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Saving Power in your Home Office
cweditor writes "Rob Mitchell shows how he measured energy use of all his home office equipment, and then targeted the energy pigs for replacement. With better equipment choices, he'd save $90/year. If you've got more than a couple of computers and printers at home (and if you're a Slashdot reader, you probably do), the savings would be a lot higher. Includes detailed formulas as well as a spreadsheet on monitor energy usage."
A typical slashdotter will likely save way more both nature and money in a year by just not buying one of the gadgets..
Ofcourse saving electricity is good, but often the total enviromental cost of disposing of the previous thing and the making of the new more energy efficient thing is way above any savings made by the new one..
850 untis * 77.1 cents gives a saving of 100,000 mackerals.
Excel 2007 FTW!
liqbase
I was running SETI@Home on all of my computers for a while until I realized that they use less power when the processors are idling as opposed to processing at full speed. Now I do not run any kind of volunteer processing like that. I can also see why it's a bad to install this kind of software at your place of employment. I wish that I could volunteer my computers' time without is costing me extra money to do so.
I unplugged that appliance that measured my electric usage. However, the power company didn't see the benefit the way I did.
Also, what about TVs? I have a 19" old-fashioned TV. Cheap, and it works. But I'm looking at a 32" LCD. The LCD might pull less electricity, but would the difference offset the energy costs of making the TV?
Decent little article. I decided to go on a similar drive and make our home (which serves as home office for myself and my wife) a little more efficient. I targetted a number of things including DC plug packs being left in idle, devices in stand by etc. What I did was measure the household electrical current draw by timing meter revolutions (old spinning type meters in near universal usage in the UK) before and after, and work out what was worth doing.
I detailed my thoughts in this blog along with details of how to calculate power drain from the electrical meter in your home.
How much time and energy does it take to "save" 90 dollars? Maybe being cognizant of power consumption on new purchases is handy, but spending a weekend dicking around with stuff is a waste of money.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
all go back to using candles and get rid of all our gadgets (except mine of course). What say you?
For those of us who need to think bigger EnergyStar has a report and ways to cut energy usage for a whole data center... But energy saving starts at home.
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
I've got one of these little guys on hand, and I swear by it myself. Much easier than trying to use an amp-clamp to find your AC current usage. Anybody interested in monitoring home energy usages should invest in one.
The Kill-A-Watt (and its competitors) are a handy item. I was surprised to find that my desktop PC was pulling 118W doing "nothing" and 139W when working pretty hard. Even more surprising, when I switched to Volt-amp mode, the numbers were 189 and 210 VA, respectively. My office is usually too hot anyway, so I figured that was a good excuse for a new power supply. I got an "80 Plus" power supply, and now "Hymie" pulls under 88W/89VA when slacking and about 95W/96VA breathing hard. The power factor correction isn't just a gimmick. The case is much cooler, and I unplugged several of the now-unneeded fans, saving a couple more watts. On top of that, my immediate desk area is more comfortable and quieter. See website http://80plus.org/ for more info on "80 plus" program.
I am not a crackpot.
Okay, so it saved him $90 when he replaced some items, but how much extra would you spend on the new items that you wouldn't otherwise spend?
One great way to cut down your computer's power is to replace all of the big power-hungry graphics and processors with all these cheap and efficient ones like WalMart or whoever have been selling recently. Who volunteers to replace their nVidia 8800 with an on-board graphics card to save a hundred watts or so?
It's a good idea, but it's either expensive in gadgets or will often need to cripple what you have. (Yes I know there are more efficient graphics cards now, but the general trend is more power hungry)
The main lessons from TFA seem to be: get rid of CRT monitors (my last one died this year and was replace with an LCD) and turn things off when you're not using them - sensible stuff just about anyone could do.
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
Give me a break. Turn your house up 1 degree in the summer and down 1 degree in the winter and you will save more money than that!
"TV, a medium as it is neither rare nor well done." Ernie Kovacs
It said the new LCD was better on the eyes. I think it worths $200 to not ruin your eyes...
But i agree, he probably spent 5x more to save $90.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
Not a bad article, but really his primary problem was that he was running some pretty old gear - a big CRT monitor and an old Laserjet. Once he dumped those the pickings were pretty slim.
It's like those folks that hang onto a twenty year old fridge, keeping it in the basement for beer. Just because it's "free" doesn't mean it's doing you any favors.
Three Squirrels
What he saves on his electricity bill, he will have to spend on his heating bill.
You know it makes sense, a little reminder from jointm1k.
I seem to think that any one of the power switches featured in a previous article would do nicely to reduce power consumption. Something about disabling electronics with the extreme prejudice of a "thud" followed by the lights flickering tells me that I'm going to save some cash.
If my old Commodore64 used less power than my Pentium IV I should switch back? What about if a CRT uses less power than my new HDTV of similar size? Sometimes there are other reasons to choose a product than simply power consumption.
http://www.earth.org.uk/low-power-laptop.html
And the site is hosted by the new equipment!
Rgds
Damon
http://m.earth.org.uk/
Methinks slaughtering those energy pigs, roasting them, then consuming should save the home some power. Bonus points, if you roast them using their own fat as cooking fuel. (ouch - no one said environmentalism was not ironic).
The author spent $200 to buy an LCD monitor to replace a 19" CRT, saving $18 / yr electricity: more than a five year payoff. And he's putting a CRT into a landfill somewhere. There's no economic incentive to buy an LCD; savings are pocket change and doesn't realistically pay for itself. And the environmental cost could be a wash, since the reduced carbon footprint is weighed against a CRT dumped in the trash.
This article is fun, and I might play a similar game at home. But people chasing $90 in electricity is nearly trite compared to the real energy users: home heating and cooling and clothes washers and dryers. Globally, this is spitting in the ocean compared to the real change that's (presumably) neeeded.
It's reported that eliminating coal-mine fires (http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/22/from-bagels-to-coal-fires-an-unorthodox-economist-keeps-pushing-for-change/) would reduce CO2 emissions annually equivalent to that produced by all cars and light-trucks in the US. There's little value in individuals replacing 3 W cable modems for 2 W versions when the "easy" targets are still ignored.
ShoutingMan.com
Mine reports watt use via a USB link to mfgr-provided software. I run the program on a laptop plugged in elsewhere when I'm measuring.
Not quite as spiffy as a Kill-a-Watt (instantaneous readings only), but still very useful.
I've replaced a bunch of bulbs with compact fluorescents. If I believe the packaging, I will save more money in a year on my lighting costs than I normally spend in a year on ALL of my electrical needs.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I can retire at 40!
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
... of course, alligator-clipping the blink sensors to my eyelids stings for a little bit, but you get used to it really fast. It's a small price to pay to save the world.
The emperor is naked.
Coal mine fires will be eliminated by individuals. They will be individuals who operate coal mines, or run coal mining companies, or regulate the coal mining industry. But each and every one of them will be an individual.
There is no need, nor any possibility, of "leadership" in sustainable living because "leadership" always means "coercion", and coercion is unsustainable. Even the more benign forms of government intervention, like subsidization, are unsustainable.
Sustainable environmental change will only come when the way we bill for energy usage is changed, such that the first few hundred kWhr are relatively cheap and the rest get progressively more expensive. This would recognize that energy is as necessary as food for modern life, but still punish gluttons. Taxing energy usage or carbon dioxide production would of course be as unsustainable as any other coercive action unless it was done as part of a large-scale shift in the tax code as proposed by Ontario's Green Party (in that case the coercive nature of the tax code remains constant, but the burden is shifted from environmentally friendly activities to less friendly ones.)
In any case, every watt anywhere is always used by an individual for the purposes of that individual or under the orders of that individual. Anyone who says, "There is nothing an individual can do" is saying, "There is nothing to be done." On the contrary: reducing your own individual energy use is all that there is to be done. Everything else is just wanking.
In terms of grams of CO2 per candela, a candle has a carbon profile worse than that of an incandescent bulb. Beeswax candles are an exception but most paraffin wax is derived from petroleum.
Multiplying Amps by 127 doesn't take power factor into consideration and gives you VA, not Watts, unless your load is purely resistive. It can give you a vague idea of whether you're saving any power or not, but not always since electronic and inductive loads can draw current at different parts of the AC waveform such that a clamp ammeter won't show.
There's a short explanation of the difference here: http://www.powervar.com/Eng/ABCs/CalcVAWATTS.asp
Putting moderation advice in your
Rather, the brick that converts the AC to DC is inefficient.
My savings came from taking an efficient computer power supply (80-85% efficient, depending on the load) and running my own 12V and 5V supplies direct to the devices that use those voltages [includes: cable modem, wireless router, usb hub, network disk, a GPS/VHF radio and a camera]. When I can be find time to finish the job, I'll do the maths and buy the parts to add 19V and 6.8V for two other devices.
In practical terms: I no longer have a collection of bricks generating heat, so I waste considerably less energy; I plug only one device in to the UPS, eliminating a lot of wires, so the installation is simple and tidy; and there's a bonus: the fan on the power supply keeps air moving over the equipment whenever heat builds up...
You make a good point about heating and cooling being bigger offenders than office electronics, and focusing on them first. Adding insulation and replacing (or at least caulking) leaky windows is another good move which could save you hundreds of dollars in energy each year.
The article didn't mention him putting the CRT in a landfill - I suspect he ended up donating it or giving it away. There are a number of charities out there which take obsolete computer equipment, test it, and give it to nonprofits or low-income people. Or you could give it to Goodwill or post it on Craigslist, where it will end up with someone who needs a monitor and might have otherwise bought a new one. If it exists in your town, you could even freecycle it. This is a great way to keep things out of the landfill - it's a lot more efficient than donating to a thrift shop for specialty items. When someone needs something in particular, they don't have to go to a dozen thrift shops looking for it, they just do a computer search or post a request.
My truck is like a series of tubes.
Two things, really. A power supply where the individual outputs are switchable via USB (go to sleep, printers, USB hubs, etc shut off) -- at the very least that cuts power to all outputs when one output's load drops (i.e., the computer turning off cuts power to everything else plugged into the switch). The other thing I'm looking for is a single higher-efficiency power adapter that would replace the multitudinous little bricks with a multi-output brick.
Put those things together and you could easily drop power consumption 30-50% in a setup like that.
90/year is better than nothing BUT he spent a fair bit of money for those savings.
While monetary price may not be the most accurate measure of resource consumption, with the fairly low margins on many computer products I suggest that it's not that far off. USD200+USD130+USD65 of monitor+modem+printer does include the energy and resource cost of building them (and nowadays some products include the cost of recycling or trashing it).
Basically I doubt many of those items are priced much cheaper than the energy and resources used to make them. Sure there could be distortions but I'd need to see more proof that saving USD90/year of electricity by immediately buying USD400 of stuff is so much better than waiting for your old stuff to actually stop working first or become genuinely inadequate for your needs. The way I read it, USD44 of the savings were achieved just by turning on power management on his machine.
A lot of consumer grade computer equipment stops working within 5 years anyway. So if you're say spending USD400 every 3 years (USD133/year) instead of 5 (USD80/year), where's the bulk of your USD90/year savings going? If you exclude savings from power management to try to get savings from buying that new stuff, then you might be talking about only USD40+/year "savings" which is negated by you spending an extra USD53/year (USD133-USD80) because you are buying stuff more often.
If you have an SUV, switch to a smaller car and you'd save a lot more.
If you want to be more cynical, this story is just more slashvertising that encourages yet more consumerism. "Buy that new LCD monitor", "Buy that new printer", it's good for the environment. Blah blah blah.
This article is kind of timely, as I just got a Kill-A-Watt on Tuesday for the purpose of measuring office equipment electrical usage. What I found was that my old Athlon64 3200+ (1 gig of memory) was drawing 100 watts idle, while the new Athlon64 X2 5400+ (2 gig of memory)that I just got to replace it runs at 40 watts idle. Given that I am paying $0.32 kwh for my top usage, that comes out to a $14.29 savings per month by purchasing the new, noticeably faster machine. Given that I paid $150 for the motherboard/processor/video card/memory upgrade, in 10 months, the machine will have paid for itself if both would have been left to sit idle. The normal usage numbers are 120/77 watts which comes out to a $10.07 a month savings if both machines were run under normal loads 24/7. The new system also has WAY better power management, so I'll actually use it. This means that when I am not using the system the numbers will be 100/5 watts, and a savings of $22.25/month. Based on my usage patterns, I expect about $15 a month in savings.
After seeing these numbers, I decided to check out my wifes machine. Her system has the known Windows bug that makes it go to the "It is safe to shut down your system" message instead of actually shutting down when the computer is instructed to shut down. This combined with her usage pattern of sitting down and looking things up for 5 minutes, then walking away for the computer, and coming back 2 or 3 hours later to spend another 5 or 10 minutes on the system, means that getting her to turn off her computer when not in use is simply not an option. There is no way I am going to convince her to wait the 3-4 minutes waiting for it to boot up, and another 3-4 minutes waiting for it to shut down, to get 5 minutes of use out of it. Her machine runs at 110 watts idle, and 150 watts under normal load. Given that the new motherboard has suspend that actually works, 99% of the time her system could be running 5 watts with, again, better functionality. This would lead to a savings of $22.25 per month in savings. This would mean giving her the same upgrade would pay for itself in ~7 months. You can bet I am going to do that very soon. I expect that my son's system is only slightly more efficient than my wifes, so his will likely follow shortly after.
I have a small 1200sqft home and my electricity bill is over $400 per month. We went around the house and tried to figure out the biggest hogs. Nothing seemed off par until I went into the garage and noticed that the fridge and freezer were running. So I sat down for awhile with a book and listened. It was summer and these things were running 25 minutes out of the hour. Then i went inside the house and it was no more than a total of 10 minutes and hour. I disconnected them for 2 months and saw my bill drop over $125 a month! I no longer have them in my garage. I later read that they should never be in a garage unless it is climate controlled. I bought a bigger unit for my house and no longer need them anymore.
Mike18067
www.slipcoverhome.com
I wish appliances such as motherboards and monitors could deliver information about Wattage in addition to temperature. That info would be stored near the BIOS and could be read at any time by software (in kW h).
In the USA, the standard voltage is 120 volts. Virtually every computer power supply and these days the power supplies of most auxiliary equipment can operate on 240 volts, either with a flip of a switch, or through autoranging which usually supports 100 volts (as in Japan) through 240 volts (as in Australia, UK, etc). 240 volts (or in some cases 208 volts) is usually available for special circuits using opposite alternating polarities. Most equipment will operate slightly more efficiently on 240 volts. There is also less power loss in the wiring due to the lower average current. While this might only amount to a 2% to 4% overall savings, it is something to consider. Note that the use of a transformer to step the voltage up to 240 from 120 will lose some or all of that savings, so this only works if you and wire the 240 volts up directly.
There are a few problems with this that won't be readily solved unless there is a big market demand for this. One of them is that the way 240 volts arrives to your home in the USA is different than in places like the UK. The USA gets 2 opposite polarities at 120 volts relative to ground that combined have a difference of 240 volts relative to each other. The UK gets 1 polarity of power and a grounded neutral wire. That means things like surge protectors have to be wired differently. So just buying surge protectors from UK will leave you less protected, or in some cases not even work at all. Equipment to handle power distribution and protection with the USA style of 240 volts is hard to find and expensive when you do (usually because it is designed for very large appliances like a 50 amp electric stove, or the whole house). A UPS for this voltage (usually listed as 208 volts because that is what many business offices get since that's the voltage between 2 phases of 3 phase power in the USA) is usually a very large device (3 kVA and up).
It's a chicken and egg problem. The right equipment won't be made unless there is a market. The market won't come about without the right equipment.
There is one advantage of the USA style of 240 volts that neither the 120 volt circuits in the USA nor the 240 volt circuits in Australia an the UK have. This is "balanced power" (an equal but opposite voltage on each wire, relative to ground, and no current on the grounded wire) which greatly reduces the level of hum that can get into audio equipment, especially sensitive sound studio equipment. This can only solve the hum problem for equipment that can use 240 volts (otherwise the hum problem would have to solved using a special balanced 60 volt system that delivers 120 volts).
But we can at least get started despite some of these difficulties. I just wish they would make a 240 volt version of that "Kill A Watt" meter mentioned in the article.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Yes, this is a bit offtopic...
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
The author spent $200 to buy an LCD monitor to replace a 19" CRT, saving $18 / yr electricity: more than a five year payoff. And he's putting a CRT into a landfill somewhere. There's no economic incentive to buy an LCD; savings are pocket change and doesn't realistically pay for itself. And the environmental cost could be a wash, since the reduced carbon footprint is weighed against a CRT dumped in the trash.
$90 / yr / monitor in a business setting is a big deal though. And you assume he tossed the CRT instead of having it properly recycled. I don't see why you'd assume that.
This article is fun, and I might play a similar game at home. But people chasing $90 in electricity is nearly trite compared to the real energy users: home heating and cooling and clothes washers and dryers. Globally, this is spitting in the ocean compared to the real change that's (presumably) neeeded.
$90 * 100 million homes = $9 billion / year. Not trival at all.
It's reported that eliminating coal-mine fires (http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/22/from-bagels-to-coal-fires-an-unorthodox-economist-keeps-pushing-for-change/) would reduce CO2 emissions annually equivalent to that produced by all cars and light-trucks in the US. There's little value in individuals replacing 3 W cable modems for 2 W versions when the "easy" targets are still ignored.
If it were "easy" to put out a coal fire, don't you think we would have done so already? Letting it burn underground is a waste; mining it and burning it at a plant at least provides some value. Ideally, we should be able to do both.
I can't help but wonder how much electricity we are wasting with people leaving their boxes on (for a good reason mind you) but wasting a bunch of it at the same time.
In some places (the southern United States, for example) people cool their homes for six to seven months a year, and every watt used in a home office costs an addition 2 to 4 watts to remove from the house just to maintain a constant temperature. Add to the $90 a year he would save directly an additional $200 in indirect savings for home cooling for these places.
The biggest power sucking appliance in most houses: the clothes dryer. These puppies can suck down 4000 watts or more.
The secret that appliance companies don't want you to know: clothes dry themselves. It's true!
I went out and bought a $28 drying rack, which is big enough to dry one load of clothes. Even when the weather is cool, heavy clothes only take a day or so to dry. I haven't used a clothes dryer in over a year.
If it's 10c per kW*h (I don't know the exact price offhand), and I do 1 load of laundry a week, I'm saving 4 kW*h = $0.40/week or $20/year. (Actually, I recently moved into an apartment complex where the dryers cost $1.00 to use, so I'm saving $1.00/week.) It look like my drying rack has already paid for itself.
I switched to more energy efficient computer hardware, but did not just suddenly go out and buy new computer hardware all at once. I waited until each item became semi-obsolete or quit working, then I replaced it with a more energy efficient replacement. Perhaps the author should have suggested that people do it that way.
There are other advantages besides just saving money. For one thing, during power failures, my computer can now run much longer from UPS power. There is at usually least one thunderstorm, every summer, which knocks out the electricity for an hour or more. There are also usually other thunderstorms that are so loud and close, that I pull the power plug and unplug from the Internet, to avoid damage. I can now keep on working longer from UPS power while waiting for the worst part of the storm to pass.
An energy efficient computer is also usually quieter, because less powerful fans can be used.
With my purchasing choices as a consumer, I am sending a message to manufacturers that energy efficiency counts. I do not want a 500Watt power supply and dual power hungry high-end video cards. By purchasing energy efficient products, I am telling them that I want good performance with minimal power consumption.
One thing that the author did not mention was 80 PLUS certified power supplies. They are much more energy efficient that many of the other power supplies. I used one of those when I built my latest computer from scratch. Like the author, I also use a Kill-A-Watt meter. I also save energy by using CFL light bulbs.
Don't replace things to save energy. Just make energy conscience choices when the time comes to replace things.
Of course, people forget that computers cause air conditioners to cycle more frequently. Here in Austin, TX, that is a real issue. Sure, way up north, the heat is efficient in the sense of a space heater. We don't need those very often. :)
I ran the numbers and running my machine at home for my website, email, etc. was costing me more than running it on a cheap web hosting service mainly due to the cooling issue. I lost a small amount of flexibility, but gained a cooler home. Easy trade-off in this part of the country.
-l
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A slowed down CPU (P4 or Athlon w/speedstep or similar technologies) won't save much. What really made the difference for me were video cards and rotating hard disks. While most ordinary PCs would draw around 100-150 watt, monitor (lcd) included, a high end video card could double that figure alone. Also, while an idle disk draws around 5 watts, a rotating one will need 20 or 30; more when spinning up. A misconfigured RAID set could draw easily 100 watts or more.
Beware of the tip where the author suggests to let the disks spin down after 15 minutes. Hard disks aren't built to be spun up and down too often and this figure could cause a probable mechanical failure before its time. I'd choose (and used for years for my disks) longer periods like one hour or two.
Not to mention that the environment, instead of being impacted over 10 years, got impacted now because of the raw material/resources/energy needed to manufacture said replacements - and the accompanying collateral contamination - you don't really think fluirescent lamps have benign contents do you?
See that long UID - that's what you get for lurking too long
This is my goal. So far Im on track. It'll get harder once 2010 rolls around though... (when I started in '05, I was doing 5% power reduction per quarter, but those days are over.) Once you're into the 30% range, lifestyle changes must occur, and thats where it'll stop for 99% of westerners. Their right to a marginally more comfortable lifestyle at exponentially increased energy footprint is written into the constitutions of their countries.
The author spent $200 to buy an LCD monitor to replace a 19" CRT, saving $18 / yr electricity: more than a five year payoff.... There's no economic incentive to buy an LCD
Your understanding of economics is poor. Give me an investment opportunity where I'm guaranteed to make my money back in 5 years and it will continue to grow at least that rate after that, I'll put everything that I can into it, even if it's only "pocket change". In 5 years he will have made that money back and after that, it's gravy.
The savings in power from replacing the CRT were $18/year, not $90. Assuming no time-value of money, it would take 11 years to pay it off. It takes longer, of course, if there is time-value (interest). Not many LCDs really have that lifetime, so money-wise, you're not saving any.
In terms of energy, it takes energy to make the LCD, transport it, and to recycle the CRT (rather than dump toxens into a landfill). How much of the $200 pays directly for the energy? Does $18/year, or even $90/year really pay it off?
This is why people say it's trivial. In many cases, there's no gain by replacing working equipment.
Sometimes there is, though. His office lighting used 370 watts (twice his office equipment). In terms of energy and cost, it would probably be worth it to reduce that. My home office uses about 40W of lighting for general use, 90W when task lighting, which happens less than once a week. So, if he saved on lighting, that's between 280W and 330W or 2.24-2.64kWh in an 8-hour day (provided you use the lights in day-time).
I'm a husband, father, and computer hobbyist extended into at least three niches -- my time is worth a hell of a lot more than my money. $90 a year doesn't seem worth the 2+ hours it takes to identify and replace the devices, unless you've got nothing better to do...
One of my professors in college was Chief Scientist at GM for a while and wrote some papers on this in the 80s or 90s. I don't have the citations, but there was not a lot of benefit to buying a new car just for a 20 or 30 percent improvement in mileage back in those days. However, these days, a large portion of a car gets recycled, and new cars are made from a lot of recycled materials, so there is probably some benefit if you can double your mileage or thereabouts.
And, how much do you drive? I have a 99 Cr-V which only gets 23 mpg. I consider that a guzzler, but I only drive it 3000 miles a year.
The basic point is that the "marketplace" is pretty efficient - a car has a large variety of materials in it, including energy, so the cost of production pretty much reflects the envionmental cost of producing it.
20 mpg is not very good mileage these days, and if you have an old Subaru it will eventually spew oil everywhere (trust me, I used to own one.) I say upgrade if you can afford it and you drive a lot.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
So what then do I do about keeping my BOINC projects humming along? Isn't the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence or Folding@Home, even Einstein@Home more important than saving a few measly dollars per year on my electricity bill? What if $90 is what I spend for coffee in a month without blinking an eye? Why would I care about $90 in a year? Is my home-office carbon footprint really THAT big? I'm thinking not and certainly not at the expense of my BOINC stats. I'm in the top 99.6 percentile for cryin' out loud! I'll pollute our landfill with mercury from my CFLs but I'll be damned if I'm going to have my BOINC status take the hit for a future that I'll never see.
I leave it on all the time. It takes too long to boot. Sue me. My wife uses one desktop, likewise. Sue her too. My son, ditto. We have one wireless router, one MTA for Voip, one print server, one printer. If I save a few watts will that make up for my neighbors 60 inch home theater?
Then again, I still use some of those really inefficient halogen touchier lamps. I use CFL bulbs in the light fixtures that don't dim, but there's something really nice about being able to vary the light from intense and white for reading to warm and dim for movies or dinner.
While halogen lights are not as efficient as CFLs they are more efficient than incandescent lights. As for using CFLs with dimmer switches, there are some CFLs capable of dimming. Though they are more expensive here are some dimmable CFLs. Though I don't see where they say what the manufacturer is on that page both GE and Philips make dimmable CFLs.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Warning... This is a long post, but has specific info on how we did it. If you are really interested in saving energy regardless of your motivations, read on.
;->. We incorporated these ideas in our old location, but we had no idea how much we were saving because power was included in our lease.
We are a small IT company in Colorado that has always had a thing for saving energy. To all you "green" folks out there, no, we did not do it to reduce our "carbon footprint" or any such psudo-math. (I will retract this statement if and when someone can show me hard math and facts where the data doesn't come from a table generated by an "expert"). We simply saw the need to reduce waste, and did what we could. The fact it would help our bottom line didn't hurt either
Recently we moved into our own building, and got a real power bill. The first one doesn't count since we had the deposit to pay and contractors with power hungry tools... but our second one was $37, and no, that is not a typo. The subsequent bills were within 20%. What was done to make this possible was three-fold, Habits, Building, and Equipment.
Change your habits. If you are done with something, turn it off. We power down half the servers and some IT gear when we leave for the night. Laptops get turned off or leave with the employee. Lights get turned off when you are not using the space. These habits were solidified in the old location.
The building we selected is a 1920's adobe with about 2200 square feet. At our altitude (nearly 7000 feet), we needed no cooling except for the hottest months. The rest of the time we pull cool air from under the wood floors as needed. The office stayed at about 70 degrees, and the A/C kicks in at 85. All the area lights have been replaced with compact flourescent and task lights are LED spots. The break room has a small energy efficient fridge and microwave. No real surprises there, but the big savings is in the IT side of the house.
Most of our real power consumption on the AC side are the printers. We have 3 laser printers, 2 B/W and 1 color, that we keep turned off when not in use. I wish we could move to something more energy efficient, but in business, there is still no replacement for a laser printer. We also have an inkjet/fax/scanner/dishwasher combo (just kidding about the dishwasher bit), but it also runs on AC, and stays on nearly all the time. We use it mostly to print proofs before they go to the laser printers for production.
We have 8 pieces of non-computer equipment (phone systems, routers etc...) that run on 12 VDC and 3 run on 5vdc. We selected the equipment because it ran on DC at one of these voltages. Wall warts are just miniaturized linear power supplies; they draw power whenever they are plugged in, and produce heat, even when they are doing nothing for you. Switch mode supplies, such as PC power supplies use power in proportion to their demand and are most efficient at 70-80% load. We use a 500W dual output switch mode power supply to power everything that normally has a wall wart, charge the battery banks for failover... sort of a UPS with an 24 hour run time, and all the servers.
Waitaminute... Servers??? Yep. While you may think you need God's own server for what you do, take a real look at it. We had a file server, 2 web servers, a mail server, an applications server, a database server, and a development server. They were mostly dual P4s with one single CPU. We replaced the servers used for the file and mail servers with one box with a Via C3 processor, 200W 12vdc power supply (for ITX machines), dual 500GB hard disks and 2 GB RAM running CentOS. It is plenty fast for our work group of 4 office people, 4 techs, and 2 sales weenies. In fact most have commented that it "feels faster" than our old SMP machine running 2000 Server. Better still is the power consumption... about 3.5 amps on the 12V line, or 42 Watts. Nearly identical machines run as our web servers, a combined application and database serve
an analysis of the energy and toxins used during the lifecycle of a car: http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=433981
If you sell your gas guzzler to someone else in favor of a more efficient model you aren't really reducing pollution at all. Would it be better to just send it directly to the scrapyard?
If you sell and the buyer uses the vehicle for transportation it's being reused not recycled. As for whether it's more efficient to reuse it or send it to the scrapyard, recycling it if the material is salvaged and melted down to be made into something else, it depends on the energy used in both processes. I once read of a lifecycle study that showed it took more energy and other resources to mine fresh metals and use it to make something than does recycling used metal. However today I don't know if this still applies as vehicles are using more resources than just metals such as the composites used. To an existent this is being worked on by companies like GM. GM has worked on a Hy-Wire Concept car with a skateboard design. The skateboard provides locomotion, the engine and drivetrain, which allows the body to be interchanged. A person would be able to get a car with one body type but then a few years later they could then change the body style from say a muscle car to a SUV when they have a family.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I guess that is a decent argument for improved CAFE standards.
Politicians will never raise CAFE standards until they're bit in the ass. While the big 3 US makers; Chrysler, Ford, and GM, fight any raise in CAFE their foreign competitors are eating their lunch. The same thing happened in the 1970's, they didn't learn then and they aren't learning now.
FalconShould there be a Law?
But yes, overall, simplifying our lives and living situations would go a long way towards reducing our energy footprint; but we should also avoid false optimizations.
- "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
The savings in power from replacing the CRT were $18/year, not $90. Assuming no time-value of money, it would take 11 years to pay it off. It takes longer, of course, if there is time-value (interest). Not many LCDs really have that lifetime, so money-wise, you're not saving any.
I wasn't only focusing on the CRT though when I was replying. My only point regarding the CRT was that it can be recycled. As for LCD lifetimes, I know several people that have laptops and the LCD screen works just fine even though its about 12 years old. I don't see where you got that 11 year number from; every LCD tv will be trash in 11 years? I somehow doubt that. At any rate, saying that the LCD must pay for itself without using savings elsewhere is silly.
In terms of energy, it takes energy to make the LCD, transport it, and to recycle the CRT (rather than dump toxens into a landfill). How much of the $200 pays directly for the energy? Does $18/year, or even $90/year really pay it off?
It takes far less energy to create than its $200 price. Much of the price is in materials, labor, and markup. By the time you buy the monitor, its $200. It may have only cost the manufactorer $75, and not all of those are energy costs.
Personally I'd rather use some energy to recycle than let posious chemicals end up in drinking water.
This is why people say it's trivial. In many cases, there's no gain by replacing working equipment.
It doesn't seem that logic supports that. At any rate, the LCD is already created, sitting on a shelf. Letting it sit there and using a CRT that takes up more energy doesn't seem like a great idea either.
Sometimes there is, though. His office lighting used 370 watts (twice his office equipment). In terms of energy and cost, it would probably be worth it to reduce that. My home office uses about 40W of lighting for general use, 90W when task lighting, which happens less than once a week. So, if he saved on lighting, that's between 280W and 330W or 2.24-2.64kWh in an 8-hour day (provided you use the lights in day-time).
Agreed; but savings are savings, and if you can cut cost further that seems to be a good thing. Most of our nation gets its electric from coal burning plants, possibly one of the costiest (in terms of polution) ways to generate power. Cutting your power bill today lessens the need to burn as much coal.
New decent quality CFLs feature "instant on" and are full brightness in a second or two.
Cheap no-name models made in china sold by walmart are crap, but even those have improved.
Luckily there is this thing on the information super highway(its a series of tubes) called google that can help you find unbiased product information.
1. in your web browser type in the url: www.google.com
2. type in the search term "compact fluorescent lights test"
3. click "I'm Feeling Lucky"
4. Profit!**
**Actual profit is debatable, but saving real money on your energy bill can be easily achieved.
We have the best government that money can buy.
>"It turned out that my office sucked away 2.2 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of power during that time. Since all of that power is converted to heat, I was also warming up my office to the tune of 562 British Thermal Units (BTUs) per hour. That's roughly one-sixth of the heat output from a 1,000-watt hair dryer, heat that my fan had to work to remove."
1 kW/hr = 3413 BTU/hr, not the other way around. In other words, its equal to 7,500 BTUs. Or. more obviously, 2.2 1,000 watt hair dryers.
If the author could make such a simple mistake, I wouldn't trust any other figures, esp. since
Kevin Smith on Prince
True. But "society" had better improve the availability of (and education about) proper disposal for CF bulbs. In a few years when all the bulbs sold in the recent surge wear out, most will probably go into the regular trash and landfill.
I bought my first CFL more than 20 years ago, replacing the incandescent bulbs with CFLs when they burned out, and I've only replaced 3 CFLs in that tyme. Meanwhile the added energy needed to power incandescent lights over CFLs mean more mercury is emitted burning coal. I bet the mercury in CFLs is less than that emitted from coal fire power plants. But you're right, good collection systems need to be in place to recycle CFLs. A similar system to what done with car batteries, motor oil, and tires can be put in place in some places. Have a "deposit" being paid on CFLs when bought, but if a bad CFL is brought in then waive the deposit.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Wouldn't these devices simply measure voltage and current and multiply them to give watts?
With purely resistive loads 1 VA is 1 watt, however with an inductive or capacitive load VA and watts are different. My electrical knowledge is way too rusty but maybe another /.er can give you the formulas to calculate VA and watts.
FalconShould there be a Law?
For DC circuits, VA = Watts, but for AC circuits, it's a bit more complicated.
The problem is that the v(t) and i(t) may not be in phase, so you cannot simply multiply Vrms*Irms and get the power used. You can calculate the instantaneous power p(t) = |v(t)*i(t)|, and integrate that directly over one period to obtain the average power usage. You could also calculate <p>rms = sqrt(int(v(t)^2*i(t)^2 dt, 0..T)/T) to avoid using the discontinuous abs() function.
It's a little simpler if you assume that your power is monochromatic. The integrations have already been worked out, so all you need to know is the difference in phase and you can compute the real power (W) from the apparent power(VA_rms). We call the ratio of real power to apparent power the "Power Factor." It is always less than or equal to 1.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
I always laugh when someone mentions that. My PC uses a reasonable amount of power, about 100 watts, using a plain old 70%+ PSU. Switching to a 80PLUS one would have me about 10 watts or so.
10 watts * 24h/day * 365 days/year = 87.6KWh, @ 0.10$/KWh that's 8.76 (make that 10$ w/ taxes) savings per year. Assuming my PC is running 24/7, without any kind of power saving (it hibernates when I don't use it, so it's not even close to that).
Why would I go spend like 150$ on one of them fancy high quality 80PLUS PSUs when they would take 15 years to pay for themselves? With average daily usage (maybe 6h/day tops -- gotta work, sleep, etc) and power savings enabled it would take well over 50 years to pay for itself... Even if the PSU didn't use any electricity at all (created the power out of thin air) it would still take like a couple years for it to pay for itself (and by then I'll likely have a new pc anyways)
What about if a CRT uses less power than my new HDTV of similar size?
Ah, I saw some HDTVs that were CRTs. While LCD TVs use less power than CRTs a plasma TV may use more.
FalconShould there be a Law?
The author spent $200 to buy an LCD monitor to replace a 19" CRT, saving $18 / yr electricity: more than a five year payoff. And he's putting a CRT into a landfill somewhere.
Having RTFA I didn't see where it said he was putting the old CRT into a landfill, can you point it out for me?
FalconShould there be a Law?
I have a Lux meter and a power meter and a test rig and a large assortment of bulbs... The savings from CFL isn't much and the amount of real light they produced isn't what the packages claim and they reduce their light output faster than older bulbs. It appears that the light output is based on their highest intensity point as if the entire bulb produced that (like the incandescent bulbs). Most of the non twist designs put out 1/3 the light on the end as the brightest part of the side and the twisties tend to produce less total light but are more consistent. I started by testing 20 bulbs I got from a local K-mart and grocery store and have since collected a few more. The best so far have been LED or halogen and the worst was ones are CFLs. Good quality long life incancesdents are in the same range as mid tier CFL. CFLs dim rapidly (to being useless based on their stated output in less than 1000 hours) while old bulbs would last 1000 hours at nearly full intensity 50% of the time (and 0% intensity 49.999% of the time)
What, did you buy cheap Chinese CFLs? I've been using CFLs for more than 20 years and never had these problems, actually I've gotten better CFL bulbs cheaper the last tyme I bought some. The only problem I've had with CFLs is some of them have taken more than a minute for the light to be full strength when used outdoors while cold, but new CFLs are better here too.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Replace those incandescent light bulbs with CF's. Typical payback period is 3 months. Store the incandescents somewhere relatively safe, and pop them back in whenever you move out of your residence.
I have questions. Before I get to them... my experience with compact fluorescents... GREAT! I'm on my 2nd set now. One just died two days ago and I have temporarily replaced it with one left over from my first set. The specific model of the 2nd set is: Panasonic EFT 15E28. I use three (3) in my office in a whirly bird.
The first problem was solved as follow. The light projects upwards through the whirly bird and the fans created an annoying flickering reflection off the ceiling. A trip to the hardware store and a small bottle of glass paint and 5 minutes fixed that issue. All that is required is to paint the upper 1/2 of the glass flutes of the whirly bird which houses the lamps. This makes the fixture more efficient anyways. Should I now expect an annoying patent lawsuit?
Second problem? There wasn't one.
I run my office lights 24x365 and have for over 15 years. My computers run 24x365 also and the reason is most are servers and I live in Calgary which needs heating anyways about 8 months of the year. I'd like to get greener servers. See below.
My lights draw 15 watts each so that is about 15*3*24 = 1080 = about 1 KWatt per day which costs me about $3 per month from which I can deduct heating costs. I'm in the office probably 8-10 hours per day and this is spread over about 12-16 hours a day so I figure its ok to leave the lights on.
The life of the bulbs is about 50,000 hours. This is correct. I installed my first set in about 1995 and replaced them when I installed the whirly bird in about 2000-2002. I don't recall exactly when I replaced them but I know it was after 1999 because I built my garage then and the same electrician hooked up my whirly bird. I know I installed the fist set before 1998 because I was in Malaysia and Australia in 1998 and I remember subtracting out the months overseas from the lives of the first set of bulbs. I can look up the bills.
This means that both the first set and the second set of CFL's ran about 5 years at 24x365 and that is 50,000 hours give or take and 2/3 of the 2nd set are still running with the 1/3 failure from 2 days ago. This is not even close to the 10,000 hours advertised. Its not even close to the horror stores I read before I decided to post this.
The light quality is excellent and the spectrum works well with my monitors. There is no discernable flicker and my eyes are very very sensitive to this so I know its not there.
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This also introduces a nepherious issue. The CFL I need to replace. Well. I called Panasonic. Seems its not available in Calgary. Why? Calgary has over a million people. Why can't I find it here? Are the manufactures trying to dumb down the engineering so they can sell more? If this is the case then people in slashdot should post a story and lets get to its bottoms.
In the mean while I am faced with finding a replacement. I'd like the same CFL bulb actually. Then my office decoer matches. If they are going to improve it in a negative way I'd like the old product please.
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Questions:
1) I'm interested in very low power green servers. I'm working with some associates and the objective is partially to be cost effective and wise and to come up with a robust solution that people can adopt. So far we have identifed an eden processor from WalMart... cost is $200 and power draw apparently 7 watts for the cpu. I don't know what the total system draw will be.
I'd like suggestions. IF these are in the form of something we can compile and publish then so much the better. What about solid state solutions? We're probably going to serve static web pages so even the CPU in a cell phone will probably handle the load. We'll look to feed a DSL which is limited to say 1 Mb/s
2) Ditto with firewall solutions.
I'd like to see new machines built like cartons of cigarettes from the 1940's and 1950's. They are about the right size. They are easy to carry. Each "package" can contain a useful assor
Maybe the US just has tighter regulations... but where I live people can just take old CRTs to the recycling place, leave them there with the rest of the junk, and they allow anyone else to take stuff out as long as they accept the common-sense risk disclaimers.
>>> Money aside, I don't know whether to keep the beater (which gets about 20mpg) or get a newer car.
Neither. Rearrange your life to walk; ride a bike or hire a car if absolutely necessary.
Cheap, and it works. But I'm looking at a 32" LCD. The LCD might pull less electricity, but would the difference offset the energy costs of making the TV?
Either the TV will have to be replaced or you will need a converter for it anyway because of the switch from analogue to digital broadcasting.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Though halogen lights may be more "efficient" than incandescent lights, halogen torchieres are usually 300 or 500 watts. People don't have incandescent lamps that take a single bulb that use 500 watts. (I have a 300 watt halogen one, and definitely want to replace it.)
Why do you need such a large, high wattage, light? Photography? Florescent lights do funky thinks with photos but I'd think halogens would have an even funkier effect.
FalconShould there be a Law?
"saving $18 / yr electricity: more than a five year payoff."
The payoff may be less than that, depending on his assumptions of future energy costs. If he is switching to solar, reducing peak or average load will probably reduce his costs there.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
I think it's great that slowly but surely, everyone seems to learn about what consumes how much power. We recently did a video podcast (there's an Ogg Theora version too) about this subject, too (shameless on-topic plug). Our audience is probably less technical than the people you'd find on Slashdot, but you never know. I've met quite a few IT professionals in my day who didn't even know the amount of power their server rooms consumed, so there are still new heads to educate out there :)
The more people talk about this, the more will the industry be forced to do something. In some areas, they already reacted, especially about the standby problem. Fujitsu-Siemens now makes a monitor that eats exactly 0 Watts in standby. That's the target, everyone.
PS: Podcast's website isn't actually meant to be seen by humans, it's there mostly for Miro users to subscribe to.
There will be no single solution to the energy problem. We have to recognize that small changes, added together, accumulate into large changes. Even with CFL bulbs, I still turn the light out when I leave the room. Each light turned off for the 5 min till I re-enter the kitchen is individually insignificant, but you have to see things as part of a larger whole.