The cost of empty offices
At a time when energy prices are rising and we are all looking for ways to cut costs, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has admitted to leaving its computers on overnight,... all 10,000 of them.
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), has a lot of computers in its offices around the world, at least 10,000 machines, possibly 12,000, and in response to a parliamentary question it admitted that it leaves its machines turned on for 24 hours a day, even though they are used only during office hours. So how much does that cost?
In its figures the FCO said its machines are idle for 14 hours a day and that they each consume 80 watts of power. Even assuming the 80 watt figure is accurate, (how many PCs do you see these days which have a mere 80W power supply, not to mention the power needed for the screen, the printer and the scanner), by my reckoning that comes to around a megawatt of electricity being used to keep these machines running. To put that into perspective, a large wind turbine standing on a Welsh hillside generates 1.5 megawatts. For the 14 hours a day, 365 days a year that they are standing idle, given an average cost of electricity of 12p per kilowatt hour, (about one pence per hour per PC), that comes to around half a million pounds per year of electricity bill for the idle time, half a million pounds worth of global warming.
How does the FCO justify leaving the equipment turned on overnight? The ministerial answer from Meg Munn was: "It has been our assessment that the risk of lost productivity and the risk to national security that this policy avoids outweighed its cost." Quite how turning off a desktop PC when it is not in use overnight can be a threat to national security is a mystery to me but these days governments can justify anything by citing national security and the war on terror. The FCO has also said that it is replacing all 12,000 machines world-wide and that the new machines will be significantly more energy efficient. Efficient or not, it is still no excuse to leave them powered up overnight.
18th October 2008
This article comes from the SKILLZONE email newsletter, published monthly since January 2008, and covering topics related to technology and the internet. All articles and artwork in the SKILLZONE newsletter are orignal content.