From MIT student to vice president for Information Services and Technology (IS&T), Jerrold (Jerry) Grochow has seen major changes in computing on campus and their impact on energy consumption.
“When President (Susan) Hockfield announced the MIT Energy Initiative, it was clear that information technology (IT), as a significant user of energy, needed to focus on how to participate in the ‘walk the talk’ Campus Energy Task Force and energy-saving research,” Grochow said.
With more than 20,000 personal computers and several thousand servers, MIT is a hotbed of computing power. These machines generate so much heat and devour so much electricity that community-wide adoption of power-saving measures could save as much as eight million kilowatt hours annually—the equivalent of powering approximately 1,000 homes in Cambridge.
Targeting these potential savings, Grochow created the position of IS&T energy coordinator held by Laxmi J. Rao. Rao partnered with the community to develop personal computer energy-saving guidelines. Included are a campus-wide campaign to turn off PC and Mac monitors, or put them in a lower-power or sleep mode when inactive, and limiting use of screensavers, which waste energy and don’t save screens.
“We think behavioral changes will have a positive impact on energy use across campus,” Grochow said. “We have to work on both fronts—implementing energy-saving technology and behavioral change of users. You can’t do only one and hope to get maximum improvements.”
As a member of Academic Council, Grochow represents all of IT at MIT. He also chairs the IT Strategic Planning and Resource Coordinating Council. In these roles, he strives to partner with the community to reduce the MIT’s carbon footprint by improving performance of IT on campus.
“Walking the talk,” Grochow asked staff to explore potential energy-saving strategies for transportation.
“Using a grant from Ford Motor Company, we replaced one of our vehicles with a hybrid van. We also acquired a weatherproof Haley tricycle with a custom-made, attention-getting cargo box, painted apple green, to transport computer equipment and help IS&T promote that we’re saving energy ‘one pedal at a time,’” Grochow said.
IS&T also partnered with MIT students who designed and built a pedal-powered laptop—an exercise bicycle that uses “pedaling power” to charge a laptop computer.
IS&T’s N42 building is currently a test bed for research on building monitoring sensors. Professor Leon R. Glicksman, co-chair of MITEI’s Campus Energy Task Force, sponsored a graduate student to conduct a building audit to understand energy use in N42 and potential savings from lighting and heating improvements.
Sloan School of Management students used IS&T buildings and data to conduct energy analysis in various classes. “This opportunity to partner with academic departments has immediate value from an educational standpoint and also for campus operations,” he said. “I’m promoting this to ensure we tie what we do very closely to MIT’s educational mission.”
Grochow turned to VMWare, which has boosted virtualization, saving on machine costs, energy, and floor space by creating virtual applications to consolidate programs running on separate systems. Eight servers running at 10 percent capacity could be replaced with one running at 80 percent capacity for considerable energy savings. Any MIT department can work with IS&T to implement the software of more than 100 virtual machine applications, Grochow said.
“Overall, this proves advantageous, making it easier to operate the data center and run educational and administrative applications,” he said. “Virtualization has literally hundreds of potential applications across campus.”
At MIT, Grochow serves as a “green ambassador,” turning off lights, using power management features for his computer, and printing double-sided or not at all. At home, he installs energy-efficient light bulbs, combines errand runs, recycles regularly, and lowers temperatures on thermostats both day and night. He is also researching a “co-gen” heating system to eventually replace his existing unit.
Although Grochow is pleased with IS&T’s improvement in campus energy sustainability, he said, “We’re certainly not done. We’re always talking about the next set of things we should be looking at to make sure IT is part of MIT’s overall energy initiative.”
Press inquiries: miteimedia@mit.edu