BigFix, a PC power management company, has signed two contracts in the past week to help the University of Michigan and Texas Southern University (TSU) help cut energy use across their campus computer labs.

TSU will install BigFix's power management system on 15,000 campus PCs, and Michigan will first install it on 10,000 of its 80,000 computers. TSU estimates that it will save $225,000 a year in energy usage as a result of installing the BigFix software, between $35 and $45 per PC, per year.

"At Texas Southern University, sustainability is a number one priority," TSU's president, John M. Rudley, said in a statement. He added, the BigFix solution "is an important tool for us to achieve our comprehensive sustainability goals by enabling the University to save a substantial amount of money by conserving electricity while reducing our carbon footprint.”

The BigFix software solution, which comes as a stand-alone product or part of the company's Lifecycle Management suite, lets companies set policies for power conservation across the firm's entire PC fleet.

Power management is increasingly common for companies that are looking to make a big dent in both energy costs and energy-related CO2 emissions; in a power management summit held earlier this year, industry experts laid out the many different flavors of power management software, and the potential benefits of adopting power management strategies.

Companies like AT&T have installed power management systems on hundreds of thousands of PCs company-wide, and can save millions of dollars every year as a result.

And it's not just business that's saving, as today's news shows; in addition to universities and private companies making big gains from power management, last year the U.S. General Services Administration, a branch of the federal government expedited purchases of 15,000 seats of BigFix software, at a discounted rate of $3 per license. The GSA expects to save as much as $750,000 per year.