Panama Buena Vista Saves $60,000 in One Year with Lightspeed Power Manager

School / District: Panama Buena Vista
State: California
District Size: 16,000 students
Solution: Total Traffic Control, Power Manager
Focus: Power management, Web filtering, Spam filtering

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Overview

In the Panama Buena Vista school district in southern California, technology is central to both instruction and student services. The K-8 district uses desktop and laptop computers to deliver curriculum and instruction, to provide student services, and to perform business tasks. Recognizing the benefits technology can bring to education, the district has equipped teachers with laptops and whiteboards; created mobile labs with carts of laptops that are brought into classrooms for students; and centralized student information management for administrators.

Challenge

The educational and productivity benefits of the proliferation of technology across the district are tremendous. But from an economic and environmental standpoint, there is a cost: high utility bills and energy waste. As the message of “going green” grew ever-strong throughout California (and the world), schools—like corporations and individuals—became aware of their unnecessary energy waste. “There was a lot of pressure from state agencies and our utility company, PG&E, to reduce energy usage,” explains Brook McKnight, Network Manager at Panama Buena Vista.

When Brook began investigating solutions that could help him reduce power usage across the district, he had several key factors to consider. “How we were going to implement the solution across thousands of computers was critical. How granular we could get with different policies and configurations was also important. Ease of management was a concern. And we needed to make sure that the addition of this solution wouldn’t mess up our computers in any way,” he recalls.

When he learned about the Power Manager solution from Lightspeed Systems, it was an easy decision for Brook to make. Because the district was already using Lightspeed Total Traffic Control for content filtering, antivirus protection, and spam blocking, Brook knew that the Lightspeed solution would deliver the features he needed: “We implemented Total Traffic Control about nine years ago, and were impressed by the user-friendly front-end, the ease of maintenance, and the ability to configure policies and controls.”

He also knew that Power Manager would add to their powerful, integrated network management solution—without adding another point of management. Brook shares, “Everything else we had done with Lightspeed had worked so well, we knew we could count on the features and reliability and ease-of-use. And Power Manager fit seamlessly into Total Traffic Control, without adding another interface or layer of management. It’s a one-stop-shop with Lightspeed!”

Solution

Implementing any solution over thousands of computers can be a time-consuming management headache. But, as Brook recalls, the Power Manager installation was fast and easy: “Distributing the Power Agent across all of our computers was easy because it works through Active Directory Group Policies. We set it up to be distributed automatically when the computers booted up. Installation was a snap—and the next thing we know, data was coming in.”

Within just a few months, Panama Buena Vista had the data they needed to demonstrate their reduced energy usage to PG&E—and receive a rebate from the utility company that covered the cost of the software. “The reports Power Manager provides made it easy to get the rebate. The report shows independent computers, IP addresses, parameters, and how much energy we were saving. I printed out the first and last page of the report, gave it to the PG&E representative, and within a couple of weeks we got approval for our rebate. That’s all there was to it!”

The granularity of controls was an important factor the district took into consideration when choosing a solution for power conservation—because they recognized that for a solution to meet their specific needs, and the individual needs of their various users, customizability was key. “Granularity of controls fits with how all Lightspeed solutions work—they offer flexible configuration and policies. It’s the same with Power Manager. I can set when to turn a computer off, or add a special rule for Power Manager not to do anything between certain hours, or on certain computers, or on specific days. This is important, because we had to be able to account for how different computers are used and what different users expected,” explains Brook.

Brook reports that across the district, the response to Power Manager has been positive, with users recognizing that the economic and environmental benefits of automated power management more than make up for the extra time it takes to turn on a computer every day.

Conclusion

And the results speak for themselves. Just by turning off monitors automatically, the energy the district saves is significant. By turning off PCs during nights and weekends, they save even more. With Power Manager installed on 3,500 computers, Panama Buena Vista reduced energy use by about 25%—and saved $60,000 in utility costs in the first year! Brook enthusiastically shares the results: “With the rebates from the utility company and $60,000 in saved energy costs, Power Manager paid for itself. In fact, it’s paying us money!”