AEM or Active Energy Manager - How does this play in an i world?

[rob@xxxxxxxxx]

Guess I'll have to watch the webcast on Tuesday  February 23 to get any 
details but I was wondering how AEM or Active Energy Manager plays in an i 
world.
http://www.common.org/webcasts/
Boss is talking about upgrading our PDU's to play with this team.  Is this 
just for monitoring purposes or does it act like an electric water heater 
in the US?  Where the electric company can send a message down the power 
line to shutdown electric water heaters during times of peak consumption.

I can understand how individual equipment can be tuned for this.  For 
example, if the temperature is not that high then why spin fan motors so 
high (or even spin all of them)?  But how can a PDU help (other than 
monitor)?  Shut down the hardware?  Give it a "brown out"?

Although having PDU's that I can remotely turn off/on sounds cool, 
especially for a bank of modems that I often have to power cycle.  Just 
have to make sure that alternative equipment is not plugged in, or, 
perhaps I can power cycle by outlet on the pdu.


Rob Berendt