Fresh from our “Ride with the Verify Seven” evening co-hosted with ESD Alliance member company OneSpin during DVCon, we’re planning our next event with another member company –– Sonics –– Thursday, March 23.

The panel, “Energy Policy and Strategy for the IoT Era,” moderated by Grant Pierce, Sonics’ CEO and chairman of the Alliance board of directors, will outline new energy rules for PCs set by the California Energy Commission (CEC). A panel discussion will look at how these new rules affect the system design ecosystem and how the industry will adapt to them. 

The standards, primed to begin January 1, 2018 and roll out through July 2021, cover desktop computers, notebooks and laptops, small-scale servers, workstations and monitors, the top consumers of electricity in California. Estimates are staggering –– the state reports consumption of about 5,610 gigawatt hours of electricity or 3% of residential electricity use and 7% commercial. The CEC determined something needed to change, even though many manufacturers build seemingly energy-efficient products. The new standards are estimated to save 2,332 gigawatt hours per year and reduce utility bills by more than $370 million, enough energy to power about 350,000 California homes a year while reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
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