Utilities Push 80-Plus Power Supply Standard

Currently, 18 system builders are signed up for the 80 Plus program, sponsored by a dozen electric utilities, and another five system builders are on track to join, said Jason Boehlke, channel program manager of Ecos Consulting, Portland, Ore., which manages 80 Plus. The program is "ramping and continuing to grow daily, weekly and monthly," he said.

The program pays system manufacturers rebates on systems they build that use 80 Plus-rated power supplies, which need to be 80 percent efficient at loads of 20 percent, 50 percent and 100 percent. System builders in the program get $5 for every desktop and $10 for every server they sell that meets the standard.

Boehlke said the program currently has about $5 million to hand out in the United States and Canada but can tap more donors as needed. "It's far cheaper to have an incentive purchase program that saves energy than it is to produce more of it," he said.

A bigger incentive, though, may be that later this year the 80 Plus specification will be incorporated in the new Energy Star v4.0 computer specification, the first update to the energy program's computer requirements in seven years. Boehlke said that is creating awareness of the program and the standard. Among tier-one vendors, Dell was the most recent to join, getting certification on four of its power supplies, and Hewlett-Packard released its first 80 Plus-compliant product last fall.

Custom systems builders such as Nor-Tech, Alden Associates, Premio and Northern Micro, among more than a dozen other smaller players, are also in the program. And most major power supply manufacturers are making 80-Plus units available to the channel.

Antec last fall introduced its first 80 Plus-certified EarthWatts power supply unit in 280W, 430W and 500W models. "It's not just a marketing thing," said David Forster, director of channel relations at Antec, Fremont, Calif. "In terms of the market, there's a growing awareness that this is really an issue. A very large percentage of world and U.S. power needs are actually going to computers that are sitting there idle."

The 80 Plus organization calculates that a compliant computer can save users on average $13.60 in energy costs each year, making it attractive to customers who want to cut their power bills. "Multiply that by the number of PCs [a customer has] and the savings are substantial," said Mike Ferguson, sales manager at Seanix Technology, a Vancouver-based system builder and program member.

Seanix makes a line of desktops for business users called TCO, which feature low power consumption, among other things. "The total cost of ownership is not only the cost of the PC but the total cost surrounding the PC of support and air conditioning," Ferguson said. "If we can reduce the global price of it, it's not only dependent on just the single price of the unit, but the whole experience."

Todd Swank, vice president of Nor-Tech, Burnsville, Minn., said that his company has sold about 500 80 Plus-compliant PCs since it began incorporating the efficient power supplies in its Voyageur and Nor-Tech lines of computers. The systems are popular in schools, hospitals and other budget-conscious high deployments. They're also appealing to customers whose IT electricity bills are paid through their IT budgets. "If you add it up over the life of an enterprise situation when you're deploying hundreds of PCs, the cost savings are incredible. It really makes a lot of sense when you put it in perspective," Swank said. For Tech Networks of Boston, 80 Plus compliance was part of the company's desire to make environmentally friendly systems, said Susan Labandibar, president of the system builder and MSP.

"We thought it was a really good idea for us to get on board with 80 Plus because they had the credibility that would let people buy our computers with confidence knowing they were certified by an independent agency to be energy efficient," she said. "We're not presenting it as a specialty product, we're presenting it as a mainstream product."

Ferguson said being in the program coincided with Seanix's desire to be innovative and stay on the cutting edge of technology. "We pride ourselves to be one of the first getting into a new big project like this," he said. "All of the power utilities are getting into this now. We are quite conscious that reduced power requirement is a concern to be able to save energy, and we're doing our best to participate in that."