Efficiency in the health sector is a core focus of high level government debate. Software management firm Certero explains to Energy Demand how a recent project involving a leading London hospital demonstrates the vital role PC Power Management (PCPM) can play to create cost and energy savings and boost green credentials.

The scale of the UK’s PCPM challenge has been highlighted in many reports. This includes one study from an industry news title which suggested that PCs make up to 40% of IT energy consumption, and those that are left running cost “UK PLC” more than £300 million a year.

Certero recently undertook a project at Barts and The London NHS Trust to deliver greater energy efficiency across an installed base of more than 5,000 PC and laptops in more than 25 buildings. This major initiative was aimed to drive down costs, carbon emissions and overall energy usage, as well as improve the trust’s green credentials and place it in line with government carbon reduction targets.

Following an initial investigation, Certero discovered high levels of overnight power wastage of around 85%. The company deployed its PCPM solution, PowerStudio, the system is now estimated to be driving savings of around £10,000 a month. It is further understood that the trust saved in the region of 206 tonnes of CO2 in its first quarter, delivering a rapid return on investment in less than four months.

Barts & The London NHS Trust

Barts and The London NHS, now known as Barts Health NHS Trust following recent government reforms, is one of Britain’s leading healthcare providers. It has close to 8,000 employees spread across the hospital’s portfolio of specialist centres. These include the country’s largest heart attack centre, one of Europe’s most advanced cancer centres and one of the UK’s largest children’s hospitals as well as a highly successful fertility centre. Barts is Britain’s oldest hospital and its School of Medicine and Dentistry was also the country’s first. Referrals are received from overseas and throughout the UK, but the majority of the 700,000 annual attendances are patients living locally.

The CRC scheme

The organisation sought professional advice from Certero to help produce quantified evidence of energy savings and crucially reduce the number of carbon credit purchases required under the government’s Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) scheme. The CRC scheme has placed growing pressure on organisations to make a commitment to reducing carbon emissions. The mandatory initiative has been designed to boost energy efficiency and reduce emissions in large public and private sector bodies – which are responsible for around 10% of the UK’s carbon output – with a grand ambition to cut carbon emissions by 80% of 1990 levels by 2050.

The Project

Barts and The London NHS Trust faced a number of challenges in reducing energy usage across its IT estate. It has numerous PCs, both clinical and non-clinical, spread across various locations. This comes in tandem with staff working a variety of patterns requiring a complex power management strategy. With the entire PC estate encompassing 26 buildings, the solution needed to apply multiple power saving policies to various organisational units. Furthermore, it needed to provide core benefits of administrative flexibility, user empowerment and advanced reporting to help meet energy saving and carbon reduction goals.

The new system provides Barts and The London NHS Trust with accurate reporting of savings on costs, energy supply, man hours, and carbon emissions in a format which is designed to be easily understood by the IT department and managers. Power saving profiles have been set up for each PC across the trust’s entire estate and each PC monitors its usage patterns and determines when it can be powered down. The project has helped to reduce the amount of carbon credits being bought and provides evidence of carbon savings to satisfy the CRC scheme.

Highlights

PowerStudio provides detailed reports on cost, carbon, energy and time, and its parameter-driven interface allows Barts and The London NHS Trust management to ask questions with ease. Answers are displayed through understand charts, graphs and widgets, making complex and detailed information easier to digest. Meanwhile a customisable dashboard allows any number of power schemes and power management policies for different job roles, locations, organisational units or individual PCs and its energy star database also provides accurate PC power consumption values. A built-in document manager allows users to shutdown applications and save open files when the system goes into low power states, while personalised power usage reports also enable comparisons against the whole user community. This helps with user education and awareness, keeping staff informed of their personal contribution to PC energy efficiency.

The verdict

Fiona Daly, NHS environmental manager at Barts and The London NHS, said: “PowerStudio was easy to deploy and critically engages staff. The trial provided a strong analysis of the key data required to prove there was a power saving issue that needed addressing. The results from the trial quantified the evidence for the savings to be made and the quick return on investment made the solution very attractive. It is a solution that all organisations should consider as it provides the necessary functionality to reduce energy and significantly decrease carbon usage.”

Inside view

Certero managing director John Lunt said the project reinforced the financial and environmental rewards of effective PCPM. “This project highlights the crucial role efficient PC power management plays in helping organisations, both in the public and private sector, to drive down energy costs and improve environmental credentials,” he said. “Our PowerStudio solution enables organisations to get a firm grip on PC power management.

“It provides greater administrative flexibility with the choice to tailor power policies to specific needs of individual workers. Detailed feedback can also be gained through PowerStudio’s advanced reporting,” added Lunt. “This allows IT managers to study overall power usage in fine detail and establish areas to save power, reduce bills and reach green energy targets.”

PowerStudio

According to Certero, the PowerStudio system “uses high level technology to identify power usage patterns and then apply new centralised policies to manage power usage more effectively”. It adds: “The power policies are carefully tailored to the unique requirements of each individual organisation. It can be rolled out across PCs, laptops and thin clients. It does not depend on third party products and has the ability to shut down PCs remotely, wake up PC clients and intelligently save and reload applications and documents.”