Michael Kanellos

Payoff About a Year for Energy Efficient Computers June 25, 2008 at 9:12 AM

Buying the most energy efficient server or desktop on the market costs more, but it’s not outrageous, according to Albert Esser, Dell’s Vice President of Power and Infrastructure Solutions.

“There is a premium but it is sensible. The ROI is about a year or less,” he said.

Esser was talking about a line of servers Dell is coming out with that sport a power supply that is 92 percent efficient. That means that 92 percent of the power injected into it gets used productively. Currently, Dell servers have power supplies that are around 80 percent efficient. Dell is also coming out with servers and desktops with power supplies that are, respectively, 89 and 88 percent efficient.

Traditionally, server power supplies could be 60 to 80 percent efficient, he said. It doesn’t sound like much, but if you add it up over millions of servers cranking out spam messages around the world, those electrons add up.

Hats off again to the tech industry. Years ago, these companies didn’t care about power bills. Intel and AMD began to research energy efficient chips at the start of the decade, but mostly to contain heat inside computers. Electrical costs weren’t a big factor. But when power bills began to escalate in 2005, the obsessive, hypercompetitive men and women in the industry began to rapidly tackle energy consumption. There has probably been more tangible improvement in the IT industry as far as energy consumption is concerned than any other industry.

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