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Another thing - CRT could be more efficient than many thought.

About 5 years ago I finally got rid of my 32" CRT TV and replaced it with a 42" LCD. Given the time mind you, it's a CCFL lit one, not LED.

However, both were energy star rated for their time. I no longer remember the exact figures, but I used a Kill-A-Watt energy meter on it.

To my surprise, the new TV used more power than the old. I no longer remember the exact measurements, but my first thought was 'well, it's bigger!', so I calculated it out by square inch of [i]visible[/i] screen, just to be meaner to the CRT. The LCD TV still used 30% more power per square inch than the CRT!

This.

Connect a Kill A Watt and compare your energy usage under full and idle loads.
My PC consumes about 60W idle and 250W under full load.
10 years ago it would make sense to use spare clock cycles for side projects, today not so much.

That all makes sense. However, as a practical example, let's say you take a computer that has a power supply that's rated for 600 W and has a power factor of 0.5: that computer will require 1200 VA to drive the load. Furthermore, a computer monitor is practically the definition of a low power factor load, as well as the motors on the printers you wisely exclude from the UPS circuit.

BTW, adding power factor correction is what the 80 Plus power supply certification program is about.

If you want to compare your wattage, true VA load, and power factor (watts / power_factor == VA) then I suggest grabbing a Kill A Watt meter. Amazon has them for less than $20.

So, doubling the wattage in VA is certainly a reasonable thing to do and would be precisely correct if the power factor for everything nets to be 0.5. Also, when your clients are upgrading their computers have them get power supplies with active power factor correction. It will decrease the load on their UPS as well as decreasing the day-to-day load on their HVAC (less waste heat).

Your HTPC server consumes 350W? What the hell do you have in that thing?

What is an HTPC server? What makes it different from a regular server?

I used to run a 24 disk raid box 24x7 for media-serving duties and it pulled about 350W at steady state according to my Kill A Watt.

My desktop computer is using 70 Watts at the moment, not counting the large monitor which is using 38 Watts. Added together, that is 108 Watts. When the monitor is in the sleep mode it drops down to just 1 Watt. I have my computer plugged into a Kill-A-Watt meter, with the monitor plugged into a separate Kill-A-Watt meter.

This desktop computer has an Intel i7 processor, but since I am not a gamer, or heavy user, it just has an unimpressive, quiet, low power consuming video card. It has a high-efficiency 80 PLUS Bronze rated power supply. If I remember correctly, is roughly a 430 Watt power supply. The computer runs Kubuntu Linux.

An 80 PLUS Bronze power supply is supposed to be 82% efficient when running at 20% of its 430 Watt rated capacity.

I also have a small book sized computer, which does not have a built in monitor. It uses 23 Watts during light useage, not counting the large monitor, which uses an extra 38 Watts (or 1 Watt when in sleep mode). That would be a total of 61 Watts. It has an Intel Core 2 Duo processor and runs Windows XP.

• http://www.p3international.com/products/special/p4400/p4400-ce.html
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/80_PLUS

I have been living in my truck for most of my life. What works for me may not be what works for you, but I'll describe my setup. I use 2 - 6 volt golf cart batteries wired in series to function as a 12 volt battery. Golf cart batteries are designed to put out steady power over a long time, more so than marine batteries. I have an Intelli-Power PD9245C 45 Amp RV Converter/Charger that I use to charge my batteries when I'm parked by my friend's houses. It makes sense to take full advantage of grid AC power to charge batteries when it is available. I also can charge my batteries using my truck alternator, or using a portable solar panel which I have, but mostly I just charge my batteries at my friend's houses. I use an Asus 1000HE netbook for most of my computing, because it only uses 11-12 watts. I also have an IPad 2 which only uses 3.5 watts with the screen at half brightness, and 4.5 watts with the screen at full brightness. I extensively tested both the IPad and the Asus netbook using a Kill-a-watt meter. Testing power usage of my devices has been important to me because my path has been to lower my power usage rather than to try to have a lot of generating capacity. For lighting at night, I use a 12v LED bulb.

Kila-pascal must be the pressure equivalent of the Kill-A-Watt. It tells you where you're using too many torrs and how to avoid wasting them.

You need to buy yourself a Kill-A-Watt:

http://www.p3international.com/products/special/P4400/P4400-CE.html

http://www.p3international.com/products/special/P4400/P4400-CE.html - this is your friend. Trust nothing but this.

If I were the original story author, the first thing I would do would be to plug in a Kill-o-watt and determine exactly what the power consumption was, before going through lots of effort to get rid of the card.

Amen, brother. My guess is that the power savings from removing the video card is insignificant compared to the power needs of the rest of the machine. Get a Kill-A-Watt; street price is less than $20. Let the thing run for a few hours with the card and without, and see if there's any noticeable difference.

Unless you think you're going to need a console frequently, or are going to be doing this with a lot of machines, it's almost certainly going to be better to just plug in a monitor. Just keep in mind that PS2 keyboards often can't be hot swapped. You may want to keep one plugged in all the time so you can use it without rebooting.

Not ideally suited, but you won't find anything better for anywhere close to $25. If you plug it in when you think the power is dirty, it makes all the measurements. No logging and no automatic determination of AC quality thought. You have to do the watching and judging on your own

"Also check the quality of your power by monitoring Voltage, Line Frequency, and Power Factor."

http://www.p3international.com/products/special/P4400/P4400-CE.html

my work PC is merrily chugging along folding proteins and using up company electricity

... and polluting our environment, using up our resources.

I know there is good that can come from the various distributed computing projects, but I prefer to have my computers idle down as much as possible to reduce power consumption. The more computing you do, the more electricity (and cooling) you use. Borrow a Kill-A-Watt to see how much, then weight the benefit of folding those proteins.

you should check out the Kill a Watt. It tells you just how much power something draws.

Just because you have a 240 watt PS, doesn't mean you pull 240 constantly. In fact with drives and monitors off, you might be pulling 75. At least for most of our common computers.

I am environmentally aware, but I did the calculation and 16 hours of a computer running is less than 5 minutes of a $40,000 PHB's time. So the attempt to enforce the policy of shutting down computers nightly doesn't add up to the execs.

• Eco-friendly
  
• Open Source
  
• Geeky
  
• Ugly as heck
  

Not only that, but if the PS3 really consumes 380W peak power, this could increase a monthly power bill to around $30 for the fool that leaves his on 24/7.

Anyone doing this have a Kill-a-Watt handy and care to share the real data?

Definitely. Not even most high-end gaming PCs use 400 watts when idle. IMO, the author needs to take the guesswork out of his calculations and just buy a Kill-A-Watt meter: http://www.p3international.com/products/special/P4 400/P4400-CE.html They're cheap and extremely useful for calculating energy consumption and line quality (voltage/frequency).

I also think the Kill-A-Watt power meter is a pretty nifty and inexpensive gift. It measures power, voltage, power factor, and frequency of the mains feeding your electrical items around the house.

Yeah, the Kill-A-Watt totally rocks. http://www.p3international.com/products/special/P4 400/P4400-CE.html

I love my kill-a-watt but I've been thinking of picking up a Watt's Up? for the datalogging capabilities. But the price is silly, I should just build one.

Anyway, a clamp-on ammeter should be in your toolkit. (Get a DC-capable model and watch motherboard/peripheral power draw inside your PC!) Instead of slicing open an extension cord, consider an AC line splitter to make your measurements with. The 10-winding side makes small measurements more accurate, and it looks more professional if you end up using it on the job.

Real servers are rackable, in 19 inch wide, 42U (~72 inches I think ) high racks.

One UPS, hot swapable batteries are nice, but we fry as many APC brand controllers as we kill batteries. I like to have an independent AC line conditioner, on a serperate AC mains circuit (i.e. different 15A circuit breaker) so that those real servers with dual power supplies (hot swappable of course) go one to UPS, one to the line conditioner (for UPS failures). Have enough circuits (not just more plugs) to accomidate future growth. A Watts Up? or Kill-A-Watt meter are nice to measuring your electrical consumption.

Honestly with how swappable hardware RAID-5 disks, hot swappable power supplies, sensible power distribution, and practicing regular backup hygenie, downtime can be minimized to mere hours per year range or less with care and planning of the administrator(s).

I also love KVM over IP (I use an ) or ILO (Intergrated Lights Out management) for headless servers, and have a backup AC available for server rooms/closets.

For servers ideas look at HP Proliant DL380 or Dell PowerEdge 2850 series.

Thousands of owners agree: You too should own a Kill A Watt meter if you don't already. Just please spell it correctly!

Seriously, I find mine coming in handy for more than just treehugging energy audits. It helped me diagnose a UPS whose charging circuit wasn't slipping into trickle mode, and was damaging batteries as a result. It lets me know whether certain devices will really run from the car's inverter, and once I plug them in, it lets me monitor the inverter's voltage drop.

What startled me when I first started playing with my Kill A Watt was how little of a difference CPU activity really makes, and how big a difference CRT brightness does. Black text on a white background is an energy hog, white text on a black background sips meagerly from the trough. I don't have an LCD to compare with, but I know they run their backlights full-brightness, so it's concievable that with a mostly-black image, the CRT's method of only lighting up the affected pixels might actually be more efficient than the LCD.

I used it to replace a server in my house (old server: HP Vectra VLi8 PIII-650, 46 watts idle, new server: Toshiba Tecra 8100 PIII-650 laptop, 15 watts idle), and find some surprising waste, such as a set of Boston Acoustics speakers that drew a continuous 40 watts, even when "turned off", and my HP Laserjet 2100, which draws 13-16 watts in powersave mode. (The speakers are now on a power strip, and the printer gets switched off when I'm done with it.)

More info: P3's web page. The only model is for 115 volts.

Interesting company: One of the products is a Voice Changer.

More info: P3's web page. The only model is for 115 volts.

Interesting company: One of the products is a Voice Changer.

Get a Kill A WATT. The are only about $25 US. I got one a couple of weeks ago. Great little toy.

http://www.p3international.com/products/special/P4 400/P4400-CE.html/

I ordered mine from here (no affiliation, just happened to find it.)