Environmental Leader

According to a recent survey of 250 professionals, enterprises with 10,000 desktop workstations waste $1.26 million in energy costs annually.

The survey, developed by analysts at EMA and sponsored by Kaseya, found that 69 percent of respondents used more than one workstation and that 24 percent keep their stations powered on all the time.

In addition, the survey also found that desktops are kept on during 43 percent of total non-work hours, meaning desktops are operating unused for more than 55 hours a week. This equates to an additional annual electricity cost of more than $73 per desktop, on top of the $150 of electricity a desktop already consumes.

One way of reducing company’s energy cost could be converting from desktops to laptops, as the average annual cost for laptop power consumption is around $23, about one-sixth of the energy cost of a desktop. Another is to use software that turns computers off automatically – AT&T is using 1E’s NightWatchman PC power management solution on 310,000 desktop computers across its domestic operations to help improve energy efficiency.

Earlier this year, HP pledged to cut energy consumption across its entire lineup of volume desktop and notebook PCs 25 percent by 2010.