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Use Linux to Reduce Your Power Bill
Stephen Herzog writes "Linux Devices has published an article about the AcquiSuite, a Linux based hardware device that collects and reports energy consumption information. Companies who are looking at energy management solutions need to keep the cost down in order to recover their retrofit cost with savings from the energy bill. Linux is a perfect fit for cheap data collection devices in part because "Linux provides complete TCP/IP functionality, PPP... and no royalties"."
We used proprietary software that cost a WHOLE lot and sold it to people for a lot. But it still saved money. Now the outfit is having to switch over to more Linux/OSS based stuff because they're running out of funding.
Except for the government clients.. they alwasy seemed to have money.
kill a watt meter does this too.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
to monitor water usage. It is actually kind of cool from my geek perspective. You get a bill for utilities from a company in Texas which is where the data is aggregated.
At first when I saw the box and I didn't know what it was so I called the phone number and asked what it was and they said oh it is an embedded machine to remotely monitor your water usage. I guess I got a tech/service operator because they were very knowledgable and said it uses embedded linux and want on to explain how it works (in general terms). The rep said the only presence they have in Seattle is for a technician for service related calls.
You could easily imagine running a utility company on a skeleton crew with only a strong capital investment on the onset. Makes you think.
If you want to reduce power usage, would you want to use an Intel x86 chip in that goal? Wouldn't a PPC Linux be more power efficient? I am sure others can bring up other lower power consuming chips that have Linux ports than Intel's power hungry beast.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Using Linux itself has just saved me money in my time. "It just works". Make a change, reboot, make a change, reboot, reboot? Never. Mysterious crashes? Long gone.
:) that the lights turn on automatically (sensored to X10) and the Linux box sees this (and the time) and dims the lights automatically for me. HHmmm, this saves power too!
I've also always had I believe a CM11a plugged into one of the serial ports. It's called X10 and allows signalling to take place over the electrical lines.
Linux takes care of outside lighting, HV/AC, and a host of other operations for me around the house. Add in a RF remote and all of a sudden you can control/dim the lights throughout the house with X10 and the remote in your hand (Linux does nothing here).
Can Windows control the lights? Of course, but I've never seen a Windows box "just work" with no human intervention for years on end.
I like the fact that when I walk into the bathroom at 2am (for obvious reasons
But linux is also proven to reduce your processor heat as well. Its called two little assembaly opcodes that Linux uses.
EI
Halt
This two little commands enable all interupts and then halt the processor (in that order). So while the box is doing nothing, the processor is also doing nothing, excepting waiting on some interupts to go back to work. Because the processor has halted and is doing absolutely nothing, it has time to cool down.
Windows, as far as I know, does not implement these opcodes, and I don't know excatly how they could get away with it. I guess that is how processors burn up. Maybe these opcodes help in the deduction of your power billsince the processor is no longer "active".
All opcodes are for the Z80, I do not know if they are the same for the x86 processors as well, but the theory is the same.
Especially for retrofit situations? All outlets can be X-10 managed, but this doesn't say anything about actual power consumption. I'd like something at my breaker box to measure the actual Kilowatt usage on the different circuits. Also it needs to be something passive, so if the computer goes down the system still needs to work perfectly (and then can poll the devices when it comes back up).
I also think it is worth pointing out that the author is employed by the company (http://www.obvius.com/) that sells the reviewed product....
And I use Linux all the time.
In fact, all our web-based energy visualisation products were developed and run on Linux, and the 3D energy visualisation work I do on this in my spare time:
screenshot
is also developed and run on Linux.
The devices we use to interface ethernet with meters are too lightweight to run linux, they simply provide a TCP-IP -> serial connection for the meter's RS-232/422 interface and an ethernet port for connection to a LAN.
Many meters only support pulse-output, which does require a device such as this to count pulses, convert them to kWh or other relevant measurement, buffer these readings for some period and provide a interface for this data to be extracted, which is what this device is.
It is nice to see multiple inputs for temperature etc, as energy consumption data alone often does not provide enough of a picture to make decisions that can really cut your energy peaks or identify areas of inefficiency.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
It's called the Kill-A-Watt, and is available from ETA Engineering, CCrane, and Radio Shack. .
I'm not involved in this, but just bought one, and it's answered a bunch of questions about how much everything uses. Interesting!
I know a story of a company (which I can't mention due to former NDA) that used a system similar to this AcquiSuite. The guy who saw the facilities manager for a large "campus" hired a database consultant to build some scripts to automatically update a "naughty" and "nice" list of the departments who used the most and least power per square foot of their respective areas. He had it automatically send emails to the managers of any sections that wasted a lot of power relative to the other areas.
Much of their power bill turned out to be for lighting, and by the managers simply telling their people to turn the lights off, their power bill went down considerably. The peer pressure of having the departments compared to each other went a long way towards motivating and sustaining measures to save power.
So your dad may be right, or he may be wrong about HVAC, but there's a lot of ways to save power besides ripping out your furnace and cooling systems.
Just to mention another one, I know of a place where they had a large peak demand charge (power companies charge for peak usage as well as comsumed kwh on the east coast), and it turned out large machines which melted material with heaters were all "warming up" at the same time. By having the machine operator come in to work an hour earlier and turn the machines on in a sequence they saved thousands on their monthly bill. I heard a similar story of a heat-based machine that caused a large peak because whoever installed the machine went "overkill" on the number of heating elements. They just cut the wires to half the heaters, and the machine took twice as long to warm up (was on a timer anyway in that case) but didn't set a record peak and thus the power bill went way down. In both those cases, they believed their excessive peak demand bills were from actual useful work, but once detailed data was logged it turned out to be from machine startups and they saved lots of money by simply starting the machines up differently.
So you may not think it's such a great device, but there are a lot of people who've saved a lot of money simply by learning where they were really using power and making simple changes to the way they operated. They would probably not agree with you.
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