Microsoft has worked with Alinean to build an online Green Savings calculator for both Desktop and Server Energy Savings. It has a similar look & feel as the Green Virtualisation calculator I blogged about in November.
Instead of taking you through the steps for the calculators, I'd like to give my fellow Aussie IT Pros some specific information to help them customise the calculators to the Australian market. Many of the figures within the calculator are US specific but its pretty easy to change these once you know what the typical Aussie configs should be.
So go ahead and select "Register Now", complete that process, then on the first page customise the questions to your IT environment. For example:
Clicking Next will give you the following page - now here is where we'll customise to Australian standards - select the link - "Click here to review / edit detailed assumptions".
On the page that pops up, go through & change the following metrics:
| Metric | Default Measurement | Australian Measurement | Australian Reference |
| Average work days per year | 218 | 223 | Australians typically work 11 months of the year but this figure excludes holidays etc (see below). Obviously customise this if your business is quite different. The total number of days is based on non-leap year i.e. 365 days. |
| Average non-work days per year (weekends, holidays and vacations) |
147 | 142 | Includes: - 104 days of weekends - 10 days personal leave - 20 days annual leave - 8 public holidays (NSW) This varies depending on the year & your state in Australia so check out this LINK for a full list for 2009. I used the NSW public holidays in 2009 for the numbers above, excluding the bank holiday in August because not everyone gets that! |
| PC User Profile | [your own] | [your own] | This should be very specific to the user profiles in your own environment. |
| Non-Vista PC Profile & Windows Vista PC Profile | [your own] | [your own] | These figures depend again on your specific environment. You can assess these specific figures using Microsoft Partner software such as Verdiem, which will report on usage profiles. |
| Power Consumption |
- |
- |
Unless you know specific figures for your machines, its probably best to leave these figures as is. |
| Current price paid for power per kW-hour | $0.1082 | $0.11 | Based on the OECD reporting for electricity prices, Australia is slightly more expensive than the US so I'd recommend changing this although it probably won't make a major difference to the savings. If you have your actual averages for power costs (check with facilities management) then enter these here. |
| Expected growth in power costs (starting in year 2) |
6.0% | See additional table below. | This isn't really simple as there are different figures per state and per retailer, and dependent on the amount of electricity used. However IPART (who regulates retail pricing) have provided a 3 year indication of pricing increases for electricity which I summarised in table below. |
| Average carbon emissions per automobile (metric tons per year) |
5.46 | 4.01 | In Australia in 2005, passenger cars contributed 43.7 Mt of carbon emissions and there were 10,896,000 passenger cars. |
| Average carbon emissions per home (metric tons per year) |
9.31 | 8 | In Australia, the average household produces approximately 8 tonnes of carbon through electricity use. |
Energy price increases:
| 1. Locate your electricity provider |
| 2. Find out your total energy use (e.g. 20mWh) from facilities or whoever manages electricity in your business |
| 3. Correlate this to the appropriate 3 year average column (last column) |
| For example, if my business uses 20mWh per annum and my energy supplier is EnergyAustralia, my 3 year average figure is 7.3. I then enter 7.3% into the field "Expected growth in power costs (starting in year 2)" |
| Electricity Supplier: | Energy Australia | |||
| Total Energy use | 2006/07-2007/08 | 2007/08-2008/09 | 2008/09-2009/10 |
3 year average (to 2009/10 FY) |
| 20mWh | 7.2 | 7.5 | 7.3 | 7.3 |
| 40mWh | 7.3 | 7.5 | 7.5 | 7.4 |
| 80mWh | 7.3 | 7.5 | 7.4 | 7.4 |
| Electricity Supplier: | Country Energy | |||
| 2006/07-2007/08 | 2007/08-2008/09 | 2008/09-2009/10 | 3 year average | |
| 20mWh | 8.9 | 6 | 6 | 7.0 |
| 40mWh | 8.9 | 6 | 6 | 7.0 |
| 80mWh | 8.9 | 6 | 6 | 7.0 |
| Electricity Supplier: | Integral Energy | |||
| 2006/07-2007/08 | 2007/08-2008/09 | 2008/09-2009/10 | 3 year average | |
| 20mWh | 7.7 | 8.1 | 8.1 | 8.0 |
| 40mWh | 7.7 | 8 | 8.1 | 7.9 |
| 80mWh | 7.7 | 8 | 8.1 | 7.9 |
Reference - IPART Energy Pricing
