by Max Marbut
Staff Writer
Sometimes, the little things can add up and when you’re talking about a lot of little things, it can add up to a lot.
An example of that concept went into motion in August when Maria Sharp opened her monthly message from the JEA. She noticed that with the increased fees and fuel surcharges, her bill was considerably more than it was the previous month and that made her stop and think.
“If my light bill jumped that much, I wondered how much the City’s bill had gone up,” she recalled.
One of the things Sharp decided she could do at home to reduce her energy bill was to turn off her computer when it wasn’t in use. The Computer-Aided Mass Appraisal (CAMA) System manager and Webmaster had another flash of inspiration when she got to her office one day and sat down in front of her computer, which like many City workstations, operates with not just one but a pair of monitors. Sharp knew there was no way she could power down her computer even at night – because that’s when the City’s Information Technology Department (ITD) performs remote software maintenance – but what if everyone just turned off their monitors when they left the office?
Sharp e-mailed her question to Mayor John Peyton.
“I wonder how much money could be saved if everyone in the City turned off their computer monitors every day when they left work. How many monitors are there? I bet no one knows. Not everyone turns off the lights either. Even if it’s just money on paper, it’s real electricity,” she wrote.
A week later, Sharp received a response from Peyton indicating he had forwarded her question to Kevin Holzendorf, director and chief information officer in the ITD, who would investigate the efficacy of her proposal.
Holzendorf knows how many computer monitors the City owns and operates and he knows how much electricity each one uses.
“We have about 6,000 (computer) monitors. It was easy to multiply that by the number of kilowatt hours a monitor can use in a year to come up with the operating cost,” he said, then added, “If everyone will participate and turn off their monitors when they go home, the City could save as much as $140,000 a year on electricity.”
ITD has implemented other cost-saving and environment ally conscious policies, including replacing older cathode ray tube monitors with new flat-screen LCD units that take up less desk space and use far less electricity. The City is also working to reduce its “server carbon footprint” by installing the latest software that can accomplish the same amount of work with less hardware.
“We’re implementing the industry’s best practices in terms of data centers. It’s part of the mayor’s office’s green initiatives program,” said Holzendorf.
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