Success Stories

New London Public Schools Saves $90k per Year by Shutting Down Idle Computers

Would you leave every light in your school building burning when you walked out the door each afternoon?  Probably not, but that’s often what happens with computers.  They sit idle, drawing power and costing you money – as much as $50 per computer each year, possibly more.

This is precisely the point that resonated with New London Public Schools CIO Tim Wheeler and Business Manager Maria Z. Whalen when their IT consultant, Michael Mazzariello, brought it to their attention.  Recognizing an opportunity to save money, they assigned Pat Lannon, Technology Manager, to the case.

Like most schools districts, New London Public Schools operates a pretty diverse collection of IT assets.  PCs, iPads, Macs, Chromebooks, and various servers all have important roles to play in an educational setting, but maintaining so many different computing platforms poses challenges for IT administrators like Pat.  Each machine needs periodic software updates, security patches, antivirus scans, and backups.  At first blush, adding energy management to this long list of system maintenance tasks can seem like an unnecessary complication.

In an ideal world, everyone would simply shut down their computer at the end of the school day.  Wishful thinking!  Busy kids, teachers, and administrators have a lot on their plates, and people forget.

That’s why Michael recommended SyAM Software, which helps administrators manage their IT assets – including power consumption.  Once deployed, SyAM provided Pat Lannon with a very easy way to configure each computer — no matter what platform (Microsoft, Apple, Chrome, etc.) — to automatically shut down at 6 PM every weekday.  It’s also made it easy to exclude a handful of computers that needed to stay on for remote access or for other reasons.

Small by school district standards, (just 5 school buildings and a central office), New London Public Schools still operates over 2600 computers and tablets.  By shutting off these machines every night, Pat is saving nearly 525,000 kilowatt hours over the course of a year, reducing energy costs by approximately $90,000.  For cash strapped schools, that’s meaningful savings.  For students, it’s meaningful in other ways, because saving energy also means reducing pollution.  Thanks to the actions of Pat and Michael, their school district is eliminating 362 metric tons of CO2 emissions annually.

Carroll County Public Schools

The ENERGY STAR Low Carbon IT campaign asks organizations to commit to activating “sleep” settings on their computers using network tools. In 2013, Carroll County Public Schools (near Baltimore, Maryland) submitted one of the largest pledges to this campaign — 11,000 computers. Carroll County Public Schools’ Technology Service Department activated sleep settings on all their computers at once utilizing Microsoft Group Policy.

“Carroll County Public Schools is a willing participant in the financial and environmental benefits of reducing energy consumption. We know that this is an area of great interest in our student and greater community and it is something we take very seriously.” – Gary Davis, Chief Information Officer

Not new to energy efficiency in the IT space, Carroll County Public School’s current sustainability effort also includes:

• Printer consolidation with power saving mode standards
• Data center virtualization and equipment replacement
• Replacing CRT monitors with more energy efficient LCD monitors

A conscientious participant in energy savings initiatives for many years, Carroll County Public Schools has also employed facilities—wide programs through the Johnson Controls Energy Performance Contract. These have included efficient climate control systems and the installation of geothermal HVAC systems in new school construction. Carroll County Public Schools is a willing partner in the financial and environmental benefits of reducing energy consumption.