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Prince George’s County Schools Leads the Way in Energy Conservation
May 25, 2005
Prince George’s County Public Schools is the first school district in Maryland to cut energy
waste in its personal computer network with software from Verdiem
Prince George’s County, MD—At a time when schools across America are squeezed for funding, Prince George’s
County Public Schools (PGCPS) has found an innovative way to cut costs without impacting its educational mission.
The district, which serves over 135,000 students, has installed a software program from Verdiem Corporation that
measures, manages, and reduces the energy consumption of over 17,000 of the district’s PCs. The software is
projected to save the district nearly $200,000 annually.
PCs are voracious consumers of electricity, and their energy use is increasing as faster processors, more memory,
and more power-hungry peripherals become commonplace. According to the Department of Energy and Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratories, the average PC can waste up to 400 kilowatt-hours of electricity a year simply by running
at full power when no user is present.
SURVEYOR, Verdiem’s signature product, is a software program that allows network
administrators to synchronize PC power settings across thousands of PCs from one central location. It adds new
flexibility and control to existing PC power options, making these functions more usable and dynamic. SURVEYOR
can shut down PCs, control the power schemes that determine energy use, or put PCs into low-power modes based
on user needs and network maintenance schedules. “SURVEYOR was developed because every year organizations in the
U.S. waste $2 billion of electricity by leaving computers running when no one is using them,” said Steven Sperry,
Verdiem’s president and CEO.
SURVEYOR is delivering energy and cost savings to PCs spread across the district’s 204 schools and administrative
facilities. Based on extensive pre-deployment testing, SURVEYOR is expected to reduce the cost to power each PC by
an average of over $11 per year with the use of user-friendly power management policies. The savings are ex-pected
to increase as these policies are fine-tuned. “Prince George’s County Public Schools is always seeking inno-vative
ways to operate more efficiently,” said Andre J. Hornsby, Chief Executive Officer. “With Verdiem’s software, money
spent to power PCs when no one is using them can instead be used to advance our educational mission.”
PGCPS’ technology team performed extensive technical due diligence on the software before making its decision
to deploy SURVEYOR. Prince George’s County Public Schools installed the software in several facility and school
envi-ronments across nearly 1,000 PCs. SURVEYOR measured the actual energy consumption of the PCs and demon-strated
average savings of over 185 kilowatt-hours per PC. IT staff confirmed that SURVEYOR functioned seamlessly, did not
impact users negatively, and was compatible with the district’s network. “Staff carefully validated the en-ergy
savings, technical compatibility, and user impact of the Verdiem software before deciding on a district-wide
roll-out,” Dr. Hornsby said.
In addition to saving money, SURVEYOR is helping PGCPS improve the environment. Over a half ton of carbon dioxide
-- a major source of greenhouse gas – is produced while generating the electricity that powers a typical PC for a
year in Maryland. By cutting the energy consumption of its PCs, Prince George’s is eliminating 6.6 million pounds
of CO2 from the atmosphere every year – the equivalent of removing 500 SUVs from Maryland roads.
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