Edison PC Power Management Software is a free tool from Verdiem that is endorsed by Microsoft. This simple but useful tool allows you to schedule power management settings and calculates the money, energy, and CO2 saved.
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Scheduling is fairly simple. Edison distinguishes between the times that you are working and the times that you are not working. For each day of the week you can configure at what times you are usually at work. You then simply tell the tool how strict you want to be with regard to power management at this times.
Edison provides a slider for this purpose which allows you to easily configure each time period and whether you prefer to save more or less energy. Moving the slider to the right (save more) will decrease the number of minutes the computer waits before going into standby mode. As you move the slider, Edison will automatically calculate how much money, energy, and CO2 you will save with the setting you have selected.
The main idea behind the tool is that most people configure long inactivity time periods because they feel disturbed when power management becomes active while they are still working. By providing information with regard to how much energy they may waste, Edison may make users think twice about saving energy.
I must admit that I was slightly disappointed when I realized that the maximum amount of money I can save using the software is just $51.22 per year provided I pay $0.103 per kWh. However, considering that this corresponds to 675.78 pounds (307.17 kg) of CO2, I'd say it is worth it if you are really interested in reducing your contribution to climate change. Furthermore, $51.22 can certainly add up depending on the number of computers in your organization. With 100 computers, you would save $5,122. With 1000 computers, you would save $51,122, which corresponds to 675,780 pounds of CO2.
It certainly makes sense to distinguish between times that one works and times that one does not when it comes to power management. You might ask why one would want to configure power management for times when no one is using the computer. The point is that it is common practice to wake up computers at night for maintenance tasks such as patch management or software deployment. Some days ago, I introduced the Wizmo tool, which allows you to put computers into standby mode after performing maintenance tasks. However, if you have strict power management settings in your organization for times that no one is working, you don't need Wizmo.
What I dislike about Edison PC Power Management Software is that is has to be activated. People waste energy mostly because of laziness. The fact that this simple tool has to be activated will certainly not ecourage people to use it. I think this obstacle will be insurmountable in large organizations. Note that you can let end users activate the tool themselves because no administrator privileges are required for this.
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I wish Microsoft would include Edison’s features in Windows 7 instead of simply endorsing a third-party tool.
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I like it in concept but, you choose only one working hours schedule. for my home machine I would have evening on workdays and more time on weekends. Scheduling could be far more flexible.
I agree, Edison’s scheduling is very simple. I think the main purpose of this tool is to show people how much CO2 they can save if they take some time to configure power management properly. You can do that without Edison if you use different power plans. You then have to switch manually between them.
This is a wake-up call to enterprises across the globe. With a tiny investment of time and effort, you can save your company a small (or even medium) fortune and save energy at the same time.
Does Edison take into account the additional savings that might be had from lower air-conditioning bills? After all, PCs generate a ton of heat, but if they’re all in scheduled standby/hibernation, the office will be a lot cooler!
I don’t think that Edison takes air condition costs into account. However, you could also argue that in winter running PCs reduce the heating costs. 😉
True, but in the southern states, winter’s not really an issue. 😉