Consumer reports reviews 2 watt measuring devices.

Both devices are sold only online. Kill A Watt costs $25; Watts Up, about $96.

The check

We used both watt meters to measure the electricity consumed daily by a refrigerator and a computer and compared their readouts with those from a calibrated watt meter in our labs.

Bottom line

Guess watt? Kill A Watt and Watts Up were accurate, and both can teach you how much an appliance contributes to utility costs. If that makes you use the appliance less or at lower-cost times of day (ask your utility when those are), you could save money. The devices can also help you compare energy costs of an appliance you own now with projected costs listed on any new one you might buy.

Microsoft has a couple of new Visio Tools to help your Green IT efforts – Server Virtualization inventory and monitoring & HVAC Monitoring.

How to Analyze Rack Server Virtualization
How to Set Up HVAC Monitoring with Visio

Just a few examples of cost-saving scenarios include:

HVAC ReadingHVAC Readings – virtual representations of a data center’s key HVAC data, including temperature and humidity, help companies better manage energy consumption and keep HVAC costs down.

Server Capacity – quickly assess server usage at both the rack and individual server level to help support decisions around shifting workloads to less-utilized boxes and potentially shutting down excess servers in the event of extra capacity.

I am going to get a demo of these solutions and have contacted the Microsoft product manager.  If any of you system integrators/consultants are interested in this solution, I can help arrange an introduction. 

Cisco announced its Greening The Network.

Cisco Tapping the Network to Help with Environmental Efforts

New product wards off 'vampire power' as corporations discover business benefits from going green

January 27, 2009

by Charles Waltner

Long viewed as a societal burden for corporations, environmental concerns are now proving a surprising catalyst to a host of both obvious and unexpected business benefits.

Companies that have made substantial commitments to reducing their environmental impact are discovering new ways of cutting costs and improving operations. And for many companies, especially technology-focused ones such as Cisco Systems, environmental initiatives throughout the world are creating potentially huge and diverse markets for new products to help improve the energy efficiency of everything from buildings and data centers to automobiles and the electrical grid itself.

With this in mind, Cisco is now focusing on ways to use networking technologies to speed such efforts to help its customers improve both their businesses and the environment. In its first major product aimed at this goal, the company announced the development of Cisco EnergyWise, a technology that will help businesses put a stake through the heart of "vampire power," the energy drawn by many electrical devices even when they are not in use.

Besides this press announcement.  You can check out Cisco’s Green Blog.

Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) announced its acquisition of Richards-Zeta Building Intelligence.

Cisco Completes Acquisition of Richards-Zeta Building Intelligence, Inc.

SAN JOSE, Calif. - January 27, 2009 - Cisco today announced that it has completed its purchase of privately-held Richards-Zeta Building Intelligence, Inc. The Santa Barbara, Calif., company is a leading provider of intelligent middleware technology that enables businesses to integrate building infrastructure and information technology (IT) applications over a common Internet Protocol (IP) network, resulting in improved efficiencies, greater energy savings and a reduced carbon footprint.

"Energy consumption is a global issue, and customers are increasingly demanding that energy management services are delivered over a converged IP architecture. An intelligent IP network is the platform to meet this need," said Marthin De Beer, senior vice president of Cisco's Emerging Technologies Group. "Richards-Zeta's intelligent middleware, together with the building-systems expertise of our partners and Cisco's expertise in networking technologies, will deliver complete solutions designed to maximize operational and energy efficiencies and provide cost and carbon savings for customers."

Richards-Zeta's intelligent middleware transforms building operational data into an IT-friendly format that easily integrates with existing applications. Its scalable, open platform enables the convergence of building systems onto an IP network. This integrated solution provides more effective management of energy consumption across an organization.

What motivated Cisco to make this purchase?

Richards-Zeta's intelligent middleware transforms building operational data into an IT-friendly format that easily integrates with existing applications. Its scalable, open platform enables the convergence of building systems onto an IP network. This integrated solution provides more effective management of energy consumption across an organization.

Richards-Zeta's technologies will support innovative Cisco customer solutions such as Cisco® Connected Real Estate and Cisco EnergyWise. EnergyWise, launched today in Barcelona, Spain, is a technology for Cisco Catalyst® Switches that proactively measures, reports and reduces the energy consumption of IP devices such as phones, laptops and access points. Ultimately, Richards-Zeta's technology is expected to work together with EnergyWise and industry partner solutions to enable the management of power consumption for building and IT infrastructure.

The Richards-Zeta acquisition exemplifies Cisco's "build, buy and partner" innovation strategy to move quickly into new markets and capture key market transitions. The acquisition was accounted for in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. Financial terms of the transaction are undisclosed.

This looks like Cisco’s strategy of extending the reach of the network.

Add Cisco as one of the companies you can buy energy monitoring from.