How to lower electricity costs

[frazelle09]

Hi guys.  i've got an older P4 DuoCore desktop that uses a power supply of some 250 watts if i remember correctly.  This is costing me some $50 U.S. a month and i saw some thin clients the other day that only used 13 watts.  Is there anything out there that i can switch to that would still have the basic services - DVD burning, driver for a plasma 19" monitor and that i could get fairly inexpensively?

Could i just switch to one of my PCL laptops?  i've been retired and $600 a year is still $600 a year, not to mention the greenhouse gases and etc.

Any suggestions would be very helpful.

Have a great evening! 

[AS]

Green ? 65 W 

http://www.asus.com/Eee/EeeBox_PC/EeeBox_PC_EB1501P/

AS

[frazelle09]

AS, thanks for the suggestion!  i'll have to check out the pricing - these look fairly new.  Will it run our PCL?

Have a great evening! 

[YouCanToo]

Hi guys.  i've got an older P4 DuoCore desktop that uses a power supply of some 250 watts if i remember correctly.  This is costing me some $50 U.S. a month

Geeze, how much are you paying per KWH?   In California in 2011 their average KWH ran just 13.8 cents. Using your figures you would be using 6 KWH a day running 24 hours. That figures out to a whopping 82.8 cents per day, now multiply that by an average of 30 days and that figures to $24.84 a month.

Here in Oregon our average cost is 6.23 cents per KWH using the same figures. Our daily cost for the same machine would be 37.38 cents per day or $11.214 per month.

Hawaii pays the highest cost per KWH at 21.45 cents per KWH so they would pay 12.87 per day or $38.61 per month for the same computer.

and i saw some thin clients the other day that only used 13 watts.  Is there anything out there that i can switch to that would still have the basic services - DVD burning, driver for a plasma 19" monitor and that i could get fairly inexpensively?

Could i just switch to one of my PCL laptops?  i've been retired and $600 a year is still $600 a year, not to mention the greenhouse gases and etc.

Any suggestions would be very helpful.

Have a great evening! 

[frazelle09]

YouCanToo, our rates are pretty high.  In the summer months our city gets a Federal subsidy but every year the population almost has to take to the streets to get it renewed again.  We've got our own geothermal plant but from what i understand, sell the electricity to the U.S. and buy it back???!!!

i'll have to check on the rates and see if i can make some sort of conversion to U.S. dollars -- maybe you are correct and it's only $25 U.S. a month but i just got a bill for almost $200 U.S. for January.

Thanks for replying and have a wonderful evening! 

[YouCanToo]

YouCanToo, our rates are pretty high.  In the summer months our city gets a Federal subsidy but every year the population almost has to take to the streets to get it renewed again.  We've got our own geothermal plant but from what i understand, sell the electricity to the U.S. and buy it back???!!!

i'll have to check on the rates and see if i can make some sort of conversion to U.S. dollars -- maybe you are correct and it's only $25 U.S. a month but i just got a bill for almost $200 U.S. for January.

Thanks for replying and have a wonderful evening!  

Yes I do understand the exporting of power. Here in Oregon we send most of the hydro electric power to California and and end up paying more for electricity here. Go figure!  Selling ones electricity to someone else and than buying it back at a higher rate is just plain stupid in my opinion.  My last power bill was $198.06 and I am running 7 servers plus the csu/dsu, switches, lights and AC  I try to keep the server at 72 degrees, but it does go as high as 75 degrees and no lower than 70 degrees. Summertime is when my power bill goes way way up when running the AC's 24/7 full tilt.  I understand the want to cut energy costs at any corner you can.

[AS]

AS, thanks for the suggestion!  i'll have to check out the pricing - these look fairly new.  Will it run our PCL?

Have a great evening! 

For sure it's brother is running perfectly:
http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,91034.0.html

The ION video look like supported from the current PCLinuxOS driver: nvidia-290.10

Asus doesn't provide a list of the installed components ... looking on the net I would say "mostly yes" ...

AS

[Phil]

I see your 65 W, and lower you to 20 W:
http://www.mini-itx.com/projects.asp (second one down, got something similar working, bit of a fiddle-faddle though)

I see your 20 W, and lower you to a Raspberry Pi at the end of February (5 W ?)

[thorper]

YouCanToo, our rates are pretty high.  In the summer months our city gets a Federal subsidy but every year the population almost has to take to the streets to get it renewed again.  We've got our own geothermal plant but from what i understand, sell the electricity to the U.S. and buy it back???!!!

i'll have to check on the rates and see if i can make some sort of conversion to U.S. dollars -- maybe you are correct and it's only $25 U.S. a month but i just got a bill for almost $200 U.S. for January.

Thanks for replying and have a wonderful evening!  

Yes I do understand the exporting of power. Here in Oregon we send most of the hydro electric power to California and and end up paying more for electricity here. Go figure!  Selling ones electricity to someone else and than buying it back at a higher rate is just plain stupid in my opinion.  My last power bill was $198.06 and I am running 7 servers plus the csu/dsu, switches, lights and AC  I try to keep the server at 72 degrees, but it does go as high as 75 degrees and no lower than 70 degrees. Summertime is when my power bill goes way way up when running the AC's 24/7 full tilt.  I understand the want to cut energy costs at any corner you can.

Selling electricity to the government is one thing but over here in the UK the electricity  companies are sold to foreign companies who then overcharge UK users while keeping the costs to customers in their own country at a much lower level. I calculated that I pay about 23 cents US  per KWH.

[AS]

I see your 65 W, and lower you to 20 W:
http://www.mini-itx.com/projects.asp (second one down, got something similar working, bit of a fiddle-faddle though)

I see your 20 W, and lower you to a Raspberry Pi at the end of February (5 W ?)

another brother 
http://www.asus.com/Eee/EeeBox_PC/EeeBox_PC_EB1021/#specifications

Power Supply   40 W Power adaptor
Power Consumption   Idle: 11.02 W
Running: 23.65 W~27.5 W

[russell.eberhardt]

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.

[zorlac]

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.

[frazelle09]

Thanks, guys and gals.  i really appreciate your input, including the one from Russell.  Hmm.  It makes me think.  Well we were running Folding on them for a a while...

The suggestion about the mini-itx - i couldn't find the price on the thing, and it appears to be sold from our good neighbors to the northeast.  The Eee boxes look like the may be the best bet, esp. the ION one.

Have a great morning and stay warm up there! 

[ElCuervo]

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

[russell.eberhardt]

Just made some measurements on my desktop system unit (specs below).  It is fitted with a 650 W PSU on the basis that an lightly stressed component is more reliable.

Running Folding on three cores:  consumption = 150 W.
Having killed folding:                 consumption =  88 W.

So, running folding costs me 62 W at say 8 hours a day this works out at 181 kWh/year which costs me (in France) only 19 euro a year.  The total consumption, including Folding, costs just 47 euro a year.  Of course this excludes printers and monitor.

Russell.