GreenGov Webinar: Reducing Federal Energy Use Through Smarter Computer Power Management

Today the US EPA and the Office of Federal Environmental Executive sponsored a webinar on Computer Power Management. This webinar offered some tips on how to help organizations (and households too!) effectively conserve power and cut costs by making a few adjustments to computer settings. The easiest way to conserve power is to make two simple adjustments:

1.) Set the monitor to go into “sleep mode” after 5 to 20 minutes of inactivity.

2.) Set the computer to “system standby” or “hibernate” after 30 to 60 minutes of inactivity.

Note: For laptop computers, these same two settings should be applied.

Also, in addition to these Power Management techniques, you can have employees turn off their computers in the evenings and on weekends.

For detailed instructions on how to change these settings please visit the Energy Star website at www.EnergyStar.gov/LowCarbonIT then scroll down and click on “Power manage your computers and monitors” under the “Joining is Easy” heading.

For some organizations there may be conflicts with activating the sleep settings on many computers all at once or ensuring that the sleep settings do not interfere with essential software updates such as security and antivirus. To solve these challenges there are many free and commercial software products that can assist you. For a full list of solutions go to the above website and click on “Implementation Resources” in the “Quick Links” box on the right side of the screen. Also, the Energy Star technical experts are willing to offer free assistance.

For more information about this webinar and future Green Gov webinars please visit: www.fedcenter.gov. This webinar can be found by clicking HERE.