Overview
With approximately 40,000 desktop and laptop computers on campus, it takes a lot of electricity to charge and run all these machines. BigFix Power Management was deployed to help the University both reduce this electricity usage and reduce our green house gas emissions.
Power Management lets you set the power management settings you want and then makes sure they stay set so you don't have to worry about it. Power Management choices can be as simple as turning the monitor off after 15 minutes or can be set more aggressively to put your computer into standby mode when it hasn't been used for 30 or 60 minutes.
For faculty and staff participants
If your department has chosen to deploy BigFix Power Management centrally, then your local BigFix console operator (usually your local network administrator) will update your power management settings. Contact your local IT staff if you have questions or want to adjust your power management settings.
If your department is not participating, you can still opt to participate on your own by downloading and running the Stanford Power Management Tool for Windows or Stanford Power Management Tool for Macintosh. Alternately, you may want to convince your console operator to have the department participate—BigFix is free to the Stanford community. Every little bit counts!
For student participants
Residential Computing has decided to allow students to independently decide if they want to participate in this effort to help reduce the energy usage and carbon emissions. Participating is simple—just download and run the Stanford Power Management Tool for Windows or Stanford Power Management Tool for Macintosh and select your preferred power management settings. If you don’t already have BigFix installed, you will need to install it before running the Stanford Power Management Tool.
Turning off your power management settings
If you need to, you can change your power management settings for the day, but it will revert to your BigFix Power Management settings overnight. To adjust your settings for the day, see Don't Have BigFix, below, to select an alternate power scheme for the day.
If you want to end your participation in the program, rerun the Stanford Power Management Tool and select None from the list of options. This will take you out of the program.
Don't have BigFix?
Download the BigFix Client for Windowsor BigFix Client for Macintosh.
If you don't want to install BigFix but you still want to help save electricity and reduce your carbon footprint, you can manually adjust your power settings.
- In Windows Vista and Windows 7, right-click on your desktop and click Personalize. Click Screen Saver and change your power settings to turn off your monitor after a short period of inactivity.
- In Windows XP, right-click on your desktop. Go to the Screen Saver tab and click the Power button to set up a power scheme that turns off your monitor after a short period of inactivity.
- In Mac OS X, open the System Preferences and click Energy Saver in the Hardware section. Select a time that puts your display to sleep after a short period of inactivity.
By doing this manually, you will need to check your power setting periodically to make sure it's what you want it to be. Also, you won't be counted in Stanford's reports on energy savings via desktop power management.
