Monitor Power Management Options

What are the 4 monitor power management options and what do they mean?

The 4 options are: 

Why do I care about monitor power consumption?

There are many reasons why, but with all the discussion about “Green IT” let’s not forget that a PC is made up of two major parts:  CPU & Monitor. If we only look at the power consumption of a PC we might not be getting all the power savings available to you. What happens in many case is that the PC is shut down or Wake-on-LAN product is use to turn off a CPU, however the monitor is not shut off. 

Using a Dell 1901FP as an example we can see that the ON mode uses maximum 75W and typically 55W vs in Active off mode it uses less than 3W. If we assume that a PC is turn off for 14 hours a day then we can calculate that power saving by having a monitor that can enter into Active Off mode.  

With average cost per KW cost 9.13¢ according to the Energy Information Administration.  

55W-3W=52W

52Watts*14 hours = 728W savings or ~6.6¢ per PC/Day or $24.26/PC/Year 

Or IBM E74 Monitor

75W-2W=73W

73W*14Hours= 1022Watt or ~1KW or ~9.3¢ per PC/Day or $34.05/PC/Year 

Now this does not sound like a lot of money to be saved but what these numbers don’t take into account are the AC cost nor do they take into account that businesses pay more for electricity compare to residential rates.  

Now take an originations with 5000 PCs, 10 000 or 100 000, how much will they save with Active Off mode using the Dell 1901FP as an example?

5000 PC                                $322.33/Day       $121 301.18/Year

10000 PC                              $644.66/Day       $242 602.36/Year

100000 PC                            $6446.60/Day     $2 426 023.60/Year 

Even farther saving can be achieved if the monitor uses any of the other modes during the day! Is $322.33/day good enough reason to care about monitor power consumption? 

Need more convincing? 

Quoting Energy Star’s web site http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=power_mgt.pr_power_management 

“Hundreds of leading organizations have activated system standby and hibernate settings. Read how GE, University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, North Thurston Public Schools and others are saving as much as $75 per computer annually.” 

Use Energy Star calculate to help you determine the cost saves. Estimate your savings using our online savings calculator 

Which of my monitors support “Active Off” option?

Monitor Information Reporting (MIR) v3 has just added this feature to collect this data and return it to your System Center Configuration Manager 2007 database.  

For more information about monitor power management options see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VESA_Display_Power_Management_Signaling or http://www.vesa.org/Standards/summary/2003_3b.htm