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Green Government

UK school saves big on thin client terminals

By Johanna Morden | 24 February 2011

A school in the UK has slashed its energy use and carbon footprint using thin clients in a project that has won it the 2010 UK e-Government National Award for Green IT.

The Queen Margaret University (QMU) of Edinburgh prides itself in having one of the most eco-friendly campuses in the UK.

Fraser Muir, Director of Information and Learning Services of QMU, told FutureGov Asia Pacific that the school has replaced 95% of its standard PCs with thin clients.

The change has allowed QMU to save £100,000 (US$161,420) per year in energy costs.

The annual energy use of the school’s IT facilities has dropped from 982,807 kilowatt hours (kwh) prior to the installation of thin clients to 648,727 kwh after.

Its carbon footprint has also shown significant reduction.

In 2010, the school recorded 348,380 kg of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions while in 2004, before the use of thin clients, its emissions were tallied at 527,787 kg of CO2.

QMU was able to reach these numbers by removing the hard disk drives of their computers and storing their software and hardware at central servers, made possible by thin client technology.

Every thin client terminal at the school consumes 22 watts, while a standard PC consumes 100 watts.

“The primary aim of thin client was reducing heat output, but of course to reduce heat output you’ve got to reduce energy consumption,” said Muir.

The reduction in heat output of QMU’s IT facilities lessened energy consumption through the use of mechanical ventilation to regulate temperature inside buildings.

At present, there are 1200 thin client terminals and 100 standard PC units on the campus.

Muir said the cost of purchasing and maintaining thin clients are equal with that of standard PCs.

The thin clients operated by QMU were teamed with server virtualisation and an automatic shut down program for thin client and PC terminals to maximise energy efficiency.

The need for thin clients in QMU first emerged with the construction of new buildings on the campus that were designed with natural ventilation to promote a sustainable environment.

“They gave us a quota of how many watts per desktop and we had to come up with a desktop infrastructure to fulfil that,” said Muir.

Thin client technology has been up and running on the campus for five years.

Muir said his team has had no problems with thin client technology.

“The technology is relatively easy, it’s the people who are hard,” he said.

When thin clients were first released in the school, it was met with apprehension by student-users and personnel who believed it provided less services than standard PCs.

To meet this challenge, QMU held an aggressive user education drive and designed its thin client desktops to look like regular desktops in PCs.

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