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"."

Comments

Did this in College

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Seems like a good time to mention the kill a watt

[Mustang Matt]

kill a watt meter does this too.

My apartment uses similar technology...

[UnidentifiedCoward]

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.

I've been using Linux for years to save money

[krray]

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.

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 :) 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!

The Kill-a-Watt

[ChicoLance]

Recently, I found a little personal power meter that you plug into the wall, and the device you want to measure in front of that. It then shows the amount of kWh that device is used. It's a stand-alone device, and runs between $40-50.

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!

Re:HVAC.

[pjrc]

Even if this is true, there's a lot of other loads in the building besides the HVAC system.

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.