16 mai 2024
Connected socket: good idea or gadget?
Spoiler alert: at the risk of disappointing some, connected solutions are not always relevant. The cost of manufacturing them is sometimes much higher than the economic and environmental benefits the company can expect.
Sit back and let me tell you a little story. A true story, of course. There won’t be an ugly dragon, but plenty of figures for the greedy (oh, don’t hide, I know you’re there).
Reducing energy consumption
Once upon a time, at the end of 2022, a company wanted to take concrete action to reduce its energy consumption. In France, it was (and still is) a time when energy costs were rising sharply and collective awareness of climate issues was growing.
This company being in the digital sector, a group of employees (organized in an « eco-responsibility » initiative) naturally thought of looking for solutions to reduce the electricity consumption of the company’s IT equipment. It has to be said that the teams were all too regularly leaving their computer screens on standby at night. Aouch.
The collective’s idea was to set up a connected solution that would automatically switch off all the IT equipment every night. So, no forgetting, and the prospect of big energy savings.
However, before embarking on the purchase and installation of these connected sockets, one of the company’s employees had his doubts. He tells the Mavana team.
Environmental “profitability” of a connected socket
"Tell me, in my company they want to put connected sockets in all the outlets to automatically switch off screens left on at night. When I see the impact of mineral extraction, I wonder about the positive impact of this kind of solution (knowing that electricity in France is already decarbonized). So my question is: Do you know if the carbon footprint of setting up a connected socket is profitable from a carbon footprint point of view? I suppose it's a question of time, so it must be profitable after X number of years. Do you have any idea if it's 1 or 10 or 100 years?"
At Mavana, we love this type of exercise because, for us, the calculation of economic and environmental profitability is one of the main elements that are usually used to justify the use of a connected solution. In France, 80% of the the environmental impact of most connected objects comes from their manufacture. It is therefore essential to deploy them only when they are relevant from an environmental point of view.
And the result was clear.
In the company’s specific situation (number of screens, number and brand of connected sockets, etc.), the connected solution was a gimmick.
Calculation assumptions
Assuming that the connected socket is used every day of the year, financial profitability is expected after 7 years. But what about environmental profitability? Well, we’re talking about a minimum of 9 years! In fact, it may never be profitable at all, as the socket may break down before that time lapses…
Here’s our response to this concerned employee:
Without conducting an in-depth LCA, let’s try to get a sense of the magnitude.
Electricity consumption before the connected solution
Let’s imagine that the employee works from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. (not bad) and that the screen remains powered all the time outside this range (i.e. 16 hours per night). The screen reference you gave me indicates 1.2W consumption in standby mode. Two screens on the same socket1 therefore account for 2.4W, i.e. 16×2.4 = 38.4Wh per night.
Given that 1kWh of electricity in France represents around 50g of CO2eq on average over a year, these two screens left on overnight « emit » 1.92g of CO2eq every night.
Environmental cost of the connected plug
On the other hand, the connected plug reference seems pretty hefty to me: Wifi, on-board web server, application logic capable of interacting with PDAs, exchanging with web servers, protected for 2500W, and so on. With a product of this size and weight, we’d be talking, in my experience, of between 5kg and 8kg of CO2eq just for the phases prior to its use – i.e. the raw material extraction, production and distribution phases. Let’s take 5kg of CO2eq just to be optimistic (when normally « good practice » is to be rather pessimistic). And yet… I’m ignoring other environmental indicators here, such as mineral and metal resource consumption, which are important elements in the environmental impact of this type of object. But that’s another subject.
Energy savings achieved
The connected plug reference indicates < 1W without any further precision. We therefore have a « connected » plug that potentially consumes 1W continuously all day long (24Wh), which DRASTICALLY reduces the interest of such a plug to save… 38.4 – 24 = 14.4Wh per day!!! (by way of comparison, this is equivalent to the amount of energy required by a bedside lamp bulb to read for an hour at night).
Let’s take an « optimistic » scenario, though, telling ourselves that the plug only consumes 500mW (which I doubt, given that there’s an on-board server):
On the one hand, we have two screens that would consume 38.4Wh per night and an outlet that would consume around 12Wh per day, i.e. a potential « gain » of 38.4-12 = 26.4 Wh-> I’ll round it up to 30Wh to be even more optimistic.
Study results
1 kWh (1000 Wh) emits ~50g of CO2eq in France. A daily « saving » of 30Wh would therefore equate to 50g of CO2eq x (30 Wh/1000) = 1.5g of CO2eq.
To « compensate » for the 5kg of CO2eq due to the manufacture of the plug would therefore require … 5000 / 1.5 = 3,333 days! (more than 9 years!)
Note that this would be twice as long (18 years) if we considered a consumption of 1W for the connected plug…
Raising awareness to avoid unnecessary energy consumption
I think that, rather than a connected socket, it would make more sense to connect meter « outlets »: for example, to control a whole set of lines (per floor, for example) at the electricity meter. This would have a similar effect without investing so much and weighing so much.
That said, my fear with this kind of techno solution is that it’ll take away people’s sense of responsibility, and they’ll rely on techno to make up for their shortcomings.
I suggest doing better with less and using « social innovation »: raising awareness among all employees (which would cost less than €20 per socket) and then organizing a change in behavior. Similarly to the « number of incident-free days » in factories, display a « number of days without screens on at night ». And for implementation, for example, ask each « open space » member who leaves last to go around and unplug any screens that aren’t switched off, and note down the number of these screens somewhere (in a Slack/Teams channel or in an app, eco-designed of course! ).
With a target of reaching (and maintaining) 0. If people are willing to play along, there’s a good chance the company will get there fast!
And you can even gamify the whole thing (with a scoreboard for each open space, by « chocoblasting » those who forget to unplug their screens, etc.).
And all without any unnecessary manufacturing or energy consumption.
Mavana's recommendations
Mavana has therefore recommended that we refrain from deploying these connected plugs, and instead concentrate our efforts on raising awareness, such as setting up a fun challenge on the developers’ stage. Whoever forgets to turn off their screen, pays for everyone’s chocolate! And believe us, it’s very effective!
And then we also recommended another, more impactful gesture: reducing the number of screens. Because saving on the purchase of a single screen represents a saving of around 270kg of CO2eq (equivalent to the electricity consumption of a workstation with 2 screens left on standby every night for 33 years…).
Thanks to Web-Atrio for allowing us to publish this unfiltered story. Since it has a happy ending, we thought it might be of interest to other companies in the midst of reflection.
Because even when we’re full of good will, when we don’t have all the keys in hand, it’s unfortunately easy to fall into « greenwashing », even if it’s unintentional.
1 At the time of this exchange, we had understood that a single socket powered 2 workstations, each equipped with a screen. We later learned that, in reality, the Web-Atrio team had organized the office space in such a way that four workstations were powered by the same power strip. And that each workstation was equipped with 2 screens. As a result, the figures presented in the above article differ slightly from reality. For greater transparency, we’ve included the more realistic figures here (which don’t alter the conclusion as to the right reflexes to adopt):
We’re talking about a theoretical saving of around 153 Wh per night, or around 129Wh of « avoided emissions » per day (again… if ALL screens previously remained on standby).
This would give an economic return after 655 days (i.e. around 1 year and 10 months).
And for environmental profitability, after 775 days (i.e. around 2 years and 1 month).
Source:
« In France, 80% of the environmental footprint of digital technology comes from manufacturing »: ADEME-ARCEP report January 2022 https://librairie.ademe.fr/consommer-autrement/5226-evaluation-de-l-impact-environnemental-du-numerique-en-france-et-analyse-prospective.html
« 1kWh of electricity in France represents around 50g of CO2eq on average »: Base Carbone – 2021 data: https://bilans-ges.ademe.fr/fr/basecarbone/donnees-consulter/liste-element?recherche=%C3%A9lectricit%C3%A9
Sustainable development objectives
The theme of this article corresponds to the following SDGs:
- Decent work and economic growth
- Responsible consumption and production
