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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..
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.
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
How much money does it cost to save that much energy as well? I kind of scanned the article, but one thing I did notice was that $200 was spent on a new LCD monitor to replace the CRT. If we assume 100% of the energy savings came from that one purchase (which it didn't), it will take more than 2 years to recoup the money spent on that one purchase, and there was no indication that there was anything wrong with the older monitor other than that it used too much energy.
I would advocate buying newer more energy efficient equipment as your old equipment dies, but I would not advocate going out and replacing perfectly good equipment with more energy efficient (and more expensive) alternatives. It will not only cost you a lot of money, but will also mean more waste from throwing out perfectly good equipment that will likely end up in a landfill.
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)
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
How much money does it cost to save that much energy as well? I kind of scanned the article, but one thing I did notice was that $200 was spent on a new LCD monitor to replace the CRT. If we assume 100% of the energy savings came from that one purchase (which it didn't), it will take more than 2 years to recoup the money spent on that one purchase
And for this reason, the government must subsidize energy-efficient monitors and TV's (like LCD's) so the change is viable for the consumer (and subsidizing the newest LED light bulbs wouldn't be a bad idea, either).
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.
Where I live, electricity is about twice as expensive as natural gas for heating, so heating with waste heat is not quite as economical as one would think. Plus it's an extra liability in cooling season. But when I heated with resistive electric in an apartment, I too didn't worry too much about leaving things on in the wintertime.
I am not a crackpot.
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
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.
... 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.
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.
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 really got the feeling that this article was just his way of convincing his wife to let him buy a new monitor.
Additionally, I have a radio remote controlled master power button, to which I've connected all monitors, speakers, chargers, and everything else non-essential for running the computer. This makes it easy to kill all power while still leaving the computer on. A bit more power could perhaps be saved by using an even better power supply, but not buying it will probably save more money and environment.
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
My next $5 will be spent on a timer for my overly large tv, satellite box, surround sound system, (leaving the TiVo intact for late night recording)etc. to kill standby mode on that stuff as well. I am saving more passively than the guy is actively managing his power.
Don't replace things to save energy. Just make energy conscience choices when the time comes to replace things.
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
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'
I look for the new 80 Plus rating whenever I buy a new power supply for a computer. The 80 PLUS performance specification requires power supplies in computers to be 80% or greater energy efficient at 20%, 50% and 100% of rated load. Many computers come with much less efficient power supplies. I used an 80 Plus rated power supply in the most recent computer that I built. On my slightly older computer, the power supply recently died and I replaced it with an 80 Plus rated power supply.
Another problem is the energy consumption of inefficient auxiliary equipment with transformers which consume power even when the device is off. Those cheap poorly designed external transformers are sometimes called "vampire taps." The Smart Strip Power Strip could probably help there. When the Smart Strip senses that you've turned your computer off, it automatically shuts off your peripherals, too, preventing them from drawing an idle current. It does that by sensing the flow of electrical current through the strip's control outlet.
By the way, I live in the U.S., where we use 120 volts.
What is 80 PLUS
Smart Strip Power Strip
And for this reason, the government must subsidize energy-efficient monitors and TV's (like LCD's) so the change is viable for the consumer (and subsidizing the newest LED light bulbs wouldn't be a bad idea, either).
Instead of just subsidizing energy efficient appliances I'd rather see energy users pay for what they use, not let power generators pass Externalities or external costs to others. This would raise prices but would encourage efficiency. This brings up what Australia has done and what California is going to do, outlaw incandescent lights. Some companies are working on energy efficient incandescent lights however these laws discourage research into them. Making users pay more will encourage more research. Research may be able to develop an incandescent light more efficient than CFLs.
FalconShould there be a Law?
"my time is worth a hell of a lot more than my money."
And... you're posting on slashdot? On a subject you really couldn't care less about? Something's not adding up here.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.