Green PCs Make Headway in the Market
While energy-efficient computers are being adopted by ever-larger numbers of system builders, costs–even with incentives from utilities–are keeping them from dominating the market.
By Martin Sinderman
Driven by spiking power costs, demand is growing for energy-efficient, “green” PCs. But even with increasing numbers of system builders/manufacturers developing specialized green products, there’s apparently still a way to go before these products become dominant in the marketplace.
Efforts to create more energy-efficient PCs have focused on the internal power supply devices that convert AC power into the DC current that is the lifeblood of most electronics. In 2003, a study conducted by Ecos found that the typical desktop computer had a power supply running at 60 to 70 percent efficiency, “meaning that 30 to 40 percent of the power being drawn from the wall was being thrown away as heat and waste,” says Jason Boehlke, channel manager for the Portland, Ore.-based energy efficiency/sustainability consultancy.
Ecos’ 80 PLUS program encourages system builders to come up with more energy-efficient designs, “by publicly recognizing those that have reengineered devices to be 80 percent or more efficient across the usable band of power supply,” says Boehlke. Funded largely by electric utilities, the program has certified more than 700 power supplies as qualifying under the standard, and has provided more than $5 million in incentives to system builders for integrating these more energy- efficient power supplies into desktop computers and servers.
Those incentives, which take the form of rebates to system builders, help offset the higher production costs associated with more efficient power supplies–and soften their impact on the buyer.
“There is still a bit of a price delta between standard power supplies and the 80 PLUS,” says Todd Swank, vice president of marketing for Nor- Tech, a Burnsville, Minn.-based manufacturer of computer systems, servers, and high-performance clusters. “And any time you have higher prices, customers are going to have questions.” That said, green PCs are making strong headway in today’s market, according to Swank.
“With energy costs the way they are, customers really listen now when you tell them that they can save up to $70 in energy costs over the life of [an 80-PLUS certified] system, especially if they are buying 100 machines at a time,” Swank says.
Nearly all Nor-Tech-built systems ship with an 80 PLUS power supply, with schools comprising a big part of the buyer base, says Swank, who adds: “Manufacturers that are not selling 80 PLUS power supplies are going to have a tough time staying in business.”
Thanks to a 2007 executive order mandating that 95 percent of all computers purchased meet the green guidelines of EPEAT (Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool), federal government agencies are the biggest buyers of green PCs. “System builders unable to meet these standards are out of luck in trying to compete in this multibillion-dollar market,” notes David Daoud, an analyst with IDC, a research/advisory consultancy for the IT, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets.
“[Green PCs] are slowly but surely migrating from the public sector to other spaces,” Daoud says, with large corporate entities and others now starting to require that the systems they purchase meet EPEAT, 80 PLUS, and other green standards. The major problem system builders face in growing the green PC market is pricing, he adds. “Their challenge is building systems with prices that are competitive with mainstream systems–or, if more expensive, at least not enough to scare off customers,” Daoud says.
“There has always been an understanding among consumers in the marketplace that if you go green, you may have to pay more,” notes Daoud. “The big question is how much; and the answer to that can be very fluid, especially in an economy that is not doing so well, like the one we have today.”
