Enabling energy awareness of ICT users to improve energy efficiency during use of systems
Abstract
Data centres have been the primary focus of energy efficiency researches due to their
expanding scales and increasing demands of energy. On the other hand, there are
several orders of magnitude more end-users and personal computing devices
worldwide. Even the modest energy savings from the users would scale up and yield
significant impact. As a result, we take the approach towards energy-saving by
working with the end-users.
We recognise that users of ICT systems are often unaware of their power usage, and
are therefore unable to take effective actions even if they wanted to save energy. Apart
from energy awareness, the majority of end-users often lack of sufficient knowledge or
skills to reduce their energy consumption while using computing devices. Moreover,
there is no incentive for them to save energy, especially in public environments where
they do not have financial responsibilities for their energy use.
We propose a flexible energy monitor that gathers detailed energy usage across
complex ICT systems, and provides end-users with accurate and timely feedback of
their individual energy usage per workstation. We tailored our prototype energy
monitor for a 2-year empirical study, with 83 student users of a university computer
lab, and showed that end-users will change their use of computers to be more energy
efficient, when sufficient feedback and incentives (rewards) are provided. In our
measurements, weekly mean group power consumption as a whole reduced by up to
16%; and weekly individual user power usage reduced by up to 56% during active
use.
Based on our observations and collected data, we see possibilities of energy saving
from both hardware and software components of personal computers. It requires
coordination and collaboration between both system administrators and end-users
to maximise energy savings. Institutional ‘green’ policies are potentially helpful to
enforce and regulate energy efficient use of ICT devices.
Type
Thesis, PhD Doctor of Philosophy
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