A Case Study for Sustainable Network - Challenges to Automate Energy Reduction by Predefined Rules

In general, academic institutions try to enforce strict rules to reduce energy consumption. For example, it is easy to set up automatic machine shutdown at certain times. However, this case study demonstrates that predefined rules can provide unsatisfactory results for sustainable environments. The main stages of the methodology are the time extraction in which the machines were switched on and off and the analysis concerning the times when they should be off. Samples of computer log files were analyzed from May 17 to 25, 2017 and an estimated waste of 231.35 kWh was identified with machines that should be off in accordance with strict rules in one of the laboratories of an education institution. It has been identified that a smart framework (ProNet) can help generate new rules to reduce energy consumption, meeting new requirements that were not previously met by predefined rules.