My energy meter comes from CurrentCost www.currentcost.com but is the same as that supplied by many UK energy companies. I hadn't seen the Google solution but there is an open source community developing using some nice monitoring tools to do similar things. Many of these are built by Lab IT guys in their spare time and offered for free! See http://www.pachube.com/feeds/2119 

Whether using these on lab electrics to gain carbon trading data would work would be interesting - they do do 3-phase models so it could work.

Has anyone included energy cost in an invitation to tender or specification for lab equipment yet? 

Rick
________________________________________
From: IT working group of the Association of Clinical Biochemists [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Webster Craig [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 18 January 2010 16:59
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: More green thoughts.......

Fascinating stuff this. I heard on the radio about a company that had introduced internal carbon trading whereby employees got bonuses or fines (real cash) depending on their carbon usage for the year. Apparently it worked very well in reducing carbon footprints.

I've been trying in vain to find out what the company was to try and get hold of the spreadsheet the employees used to submit their carbon budgets every month. I thought it was on the Today programme but cant find any info. If anyone else has an idea I'd welcome it.

I've toyed with the idea of the energy meter, I've seen the google powermeter http://www.google.org/powermeter/ is this similar?

Cheers
Craig


-----Original Message-----
From: IT working group of the Association of Clinical Biochemists [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Richard Jones [Pathology]
Sent: 18 January 2010 16:52
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: More green thoughts.......


In answer to Jonathan - no haven't factored in the heating effect.

But then the aircon is on full pelt too in our labs pumping heat round and round not to mention the freezers in the corridors.

Helpful in winter but a nigtmare in summer.

Fitted an energy meter at home recently - fascinating to see what energy the central heating pump consumes on its own - a lot more than a PC.

PCs were just one target - I'm sure there are others and for 10:10 every little helps.

Dr Rick Jones
________________________________
From: IT working group of the Association of Clinical Biochemists [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jonathan Middle [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 18 January 2010 15:12
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: More green thoughts.......

I was giben an 'Ecobutton' gizmo for Christmas.

When you are finished your task you hit the button and the computer and monitor are switched to a very low power state.

To wake it up again, you either hit any key or briefly touch the main box power button depending on the O/S you use.

It briefly displays how much energy and CO2 release you have saved in the period switched off.

Cheers

Jonathan


On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 11:23 AM, Jonathan Kay <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
Thanks. This is important.

1 Different computers have very different power consumption:
http://www.sust-it.net/energy_saving.php?id=20
http://www.sust-it.net/energy_saving.php?id=21&sd=0&tariff=38
http://www.sust-it.net/energy_saving.php?id=139&sd=0&tariff=38

2 Stop printing

3 But:
You have to calculate whether the space would have been heated or cooled anyway. In many UK buildings they would have had to be heated, so the penalty of running a computer or leaving it on overnight can be discounted by quite a large degree. Is this in those calculations already?

Jonathan

PS: I've just renovated an old house. We're waiting to see whether heat recovery ventilation saves what we calculated... it certainly gives a nice well-ventilated feel, and shifts the water efficiently

PPS: The new Oxford Cancer Centre uses ground heat source pumps.


On 18 Jan 2010, at 10:53, Richard Jones [Pathology] wrote:

The 10:10 Campaign (see link on www.laboratorymedicine.nhs.uk<http://www.laboratorymedicine.nhs.uk>) is going for a 10% CO2 reduction in 2010. How far could labs go towards such a target?

As a result of initial investigations by Martin Myers it's been estimated that a typical UK lab will have a electricity consumption equivalent to  about 1,000,000 Kgs of CO2. One potential target to reduce that is to address the consumption of electricity by PCs. As a rough calculation a 100 watt computer will generate about 376 kg CO2 per year if left on 24/7. If we have 200 computers in a Pathology service then this will be 75,000kg CO2 per year. If 75% are turned off at night and weekends then this  (i.e. 50 on permanently, 150 turned off at night and weekends) will generate about 40,000Kg CO2 savings per year. That's 4% towards a 10% total. At a conservative 10p per kWh that's about £10k pa at domestic rates.

Questions:

How to recover the saving?
- Behaviour change? - staff incentives - audits
- Automated PC standby software? (see http://co2saver.snap.com/)<http://co2saver.snap.com/%29>
Any other ideas and has anyone done it already?

I've attached a crude  xls calculator which does some of the calculations for a typical lab using some simple assumptions. Anyone feel like improving / testing it?

Rick Jones
<GreenPC.xls>




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