FTAO: Sparky people/RichB

[DeskJockey]

@Rich B/sparky skilled people. Looking for some help. We're considering how to manage our idle time leccy use in our offices, as there is a lot of kit on desks that aren't in use outside of office hours (docking stations, monitors). Do you know of a product that will allow us to control each bank of desks centrally with a local override capability?

Requirements:

1) must either fit into floor boxes (standard two or four plug ones) or sit in the distribution board
2) centrally managed policy (e.g. through a browser or something with the ability to group areas together, deploy policies across multiple units)
3) with some kind of local override switch that can sit on the desk so that if people come in early or stay late they can continue working
4) about 600 desks across three locations

I can find lots of dodgy looking things on the usual tat bazaars, but I would prefer a proper solution, figured this might fall under your area of expertise. Cheers!

[Matty]

Small devices like monitors and docking stations use very, very little electric and you'll probably find that the time/kit investment to turn these on/off reliably outweighs any savings on electric.

For PC's, configure sleep settings and WOL for the morning.

Bigger issue we used to have was staff leaving other stuff (heaters, portable fans, etc) on overnight because fuck it, it ain't their money.

[DeskJockey]

The draw is fairly low, I agree, but it is still about 15w/h per desk, and when we did the sums it looked like there was a reasonable saving to be made.

Idea is we do a small PoC to get a more accurate prediction.

[Rich B]

Not something I've seen I'm afraid!

[scotta]

Its generally a bad idea powering off your computer devices overnight. Scheduled updates will run overnight. If you are using some automated power cut device this will very likely lead to issues with the machines as well as that would cause an unscheduled shutdown. Your marginal cost savings will be outdone by IT costs fixing what breaks.

[DeskJockey]

Its generally a bad idea powering off your computer devices overnight. Scheduled updates will run overnight. If you are using some automated power cut device this will very likely lead to issues with the machines as well as that would cause an unscheduled shutdown. Your marginal cost savings will be outdone by IT costs fixing what breaks.

Theyr'e only docks and monitors. No actual computers. I agree if it was about computing kit.

[DeskJockey]

Not something I've seen I'm afraid!

Worth a shot. Cheers!

[Jimexpl]

I’ve done it with knx products, but it would normally need at least a partial re-wire, but the scope could be checked with a survey.
‘Corridor’ type presence detection above each bank of desks, two power feeds to each desk set, knx relays switching the power feeds and a desk mounted switch.
One power feed would be permanent, perhaps with different colours sockets, for items such as network printers which need to be live all of the time, and all the other sockets become live on presence detection, going off after a set period of time if no one is detected. Button on the desk to give the motionless/lazy person 30 min of power.

Let me know if you want it looking at.

[DeskJockey]

I’ve done it with knx products, but it would normally need at least a partial re-wire, but the scope could be checked with a survey.
‘Corridor’ type presence detection above each bank of desks, two power feeds to each desk set, knx relays switching the power feeds and a desk mounted switch.
One power feed would be permanent, perhaps with different colours sockets, for items such as network printers which need to be live all of the time, and all the other sockets become live on presence detection, going off after a set period of time if no one is detected. Button on the desk to give the motionless/lazy person 30 min of power.

Let me know if you want it looking at.

That sounds interesting and possibly what we're after. Let me check with our facilities team about next steps.

Cheers! Will send you a DM.

[Mito Man]

I may not be understanding the question, but if you want to remotely control some items plugged into a socket wouldn't a simple smart switch/plug which can be controlled by an app do what you want? Can also set what times it automatically turns on and off and some even monitor energy usage.

[Jimexpl]

I may not be understanding the question, but if you want to remotely control some items plugged into a socket wouldn't a simple smart switch/plug which can be controlled by an app do what you want? Can also set what times it automatically turns on and off and some even monitor energy usage.

Can you imagine doing that to 600 double sockets at 3 locations?

[Mito Man]

Yeah wouldn't work unless someone like TPLink do a proper commercial version which has a decent software behind it.

[Ascender]

I may not be understanding the question, but if you want to remotely control some items plugged into a socket wouldn't a simple smart switch/plug which can be controlled by an app do what you want? Can also set what times it automatically turns on and off and some even monitor energy usage.

Can you imagine doing that to 600 double sockets at 3 locations?

It would be a ballache up front, but presumably you could then group the devices into floors/buildings/areas for ease of admin?

Although you're going to have to visit every single floor box to do "something" no matter which solution you choose.