ETD

• Large Computing Environments
• Power Management
• Smart Buildings
• Soft Sensors

A considerable fraction of the total energy consumed by the Internet is due to a not appropriate utilization of computing equipment in homes and offices, such as Personal Computers (PCs), printers, and IP phones. PCs are often left on even when they are not used, while printers and IP phones are typically kept always on, especially in offices. Significant energy
and economic savings could, thus, be achieved through a more intelligent utilization of computing equipment, especially in large
organizations. In this thesis, we propose E-Net-Manager: an automated power management system for large environments, that suspends PCs when they are not in use and re-activate them as soon as the user is supposed to use them again. The proposed solution exploits Soft Sensors: different sensors (both Hardware and Software) used to detect user presence in their workstation. We use sensors that are already in the environment and, thus, do not introduce any additional cost.