BETHESDA, Md. — Next Wednesday, August 27, is being planned as a demonstration day for businesses and government to learn how easy it is to cut down significant amounts of energy used every day in their office buildings.

Hewlett-Packard, Citrix and Intel are joining forces for "Power IT Down Day," and urging IT managers, office managers and office workers from all industries to sign up and take part in the event.

The key solution to the problem of runaway energy use is amazingly simple, and yet still under-utilized: by installing and activating power management software, and training employees how to keep it functioning, companies can reduce energy significantly in off-hours and over weekends.

“The savings from avoiding unnecessary power to idle monitors, processors and peripherals is compelling,” said Tom Simmons, a vice president at Citrix Federal, the company's department involved in the project. “Turning off even one PC can make a difference.”

According to a recent report from HP and Intel, if all PC users started embracing power management software, the global energy savings could climb as high as $80 billion.

Power management software comes in many forms, and is increasingly popular and easy to find for little to no money. Both Windows and Macintosh operating systems include some form of power management software, and a host of companies have developed more complex third-party software for managing networks of computers and IT departments that operate network-wide backups and maintenance schedules.

In the past two weeks alone, the federal General Services Administration has announced a program to purchase power management software from BigFix, while Verdiem and Microsoft joined forces to promote a new, free version of Verdiem's power management software to business and individual users around the world.

For Wednesday's event, HP, Citrix and Intel will host a virtual CIO roundtable discussion, at 3:30pm EDT, exploring the benefits of power management programs. To sign up for the webinar visit www.citrix.com/PowerITDown, and to register your company or organization for the Power IT Down Day, go to http://www.hp.com/go/poweritdown.