IST Green Initiatives

The Digital Class Recording System

For more than twenty years, the Law Center has recorded classes under special circumstances with the approval of the academic administration. In 2007, the Information Systems and Technology department switched from using antiquated cassette tapes to an all-digital recording and secure delivery system. Besides being more convenient to the students and incurring lower labor costs, the new system saved the Law Center and its student population from having to purchase and dispose of 4,000 cassette tapes during its first year of operation.

New Data Center Cooling and Electrical Systems

In 2005, the Information Systems and Technology department upgraded the cooling and electrical systems in the data center of the campus. The project received an APC InfraStruXure award. It also translated into significant on-going power savings.

The Replacement of Old Monitors with Flat Panel Monitors

When the Information Systems and Technology department started replacing old monitors with flat panel monitors at the Law Center in 2003, it made sense not only in ergonomic terms but also in economic and environmental ones. We reduced by $50,000 per year the Law Center electrical bill and are using 82% less electricity, from 460,000 Kilowatts to 80,000 Kilowatts, per year.

A standard 17” monitor consumes 204 Watts per hour, that is, 2.04 Kilowatts per day using a conservative estimate of 10 hours of usage per day. At a cost of 13 cents per Kilowatt, it costs about 27 cents per monitor per day. With 247 working days in the calendar, that comes out to about 504 Kilowatts or $67 per monitor per year. Because there are about 907 monitors in the Law Center Campus, it would take about 457,128 Kilowatts or about $60,679 to operate them per year.

A flat panel LCD monitor consumes 36 Watts per hour, that is, .360 Kilowatts per day using a conservative estimate of 10 hours of usage per day. At a cost of 13 cents per Kilowatt, it costs about 5 cents per monitor per day. With 247 working days in the calendar, that comes out to about 89 Kilowatts or $12 per monitor per year. Because there are 907 flat panel monitors in the Law Center Campus, it takes about 80,723 Kilowatts and it costs about $10,494 to operate them per year.