eiPower Proof of Concept

When considering an energy savings product such as eiPower many organisations want to do a Proof of Concept (PoC) during of their product evaluation. An important part of most PoCs is achieving an estimate of the amount of energy and money that will be saved by implementing the product across their organisation.

eiPower contains a number of features to assist in performing a PoC including the 'Proof of Concept Report' which clearly shows the savings that an organisation will achieve by implementing eiPower.

In order to do a PoC with eiPower the following steps are recommended;

1. Install eiPower Saver Solution
   Go to the Symantec Installation Manager and install the eiPower Saver Solution onto your SMP.


2. Create a PoC Collection
   Identify the PCs that are taking part in the PoC and create a collection containing only these PCs.
   
   The computers in your baseline should, as much as possible, be a true representation of the mix of computers that exist in your organisation.


3. Rollout the eiPower Agent
   Enable the eiPower Agent Rollout task and apply it to the PoC collection created above.


4. Establish a Baseline
   A baseline is a record of the power usage patterns in your organisation before any power policies are applied. To establish the baseline leave the eiPower agent installed for at least 2 week with the eiPower Agent Configuration policy DISABLED. With this policy disabled the eiPower agent will collect power events from your client computers but will not apply any power policies.
   
   Note :
   
   
   
   • The longer the baseline period the better as it will be more accurate.
   
   
   • The baseline period only starts once the eiPower agent is installed onto all computers in the PoC.
   
   
   • The baseline period should represent typical (or normal) energy usage in your environment before power management is introduced and hence users should not change their behaviour during this period. e.g. users should not start turning their PCs off at night it they were not doing so previously.
   
   
   • The baseline period should not include periods where there are unusual events such as significant outages or public holidays.


5. Enter Wattage, Pricing and CO2 values
   Enter values for Model Wattage data, Power pricing and Power CO2 emissions. See earlier post on the recommended way to get started with this data.


6. Establish a Comparison
   After collecting at least 2 weeks of baseline data, enable the eiPower Saver Agent Configuration policy and apply it to your PoC collection. Set the Power Scheme to your desired times for Monitor Off, Standby and Hibernate. With this new policy applied allow the eiPower agent to collect the new power usage patterns for a period at least as long as your baseline period.
   


7. Publish the eiPower Saver Reports
   In order to run the reports in eiPower it is necessary to publish these into your MS Reporting Server. This is done using the eiPower Report Publishing page. Full instructions are provided in the documentation.


8. Run the PoC Report
   In the parameters for this report set the following;
   
   
   • Collection = PoC Collection
   
   
   • Start Date = Start of your Baseline period
   
   
   • End Date = End of your Comparison period
   
   
   • Policy Enabled Date = Date that you enabled the eiPower Agent configuration policy (step 6. above). This must be between the Start Date and End Date.
   
   
   • Count of Computer = the Number of computers in your organisation that you are considering installing eiPower agent onto.
   
   This report shows you the average daily energy usage, cost and CO2 emissions for your PoC group during the Baseline and Comparison periods. It also shows the average daily saving during the Comparison period versus the Comparison period. These results are then used to calculate the savings figures for all computers in your organisation for a full year.
   
   Hence this report will use the data gathered during your PoC to give you an estimate or the total energy, cost and CO2 savings that you can achieve by implementing eiPower across your organisation.