researchers have started work on hardware to help colleges and other organizations understand how to make their servers more efficient. The device, called the GreenLight Instrument, will deploy sensors and software to measure the energy use, humidity, and other variables in various parts of a Sun Modular Data Center, a popular, self-contained complex of servers.

The goal is to encourage engineers to try different computing strategies to reduce electricity consumption, said Thomas A. DeFanti, principal investigator on the project and a senior research strategist at the university's California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology.

"Right now there isn't enough information for somebody to make a definitive decision: Where do I save my money? Do I eliminate disks in my computers, or do I stop them? Do I use more RAM or less RAM?" said Mr. DeFanti. "Nobody has detailed information on this."

Aiming for Precision

Intelligent measuring systems like Greenlight should be extended to allow engineers to more precisely determine how to use energy, said Gary L. Baldwin, director of special projects at the University of California's Citris program. For example, he said, operators at a data center could direct cool air only where the facility is generating the most heat.

Another idea that shows promise, participants said, is to supply computers directly with local DC power. Computers generally use direct current, but the public electricity grid typically supplies alternating current, and 30 percent of the electricity can be lost in the conversion of one form to the other.

Some colleges have started projects to power their computers directly from solar cells or other sources of DC power on the campus, avoiding the energy loss altogether. At San Diego, administrators hope to build a "power ring" that will supply computers across the campus with DC power, said Mr. DeFanti.

The rethinking of how to supply campus power is part of a broader effort to "divorce ourselves from the electrical grid," said Bill St. Arnaud, chief research officer at Canarie Inc., a Canadian computer-networking organization. Power-transmission lines lose a significant amount of energy over long distances, he said, which means that supplying a campus with energy from faraway power plant can be inefficient.

A better strategy, Mr. St. Arnaud said, is to build campus data centers next to a renewable source of power, like a solar plant. High-speed optical transmission lines, he said, would ensure that the computers would seem "as close as next door."

For my suggestion on how the university can adopt this concept. Simply by analyzing the situation of the university. I think we all know that now a days the mother earth is campaigning in Global Warming that causes the ice in the antarctic to melt and loosing the only home of polar bears. Others are the smoke coming out in cars, factories, and etc., that causes pollution and a big factor in making the global warming worse. To simplify, the university need to simulate first in order for them to know what best way in implementing the concept. After they already simulated and gathered enough information on how they will implement it in the university then that's the time for the implementation. Some cases if you don't analyze the situation it's hard to implement these concept specially in a school/university. So in order to avoid conflicts they need to analyze, simulate, then implement if all things are reconsidered. For me, the university really needs to apply these concept in order to save energy, money, and helped the environment by means of conserving energy.