The launch this month of Sony's new organic LED TV could mark the beginning of a surge in adoption of Power over Ethernet technologies, potentially allowing office workstations to be run using power drawn solely from their internet connection.
That is the view of networking technology specialist Panduit, which argues that new organic or white LED monitors will have such low energy requirements that when combined with thin-client computing systems it will be possible to power an entire workstation with electricity drawn from the Ethernet connection, dispensing with the need for traditional power cables and plug sockets.
Adoption of Power over Ethernet (PoE) has so far been largely limited to telephones, wireless access points and security cameras due to the inability to deliver more than 20W of power over internet connections.
However, according to David Palmer-Stevens, systems integration manager at Panduit, the emergence of organic LED screens – which are based on electroluminescent organic materials that deliver a sharper picture and do not require a power-hungry back light – will greatly increase the potential applications for PoE systems.
"These white LEDs can take a colour screen from 90W down to as little as 8W, " he claimed. "That means that if you combine one of these new monitors with a thin-client PC requiring 12W, you can run the whole system using PoE."
Besides allowing offices to dispense with much of their traditional power infrastructure, the new low-power desktop technologies would also enable massive energy and cost savings, Palmer-Stevens argued. "You will effectively be able to get a 20W desktop as opposed to the 400W desktops everyone is running today," he said. "If you swapped 5,000 PCs with 5,000 thin clients and organic LED monitors you would pay for it all in the first month alone from your energy bill savings."
He added that the technology is likely to be of particular interest to energy-hungry offices such as trading floors that are finding it increasingly costly and difficult to power large numbers of desktop systems.
New PoE standards due to be ratified within the next few months are also expected to help accelerate adoption of the technology by driving up power loads from around 15W to 30W.
