Tracking Energy Consumption at the Cisco Store

This year at Cisco Live EMEA in Amsterdam, the Cisco Store began a new initiative to continue promoting sustainability in our daily operations. The power for the technology deployed at our travel store was routed through twelve Meraki MT40s (smart power controllers that can monitor and remotely control power). With our devices running 24/7, we baselined the store’s power consumption throughout the event with the help of CAE Labs’ WiserWatts: our total energy consumption for the show was 222.01 kWh. WiserWatts monitors our Meraki devices’ power consumption and provides power-saving, energy-efficient recommendations. Next year, we will schedule our power to compare energy and cost savings to actively reduce our carbon footprint. Similar baselining and consequent power scheduling will be conducted at Cisco Live Global starting this June.

We similarly baselined our power consumption at our San Jose store, with the total power consumption for 15 screens running 24/7 over one week coming out to 429.72 kWh. With the help of CAE Labs, we scheduled the store’s access points and switches to turn on and off over PoE (Power over Ethernet), and screens were routed through Meraki MT40s. We began shutting off the power during off-hours in San Jose, only allowing screens to remain ‘on’ for 12 hours a day, Monday through Friday: this resulted in our power consumption over one week reducing to 154.87 kWh, a 274.85 kWh difference!

Compared to the baseline week, scheduling power shut offs during off-hours also resulted in energy costs reducing from $64.46 USD to $23.23, a $41.23 difference (assuming $0.15/kWh in the United States).

As one of the Cisco Store’s six core pillars is Sustainability, we heavily prioritize reducing our carbon emissions. Our scheduled power shut offs also resulted in a reduction of our greenhouse gas emissions (GHG emissions) from 204.96 kg CO₂e to 74 kg CO₂e, a 130.96 kg CO₂e difference.

The Cisco Store plans to regularly track our energy, cost, and GHG savings with this new initiative, and monthly updates will be published on our Cisco Store Tech Lab SharePoint page (Cisco employees: log in via SSO to view). Be sure to check back in to see our progress!

Interested in learning more about CAE Labs? Visit their page or reach out now.

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