How to lower electricity costs

[ThirdOfSix]

Please understand that the rating of a power supply has nothing to do with how much power it is drawing while being used.

That is just the maximum power that it could provide to the computer if the computer needed that much power.

Also, please understand that if it is winter time where you live and your furnace is providing heat to your house, the heat given off by your computer will simply offset the heat needed to be provided by your furnace and the thermostat controlling the furnace will just shut off a little bit quicker on each cycle.

If you use electric heat, the computer will actually be costing you nothing to run during the heating season.

It you heat with gas and if the gas costs more than electricity, it may cost you the difference in rates to run your computer.

I know that this is not the political correct understanding of physics that a lot of people like politicians want people to believe ... but it is the truth.

[frazelle09]

ThirdOfSix -- thank you for posting.  We live in sunny Mexico, in the desert.  So, in the winter it gets cold but we don't have central heating so our computers don't provide much heating i'm afraid to say and in the summer they provide unwanted heat that our room a-c must eliminate.

Have a great afternoon! 

[YouCanToo]

Have you actually measured the power consumption?  

A 250 W PSU is rated to supply a maximum of 250W.  It should have an efficiency of about 95% so the input will only be slightly higher.

In practice the consumption should be significantly lower most of the time.  The full power will only be used when you are running the processor flat out, working the HD hard, burning a CD/DVD, and drawing loads of power from your USB ports.

Russell.

One is never going to be able to draw loads of power from ones USB ports. The maximum current of a USB port is 500 mA per port. That is mili amps. Not a lot of current by any stretch of one imagination.

[YouCanToo]

Here in Oregon our average cost is 6.23 cents per KWH using the same figures.

Does that include transmission costs, or is that just generation?
If you take your monthly bill divided by the KWh you used for that month what do you get?
Doing it that way I'm closer to $.17/KWh.

I am not sure how that was figured, I will have to check and see.

[YouCanToo]

May want to get one of these (or similar) and not guess.

http://www.walmart.com/ip/Belkin-Conserve-Insight-Energy-Use-Monitor/15120603?ci_sku=15120603&ci_src=14110944&sourceid=1500000000000003142050

Interesting device, but I do not support Walmart in any form or fashion.

[Hootiegibbon]

The cost implications are why I have switched completely from using 2 or 3 desktops (with 2 running 24/7)  in the house to having Laptops, wher only one runs 24/7 it is a old T20 laptop that has had its broken lid & battery removed has 256megs of ram and runs a variant of PCLinuxOS in run level 3 - with cpufreq active and limited in the bios too, its average load for its purpose is shown below

21:26:13 up 32 days,  6:10,  1 user,  load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00

Host/Kernel/OS  "t20" running Linux 2.6.38.8-pclos3.bfs i386 [ PCLinuxOS release 2012 (PCLinuxOS) for i586 ]
CPU Info        Pentium III (Coppermine) 256 KB cache flags( sse ) clocked at [ 547.679 MHz ]
Videocard       S3 86C270-294 Savage/IX-MV  tty resolution ( 170x60 )
Network cards   3Com 3c556 Hurricane CardBus [Cyclone], at port: 1800
Processes 103 | Uptime 32days | Memory 137.3/247.8MB | HDD ATA Hitachi HTS54166 Size 60GB (61%used) | Runlevel 3 | Client Shell | Infobash v3.05

If I were to use a desktop for the same functions It would cost several times what this small wonder does.

The other advantage of laptops , is that you are more likely to shut them down and put them away at the end of a session.

Jase

[sammy2fish]

Lucky for me, my heat is via natural-gas.

As for hydro/electricity/power.... I just pay it..!

My household has 5 computers running;  3 vehicles plugged in the winter, and 220 electric heater at times.   In the summer air-conditioner;  air-compressor;  220-mig-welder in garage.

Bills, bills.  They are something that we must pay.

[YouCanToo]

my acer laptop 3100

top - 16:53:07 up 251 days,  5:36,  1 user,  load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
Tasks: 111 total,   1 running, 110 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu0  :  0.0%us,  0.0%sy,  0.0%ni,100.0%id,  0.0%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,  0.0%st
Cpu1  :  0.3%us,  0.3%sy,  0.0%ni, 99.3%id,  0.0%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,  0.0%st
Mem:   2057744k total,  2005672k used,    52072k free,    38884k buffers
Swap:        0k total,        0k used,        0k free,  1842036k cached

I hardly ever turn the thing off

[russell.eberhardt]

One is never going to be able to draw loads of power from ones USB ports. The maximum current of a USB port is 500 mA per port. That is mili amps. Not a lot of current by any stretch of one imagination.

It depends on what you mean by "loads".  I meant fully loading the usb ports.  If you have six usb ports each drawing 500 mA the total power drawn will be 6 x 0.5 x 5 = 15 W.  Agreed, not loads but it all adds up and the PSU has to be rated for the maximum power required.

My point was that you are unlikely to reach anywhere near the maximum load.

Russell.