In article , "Mark & Mary Ann Weiss" wrote:

Also place electronic stuff like TV, microwave, stereo, etc. on a switch.
These things use electricity when not on. Turn off power to these things
when not in use.

That's true, but the problem is I have a constant 20A draw from four
computer servers running 24/7.


Consider:

20A * 120V = 2400W
2400W * 24 hr/day = 57600 watt-hours/day = 57.6 KwH/day
57.6 KwH/day * $0.08/KwH (estimated) * 30 days/month = $138.24/month

I believe you said in your original post that your electric bills are in the
range of $200-300 monthly. Thus, the computers account for roughly half to
two-thirds of your total cost. And *that* means that to make even a twenty
percent reduction in your bill, you need to (a) reduce your electricity
demands, exclusive of the computers, by roughly forty to seventy percent --
which is going to be very difficult -- or (b) turn off the computers.

Bottom line: you're doing this to yourself. If you're trying to run a business
out of your home, either move to a commercial building so you get commercial
rates, or quit complaining about paying residential rates for your
electricity.

If you're *not* running a business... then shut off some of the machines.
*Nobody* needs four servers 24/7 for personal use.

--
Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)

How come we choose from just two people to run for president and 50 for Miss America?

That's true, but the problem is I have a constant 20A draw from four
computer servers running 24/7.


Consider:

20A * 120V = 2400W
2400W * 24 hr/day = 57600 watt-hours/day = 57.6 KwH/day
57.6 KwH/day * $0.08/KwH (estimated) * 30 days/month = $138.24/month

I believe you said in your original post that your electric bills are in
the
range of $200-300 monthly. Thus, the computers account for roughly half to
two-thirds of your total cost. And *that* means that to make even a twenty
percent reduction in your bill, you need to (a) reduce your electricity
demands, exclusive of the computers, by roughly forty to seventy
percent --
which is going to be very difficult -- or (b) turn off the computers.

That sounds about right for the consumption figures.
Option A is my only option right now. I would LIKE to find alternative
energy sources to run them so I can avoid option B which is
counterproductive, as I would have leave the computer age and return to the
cel animation age, which is counterproductive. The computers are doing
distributed rendering (making animation a la Pixar), and some of the renders
take up to 6 weeks to complete 150,000 frames of animation, so turning the
machines off isn't practical.
Then I have the issue of my samplers, which draw 240W each. Startup is very
complicated because it involves a labor-intensive process of loading up to
999 samples from disk and manually selecting out of tens of thousands in
sample libraries. Restoring the setup can take hours of button-pushing,
which is why I have these on a dedicated UPS in case the master UPS fails.
It's technically-complicated, but if the samples aren't loaded in the right
addresses, the works-in-progress (mainly large symphonic scores) won't play
properly or have missing parts or wrong parts (ie, an oboe playing where a
violin spiccato articulation should have been). It's a massive pain to get
samples loaded up and we recently went through that after moving the
equipment, which involved powering down.



Bottom line: you're doing this to yourself. If you're trying to run a
business
out of your home, either move to a commercial building so you get
commercial
rates, or quit complaining about paying residential rates for your
electricity.

It's not commercially-viable to justify running out of a building downtown,
and also it violates my "60-second commute" rule. We're snowed in here for a
good 2-3 months each winter. Getting down off the mountain, especially
within a week of a major snowstorm is pretty difficult, even with 4WD. Some
hills, you just don't want to chance because once you start to slide,
there's no safe place to run off the road without doing a lot of damage.

At any rate, I'm simply asking if alternative energy sources for small-scale
use are becoming viable. It would be nice if I could save that $138/month on
electric and have one, then maybe two PCs running on solar power.


If you're *not* running a business... then shut off some of the machines.
*Nobody* needs four servers 24/7 for personal use.

That depends on your ambitions and hobbies. I have a friend who builds Tesla
coils and likes to fire them often. His problems are far more than
electrical though.
As I write this, one machine is crunching animation, and another is
compressing digital video into DVD-compliant MPEG stream for a distribution
DVD of my wife's dance group, another server is streaming audio for one of
our web sites and my wife is using her computer to update her association's
web site. It's not as though the stuff is idling and can be turned off. The
only time this stuff gets turned off is when we're out of the country for a
week or more. Then we finished up or reach a stopping point on all projects,
shut the machines down, go through our checklist, and then leave for the
airport. Upon returning after one such trip, two of our servers would not
come up after being powered on. One would load the 'wallpaper' but the
desktop never appeared. Luckily, I had a Norton Ghost image of the C:
partition and was able to roll back the system to a month earlier with an
image made then. The other had some other problem that took about 30 minutes
to resolve. I'm a little paranoid about shutting them down when I go on
vacation because of those two incidents, but will probably continue to do
full shutdowns when on vacations.


--
Take care,

Mark & Mary Ann Weiss

VIDEO PRODUCTION . FILM SCANNING . AUDIO RESTORATION
Hear my Kurzweil Creations at: http://www.dv-clips.com/theater.htm
Business sites at:
www.dv-clips.com
www.mwcomms.com
www.adventuresinanimemusic.com
-

"Mark & Mary Ann Weiss" wrote in message
...
That sounds about right for the consumption figures.
Option A is my only option right now. I would LIKE to find alternative
energy sources to run them so I can avoid option B which is
counterproductive, as I would have leave the computer age and return to the
cel animation age, which is counterproductive. The computers are doing
distributed rendering (making animation a la Pixar), and some of the renders
take up to 6 weeks to complete 150,000 frames of animation, so turning the
machines off isn't practical.

I can only offer this. I think you'll be best off to find the loads that run 24/7 and concentrate on
reducing them. Even a small improvement helps a lot with 24/7 loads. This is obviously your
computer equipment. Can computing tasks be concentrated to a single computer at certain times of
they day so another could be shutdown or at least put in power save mode? Are you utilizing the
power saving features of the OS? Is it possible to buy a single larger computer instead of several
smaller ones? Can you use a different type of disk drive that that allows you to use fewer but
faster disk drives (SCSI or Fiber Channel)? Are there interface boards in your computer that you
don't use that can be removed? Can you use fewer monitors and use a video switch or KVM to allow
them to go away (or at least be powered totally off 99% of the time)?

The only other thing I can see from a system point of view is that the computer is driven by DC. You
have losses in the power supply converting the AC to DC. You have even more losses since you're
using a UPS going from AC to DC to AC and then the computer goes to DC. I don't know if you could
buy a power supply or would have to make it (since you need multiple voltages at a rather heavy
current), but a DC battery system that provides DC to your computers may save some conversion
losses. Solar generation is also DC and you could gain some free electricity that way.

I'd focus on finding a way to get external free DC into the UPS battery system or a separate
computer power supply. If you add a lot of battery capacity, you may be able to rig a controller
that removes AC from the UPS and runs off the batteries. Do this when the sun is just beginning to
shine and continue to run from the batteries until they are some percent depleted (perhaps 40%?). At
that point, switch the AC back on to charge them back up. Finding an off the shelf system that works
well this way may be a challenge. But the hoepower people may have equipment that works more for
what you're trying to do rather than a UPS.

If you only improve the computer power system by 20%, your overall power bill will probably be
reduced by about 15%.

--
Mark
Kent, WA

I can only offer this. I think you'll be best off to find the loads that
run 24/7 and concentrate on
reducing them. Even a small improvement helps a lot with 24/7 loads. This
is obviously your
computer equipment. Can computing tasks be concentrated to a single
computer at certain times of
they day so another could be shutdown or at least put in power save mode?
Are you utilizing the
power saving features of the OS? Is it possible to buy a single larger
computer instead of several
smaller ones? Can you use a different type of disk drive that that allows
you to use fewer but
faster disk drives (SCSI or Fiber Channel)? Are there interface boards in
your computer that you
don't use that can be removed? Can you use fewer monitors and use a video
switch or KVM to allow
them to go away (or at least be powered totally off 99% of the time)?

I have tried to engage the power saving mode, but the PCs don't wake up
properly. Wacom, the maker of the drawing tablets, for instance, just
advised us to disable power saving mode, rather than fix their driver. I
didn't harp on it because there are few times these boxes are idle.
We've invested $2800 on each machine recently and they are under a year old,
with a five-year amortization before we even THINK about going through
another complex upgrade.
I used to run everything on one machine, but there were too many
cross-conflicts. We learned some important lessons and diversified the
machines (some MIDI/DAW hardware conflicts with Quadrant MPEG decoder
boards, and you really don't want to be rendering 3D animation in the
background while you're burning DVDs.)
We have only the minimum of interface boards we need. I am from the "KISS"
school of thought, because simple configurations result in less IRQ conflict
problems. As for disk space, I bought the largest discs that are considered
reliable and compatible with our mainboards (120GB drives in RAID0 pairs).
It hadn't occured to me either that the 3D accelerator cards used in the two
most powerful machines each use about 75W of power as well.
The monitors are basically off most of the time (they run cold on standby
and the current draw is at a trickle). My wife's which is an older NEC 5FG,
just gets turned off at night when she's not using it. KVM switches were
once something I looked into, but many of them aren't spec'd to work above
1600x1200, and the computer workstations are situated too far apart.
I don't think there is too much more that can be done about the consumption
angle. Believe me, I've been thinking about this since last summer, when we
made the upgrade from Pentiums to Athlon XPs and noted the increase in room
temperature, followed by the increase in electric bill.
The remaining solution is to look at alternate power sources for some or
most of the operating period.



The only other thing I can see from a system point of view is that the
computer is driven by DC. You
have losses in the power supply converting the AC to DC. You have even
more losses since you're
using a UPS going from AC to DC to AC and then the computer goes to DC. I
don't know if you could
buy a power supply or would have to make it (since you need multiple
voltages at a rather heavy
current), but a DC battery system that provides DC to your computers may
save some conversion
losses. Solar generation is also DC and you could gain some free
electricity that way.

This has up to a 20% advantage due to elimination of conversion loss, but
the complication of externalizing all those power leads probably brings more
risks than benefits and would be expensive and complicated to implement.
Therefore, my solution has to be able to convert solar to 120VAC.



I'd focus on finding a way to get external free DC into the UPS battery
system or a separate
computer power supply. If you add a lot of battery capacity, you may be
able to rig a controller
that removes AC from the UPS and runs off the batteries. Do this when the
sun is just beginning to
shine and continue to run from the batteries until they are some percent
depleted (perhaps 40%?). At
that point, switch the AC back on to charge them back up. Finding an off
the shelf system that works
well this way may be a challenge. But the hoepower people may have
equipment that works more for
what you're trying to do rather than a UPS.

If you only improve the computer power system by 20%, your overall power
bill will probably be
reduced by about 15%.

Possibly some savings could result if I could trickle charge the UPS off
solar, but I think the results would be so small as to be negligable.
Now if I ran everything off an inverter, things might be different.
Or maybe I could just take up golf and forget about computing. :-)


--
Take care,

Mark & Mary Ann Weiss

VIDEO PRODUCTION . FILM SCANNING . AUDIO RESTORATION
Hear my Kurzweil Creations at: http://www.dv-clips.com/theater.htm
Business sites at:
www.dv-clips.com
www.mwcomms.com
www.adventuresinanimemusic.com
-

Mark & Mary Ann Weiss wrote:

The monitors are basically off most of the time (they run cold on standby
and the current draw is at a trickle). My wife's which is an older NEC 5FG,
just gets turned off at night when she's not using it. KVM switches were
once something I looked into, but many of them aren't spec'd to work above
1600x1200, and the computer workstations are situated too far apart.
I don't think there is too much more that can be done about the consumption
angle. Believe me, I've been thinking about this since last summer, when we
made the upgrade from Pentiums to Athlon XPs and noted the increase in room
temperature, followed by the increase in electric bill.
The remaining solution is to look at alternate power sources for some or
most of the operating period.


bly brings more
risks than benefits and would be expensive and complicated to implement.
Therefore, my solution has to be able to convert solar to 120VAC.
Take care,

Mark & Mary Ann Weiss

VIDEO PRODUCTION . FILM SCANNING . AUDIO RESTORATION
Hear my Kurzweil Creations at: http://www.dv-clips.com/theater.htm
Business sites at:
www.dv-clips.com
www.mwcomms.com
www.adventuresinanimemusic.com
-
Hi,
PCs need to be configured to take advantage of power saving.
My PCs all go to stand-by and sleep after certain period of inactivity.
Even hard drives cycle down. Nonitor goes blank.
Older boxes may not do this well but newer ones which is ACPI 2
compatible only needs configuration from your system BIOS/OS.
Tony

-
Hi,
PCs need to be configured to take advantage of power saving.
My PCs all go to stand-by and sleep after certain period of inactivity.
Even hard drives cycle down. Nonitor goes blank.
Older boxes may not do this well but newer ones which is ACPI 2
compatible only needs configuration from your system BIOS/OS.
Tony

Hi,

Have done this already, but had to disable the CPU sleep mode and the hard
drive spin down. 'Seems my Wacom digitizers don't come back up after a
standby event. I wrote to Wacom about it and their attitude was to tell me
not to use the power saving features of my PC. Obviously, it's their driver
that's at fault, but they have no interest in fixing it.

I decided it wasn't worth making a stink about, since my PCs almost never
get to idle, with one rendering animation frames day and night, another
compressing MPEG streams for DVD master, and another serving internet web
audio.

I sometimes wish I could make the graphics accelerators sleep while the main
CPU is rendering, since I don't see any video during that function, and
since the GPU uses 75W by itself.

Believe me, I tried everything, but the simple immutable fact is, for X
amount of work done, X amount of electric current gets consumed.


--
Take care,

Mark & Mary Ann Weiss

VIDEO PRODUCTION . FILM SCANNING . AUDIO RESTORATION
Hear my Kurzweil Creations at: http://www.dv-clips.com/theater.htm
Business sites at:
www.dv-clips.com
www.mwcomms.com
www.adventuresinanimemusic.com
-

-
Hi,
PCs need to be configured to take advantage of power saving.
My PCs all go to stand-by and sleep after certain period of inactivity.
Even hard drives cycle down. Nonitor goes blank.
Older boxes may not do this well but newer ones which is ACPI 2
compatible only needs configuration from your system BIOS/OS.
Tony

Hi,

Have done this already, but had to disable the CPU sleep mode and the hard
drive spin down. 'Seems my Wacom digitizers don't come back up after a
standby event. I wrote to Wacom about it and their attitude was to tell me
not to use the power saving features of my PC. Obviously, it's their driver
that's at fault, but they have no interest in fixing it.

I decided it wasn't worth making a stink about, since my PCs almost never
get to idle, with one rendering animation frames day and night, another
compressing MPEG streams for DVD master, and another serving internet web
audio.

I sometimes wish I could make the graphics accelerators sleep while the main
CPU is rendering, since I don't see any video during that function, and
since the GPU uses 75W by itself.

Believe me, I tried everything, but the simple immutable fact is, for X
amount of work done, X amount of electric current gets consumed.


--
Take care,

Mark & Mary Ann Weiss

VIDEO PRODUCTION . FILM SCANNING . AUDIO RESTORATION
Hear my Kurzweil Creations at: http://www.dv-clips.com/theater.htm
Business sites at:
www.dv-clips.com
www.mwcomms.com
www.adventuresinanimemusic.com
-

Mark & Mary Ann Weiss wrote:

The monitors are basically off most of the time (they run cold on standby
and the current draw is at a trickle). My wife's which is an older NEC 5FG,
just gets turned off at night when she's not using it. KVM switches were
once something I looked into, but many of them aren't spec'd to work above
1600x1200, and the computer workstations are situated too far apart.
I don't think there is too much more that can be done about the consumption
angle. Believe me, I've been thinking about this since last summer, when we
made the upgrade from Pentiums to Athlon XPs and noted the increase in room
temperature, followed by the increase in electric bill.
The remaining solution is to look at alternate power sources for some or
most of the operating period.


bly brings more
risks than benefits and would be expensive and complicated to implement.
Therefore, my solution has to be able to convert solar to 120VAC.
Take care,

Mark & Mary Ann Weiss

VIDEO PRODUCTION . FILM SCANNING . AUDIO RESTORATION
Hear my Kurzweil Creations at: http://www.dv-clips.com/theater.htm
Business sites at:
www.dv-clips.com
www.mwcomms.com
www.adventuresinanimemusic.com
-
Hi,
PCs need to be configured to take advantage of power saving.
My PCs all go to stand-by and sleep after certain period of inactivity.
Even hard drives cycle down. Nonitor goes blank.
Older boxes may not do this well but newer ones which is ACPI 2
compatible only needs configuration from your system BIOS/OS.
Tony

I can only offer this. I think you'll be best off to find the loads that
run 24/7 and concentrate on
reducing them. Even a small improvement helps a lot with 24/7 loads. This
is obviously your
computer equipment. Can computing tasks be concentrated to a single
computer at certain times of
they day so another could be shutdown or at least put in power save mode?
Are you utilizing the
power saving features of the OS? Is it possible to buy a single larger
computer instead of several
smaller ones? Can you use a different type of disk drive that that allows
you to use fewer but
faster disk drives (SCSI or Fiber Channel)? Are there interface boards in
your computer that you
don't use that can be removed? Can you use fewer monitors and use a video
switch or KVM to allow
them to go away (or at least be powered totally off 99% of the time)?

I have tried to engage the power saving mode, but the PCs don't wake up
properly. Wacom, the maker of the drawing tablets, for instance, just
advised us to disable power saving mode, rather than fix their driver. I
didn't harp on it because there are few times these boxes are idle.
We've invested $2800 on each machine recently and they are under a year old,
with a five-year amortization before we even THINK about going through
another complex upgrade.
I used to run everything on one machine, but there were too many
cross-conflicts. We learned some important lessons and diversified the
machines (some MIDI/DAW hardware conflicts with Quadrant MPEG decoder
boards, and you really don't want to be rendering 3D animation in the
background while you're burning DVDs.)
We have only the minimum of interface boards we need. I am from the "KISS"
school of thought, because simple configurations result in less IRQ conflict
problems. As for disk space, I bought the largest discs that are considered
reliable and compatible with our mainboards (120GB drives in RAID0 pairs).
It hadn't occured to me either that the 3D accelerator cards used in the two
most powerful machines each use about 75W of power as well.
The monitors are basically off most of the time (they run cold on standby
and the current draw is at a trickle). My wife's which is an older NEC 5FG,
just gets turned off at night when she's not using it. KVM switches were
once something I looked into, but many of them aren't spec'd to work above
1600x1200, and the computer workstations are situated too far apart.
I don't think there is too much more that can be done about the consumption
angle. Believe me, I've been thinking about this since last summer, when we
made the upgrade from Pentiums to Athlon XPs and noted the increase in room
temperature, followed by the increase in electric bill.
The remaining solution is to look at alternate power sources for some or
most of the operating period.



The only other thing I can see from a system point of view is that the
computer is driven by DC. You
have losses in the power supply converting the AC to DC. You have even
more losses since you're
using a UPS going from AC to DC to AC and then the computer goes to DC. I
don't know if you could
buy a power supply or would have to make it (since you need multiple
voltages at a rather heavy
current), but a DC battery system that provides DC to your computers may
save some conversion
losses. Solar generation is also DC and you could gain some free
electricity that way.

This has up to a 20% advantage due to elimination of conversion loss, but
the complication of externalizing all those power leads probably brings more
risks than benefits and would be expensive and complicated to implement.
Therefore, my solution has to be able to convert solar to 120VAC.



I'd focus on finding a way to get external free DC into the UPS battery
system or a separate
computer power supply. If you add a lot of battery capacity, you may be
able to rig a controller
that removes AC from the UPS and runs off the batteries. Do this when the
sun is just beginning to
shine and continue to run from the batteries until they are some percent
depleted (perhaps 40%?). At
that point, switch the AC back on to charge them back up. Finding an off
the shelf system that works
well this way may be a challenge. But the hoepower people may have
equipment that works more for
what you're trying to do rather than a UPS.

If you only improve the computer power system by 20%, your overall power
bill will probably be
reduced by about 15%.

Possibly some savings could result if I could trickle charge the UPS off
solar, but I think the results would be so small as to be negligable.
Now if I ran everything off an inverter, things might be different.
Or maybe I could just take up golf and forget about computing. :-)


--
Take care,

Mark & Mary Ann Weiss

VIDEO PRODUCTION . FILM SCANNING . AUDIO RESTORATION
Hear my Kurzweil Creations at: http://www.dv-clips.com/theater.htm
Business sites at:
www.dv-clips.com
www.mwcomms.com
www.adventuresinanimemusic.com
-

"Mark & Mary Ann Weiss" wrote in message
...
That sounds about right for the consumption figures.
Option A is my only option right now. I would LIKE to find alternative
energy sources to run them so I can avoid option B which is
counterproductive, as I would have leave the computer age and return to the
cel animation age, which is counterproductive. The computers are doing
distributed rendering (making animation a la Pixar), and some of the renders
take up to 6 weeks to complete 150,000 frames of animation, so turning the
machines off isn't practical.

I can only offer this. I think you'll be best off to find the loads that run 24/7 and concentrate on
reducing them. Even a small improvement helps a lot with 24/7 loads. This is obviously your
computer equipment. Can computing tasks be concentrated to a single computer at certain times of
they day so another could be shutdown or at least put in power save mode? Are you utilizing the
power saving features of the OS? Is it possible to buy a single larger computer instead of several
smaller ones? Can you use a different type of disk drive that that allows you to use fewer but
faster disk drives (SCSI or Fiber Channel)? Are there interface boards in your computer that you
don't use that can be removed? Can you use fewer monitors and use a video switch or KVM to allow
them to go away (or at least be powered totally off 99% of the time)?

The only other thing I can see from a system point of view is that the computer is driven by DC. You
have losses in the power supply converting the AC to DC. You have even more losses since you're
using a UPS going from AC to DC to AC and then the computer goes to DC. I don't know if you could
buy a power supply or would have to make it (since you need multiple voltages at a rather heavy
current), but a DC battery system that provides DC to your computers may save some conversion
losses. Solar generation is also DC and you could gain some free electricity that way.

I'd focus on finding a way to get external free DC into the UPS battery system or a separate
computer power supply. If you add a lot of battery capacity, you may be able to rig a controller
that removes AC from the UPS and runs off the batteries. Do this when the sun is just beginning to
shine and continue to run from the batteries until they are some percent depleted (perhaps 40%?). At
that point, switch the AC back on to charge them back up. Finding an off the shelf system that works
well this way may be a challenge. But the hoepower people may have equipment that works more for
what you're trying to do rather than a UPS.

If you only improve the computer power system by 20%, your overall power bill will probably be
reduced by about 15%.

--
Mark
Kent, WA

In alt.home.repair
"Mark & Mary Ann Weiss" wrote:

The computers are doing distributed rendering (making animation a la
Pixar), and some of the renders take up to 6 weeks to complete 150,000
frames of animation, so turning the machines off isn't practical.

Mark, the simple solution is to send out a whiny letter to your customers
about the constantly increasing price of energy and raise your rates to
cover it.

Bruce wrote:

In alt.home.repair
"Mark & Mary Ann Weiss" wrote:


The computers are doing distributed rendering (making animation a la
Pixar), and some of the renders take up to 6 weeks to complete 150,000
frames of animation, so turning the machines off isn't practical.


Mark, the simple solution is to send out a whiny letter to your customers
about the constantly increasing price of energy and raise your rates to
cover it.



LMAO.

Someone in business crying about the cost of doing business.

Mark, I'll bet your pulling all your 24/7 juice from one leg of the service/
load center.

I'm guessing here, wouldn't an imbalance of draw between legs of a service cause
the meter to indicate a higher than actual power usage?

If not then I wasted allot of time laying out circuits and their breakers in the
load center.





--
--

Mark

N.E. Ohio


Never argue with a fool, a bystander can't tell you apart. (S. Clemens, A.K.A.
Mark Twain)

When in doubt hit the throttle. It may not help but it sure ends the suspense.
(Gaz, r.moto)

Mark, the simple solution is to send out a whiny letter to your
customers
about the constantly increasing price of energy and raise your rates to
cover it.



LMAO.

Someone in business crying about the cost of doing business.

Not business--yet, still hobby. I don't think my work is good enough to
compete with Pixar et al., :-)


Mark, I'll bet your pulling all your 24/7 juice from one leg of the
service/
load center.

That is true. To avoid ground loops, all the computer stuff is "star
topology"--centrally powered on one big huge rack mount UPS from APC. Due to
the fact that my large sound system is power off 240VAC (both legs) and the
fact that the PCs and all their associated audio are powered off just one
leg, I do have ground loop/hum problems when sourcing audio from the
computers to the large house sound system. But I rarely use that anymore,
because the idle current of a rack filled with pure class-A power amplifiers
was costing me $75/month for just a few hours a day worth of use. I've since
added a smaller system, powered off the same leg of the service as the
computers, and it's a mag-field amp with a very low idle current, driving
very small but powerful speakers, which now do an adequate job when I
compose and mix down my own music.
But your thought about the unbalanced load affecting meter accuracy has
raised my curiosity. The meter is a 1960's model that's the original when we
built the house. It's accuracy could be a factor.


I'm guessing here, wouldn't an imbalance of draw between legs of a service
cause
the meter to indicate a higher than actual power usage?

If not then I wasted allot of time laying out circuits and their breakers
in the
load center.

No, it's a good idea to do this to reduce drops from appliance startup
surges. I generally try to balance the larger loads. That's why my main
sound system is using all 240V industrial power amps and I have a separate
150A feed dedicated just to that. But it doesn't get turned on but once a
month now. I must be getting old... high SPLs have not been quite as
agreeable to me in recent years as in years past.


--
Take care,

Mark & Mary Ann Weiss

VIDEO PRODUCTION . FILM SCANNING . AUDIO RESTORATION
Hear my Kurzweil Creations at: http://www.dv-clips.com/theater.htm
Business sites at:
www.dv-clips.com
www.mwcomms.com
www.adventuresinanimemusic.com
-

Mark, the simple solution is to send out a whiny letter to your
customers
about the constantly increasing price of energy and raise your rates to
cover it.



LMAO.

Someone in business crying about the cost of doing business.

Not business--yet, still hobby. I don't think my work is good enough to
compete with Pixar et al., :-)


Mark, I'll bet your pulling all your 24/7 juice from one leg of the
service/
load center.

That is true. To avoid ground loops, all the computer stuff is "star
topology"--centrally powered on one big huge rack mount UPS from APC. Due to
the fact that my large sound system is power off 240VAC (both legs) and the
fact that the PCs and all their associated audio are powered off just one
leg, I do have ground loop/hum problems when sourcing audio from the
computers to the large house sound system. But I rarely use that anymore,
because the idle current of a rack filled with pure class-A power amplifiers
was costing me $75/month for just a few hours a day worth of use. I've since
added a smaller system, powered off the same leg of the service as the
computers, and it's a mag-field amp with a very low idle current, driving
very small but powerful speakers, which now do an adequate job when I
compose and mix down my own music.
But your thought about the unbalanced load affecting meter accuracy has
raised my curiosity. The meter is a 1960's model that's the original when we
built the house. It's accuracy could be a factor.


I'm guessing here, wouldn't an imbalance of draw between legs of a service
cause
the meter to indicate a higher than actual power usage?

If not then I wasted allot of time laying out circuits and their breakers
in the
load center.

No, it's a good idea to do this to reduce drops from appliance startup
surges. I generally try to balance the larger loads. That's why my main
sound system is using all 240V industrial power amps and I have a separate
150A feed dedicated just to that. But it doesn't get turned on but once a
month now. I must be getting old... high SPLs have not been quite as
agreeable to me in recent years as in years past.


--
Take care,

Mark & Mary Ann Weiss

VIDEO PRODUCTION . FILM SCANNING . AUDIO RESTORATION
Hear my Kurzweil Creations at: http://www.dv-clips.com/theater.htm
Business sites at:
www.dv-clips.com
www.mwcomms.com
www.adventuresinanimemusic.com
-

Bruce wrote:

In alt.home.repair
"Mark & Mary Ann Weiss" wrote:


The computers are doing distributed rendering (making animation a la
Pixar), and some of the renders take up to 6 weeks to complete 150,000
frames of animation, so turning the machines off isn't practical.


Mark, the simple solution is to send out a whiny letter to your customers
about the constantly increasing price of energy and raise your rates to
cover it.



LMAO.

Someone in business crying about the cost of doing business.

Mark, I'll bet your pulling all your 24/7 juice from one leg of the service/
load center.

I'm guessing here, wouldn't an imbalance of draw between legs of a service cause
the meter to indicate a higher than actual power usage?

If not then I wasted allot of time laying out circuits and their breakers in the
load center.





--
--

Mark

N.E. Ohio


Never argue with a fool, a bystander can't tell you apart. (S. Clemens, A.K.A.
Mark Twain)

When in doubt hit the throttle. It may not help but it sure ends the suspense.
(Gaz, r.moto)

The computers are doing distributed rendering (making animation a la
Pixar), and some of the renders take up to 6 weeks to complete 150,000
frames of animation, so turning the machines off isn't practical.

Mark, the simple solution is to send out a whiny letter to your customers
about the constantly increasing price of energy and raise your rates to
cover it.


I don't really have any customers and this is not a business, although it
could become one if the right potential client sees the product of my work.
This is more of a hobby of intense interest. Over the past 28 years, I've
invested $180,000 in it for software and hardware.

My wife has a non-profit org that she's the secretary of and they put on
dance performances, which I videotape and then sell the DVDs I produce to
the organization members for $12 each. We've gotten a couple of requests to
due weddings, but the dollar offers were absurdly below market value, so I
haven't made much of my investment back. It continues to be mostly hobby,
from which some others benefit.
But the recent increases in our electric rates are starting to give me an
increased sense of urgency about finding alternate ways to power the
computers.


--
Take care,

Mark & Mary Ann Weiss

VIDEO PRODUCTION . FILM SCANNING . AUDIO RESTORATION
Hear my Kurzweil Creations at: http://www.dv-clips.com/theater.htm
Business sites at:
www.dv-clips.com
www.mwcomms.com
www.adventuresinanimemusic.com
-

The computers are doing distributed rendering (making animation a la
Pixar), and some of the renders take up to 6 weeks to complete 150,000
frames of animation, so turning the machines off isn't practical.

Mark, the simple solution is to send out a whiny letter to your customers
about the constantly increasing price of energy and raise your rates to
cover it.


I don't really have any customers and this is not a business, although it
could become one if the right potential client sees the product of my work.
This is more of a hobby of intense interest. Over the past 28 years, I've
invested $180,000 in it for software and hardware.

My wife has a non-profit org that she's the secretary of and they put on
dance performances, which I videotape and then sell the DVDs I produce to
the organization members for $12 each. We've gotten a couple of requests to
due weddings, but the dollar offers were absurdly below market value, so I
haven't made much of my investment back. It continues to be mostly hobby,
from which some others benefit.
But the recent increases in our electric rates are starting to give me an
increased sense of urgency about finding alternate ways to power the
computers.


--
Take care,

Mark & Mary Ann Weiss

VIDEO PRODUCTION . FILM SCANNING . AUDIO RESTORATION
Hear my Kurzweil Creations at: http://www.dv-clips.com/theater.htm
Business sites at:
www.dv-clips.com
www.mwcomms.com
www.adventuresinanimemusic.com
-

In alt.home.repair
"Mark & Mary Ann Weiss" wrote:

The computers are doing distributed rendering (making animation a la
Pixar), and some of the renders take up to 6 weeks to complete 150,000
frames of animation, so turning the machines off isn't practical.

Mark, the simple solution is to send out a whiny letter to your customers
about the constantly increasing price of energy and raise your rates to
cover it.

That's true, but the problem is I have a constant 20A draw from four
computer servers running 24/7.


Consider:

20A * 120V = 2400W
2400W * 24 hr/day = 57600 watt-hours/day = 57.6 KwH/day
57.6 KwH/day * $0.08/KwH (estimated) * 30 days/month = $138.24/month

I believe you said in your original post that your electric bills are in
the
range of $200-300 monthly. Thus, the computers account for roughly half to
two-thirds of your total cost. And *that* means that to make even a twenty
percent reduction in your bill, you need to (a) reduce your electricity
demands, exclusive of the computers, by roughly forty to seventy
percent --
which is going to be very difficult -- or (b) turn off the computers.

That sounds about right for the consumption figures.
Option A is my only option right now. I would LIKE to find alternative
energy sources to run them so I can avoid option B which is
counterproductive, as I would have leave the computer age and return to the
cel animation age, which is counterproductive. The computers are doing
distributed rendering (making animation a la Pixar), and some of the renders
take up to 6 weeks to complete 150,000 frames of animation, so turning the
machines off isn't practical.
Then I have the issue of my samplers, which draw 240W each. Startup is very
complicated because it involves a labor-intensive process of loading up to
999 samples from disk and manually selecting out of tens of thousands in
sample libraries. Restoring the setup can take hours of button-pushing,
which is why I have these on a dedicated UPS in case the master UPS fails.
It's technically-complicated, but if the samples aren't loaded in the right
addresses, the works-in-progress (mainly large symphonic scores) won't play
properly or have missing parts or wrong parts (ie, an oboe playing where a
violin spiccato articulation should have been). It's a massive pain to get
samples loaded up and we recently went through that after moving the
equipment, which involved powering down.



Bottom line: you're doing this to yourself. If you're trying to run a
business
out of your home, either move to a commercial building so you get
commercial
rates, or quit complaining about paying residential rates for your
electricity.

It's not commercially-viable to justify running out of a building downtown,
and also it violates my "60-second commute" rule. We're snowed in here for a
good 2-3 months each winter. Getting down off the mountain, especially
within a week of a major snowstorm is pretty difficult, even with 4WD. Some
hills, you just don't want to chance because once you start to slide,
there's no safe place to run off the road without doing a lot of damage.

At any rate, I'm simply asking if alternative energy sources for small-scale
use are becoming viable. It would be nice if I could save that $138/month on
electric and have one, then maybe two PCs running on solar power.


If you're *not* running a business... then shut off some of the machines.
*Nobody* needs four servers 24/7 for personal use.

That depends on your ambitions and hobbies. I have a friend who builds Tesla
coils and likes to fire them often. His problems are far more than
electrical though.
As I write this, one machine is crunching animation, and another is
compressing digital video into DVD-compliant MPEG stream for a distribution
DVD of my wife's dance group, another server is streaming audio for one of
our web sites and my wife is using her computer to update her association's
web site. It's not as though the stuff is idling and can be turned off. The
only time this stuff gets turned off is when we're out of the country for a
week or more. Then we finished up or reach a stopping point on all projects,
shut the machines down, go through our checklist, and then leave for the
airport. Upon returning after one such trip, two of our servers would not
come up after being powered on. One would load the 'wallpaper' but the
desktop never appeared. Luckily, I had a Norton Ghost image of the C:
partition and was able to roll back the system to a month earlier with an
image made then. The other had some other problem that took about 30 minutes
to resolve. I'm a little paranoid about shutting them down when I go on
vacation because of those two incidents, but will probably continue to do
full shutdowns when on vacations.


--
Take care,

Mark & Mary Ann Weiss

VIDEO PRODUCTION . FILM SCANNING . AUDIO RESTORATION
Hear my Kurzweil Creations at: http://www.dv-clips.com/theater.htm
Business sites at:
www.dv-clips.com
www.mwcomms.com
www.adventuresinanimemusic.com
-

20A * 120V = 2400W
2400W * 24 hr/day = 57600 watt-hours/day = 57.6 KwH/day
57.6 KwH/day * $0.08/KwH (estimated) * 30 days/month = $138.24/month

Incidentally, I was going through back bills for tax purposes and noted that
on a bill last year, the rate was just over 11 cents/KwH. So maybe my
computers are not using QUITE that much, but still, savings could be
substantial.


--
Take care,

Mark & Mary Ann Weiss

VIDEO PRODUCTION . FILM SCANNING . AUDIO RESTORATION
Hear my Kurzweil Creations at: http://www.dv-clips.com/theater.htm
Business sites at:
www.dv-clips.com
www.mwcomms.com
www.adventuresinanimemusic.com
-

20A * 120V = 2400W
2400W * 24 hr/day = 57600 watt-hours/day = 57.6 KwH/day
57.6 KwH/day * $0.08/KwH (estimated) * 30 days/month = $138.24/month

Incidentally, I was going through back bills for tax purposes and noted that
on a bill last year, the rate was just over 11 cents/KwH. So maybe my
computers are not using QUITE that much, but still, savings could be
substantial.


--
Take care,

Mark & Mary Ann Weiss

VIDEO PRODUCTION . FILM SCANNING . AUDIO RESTORATION
Hear my Kurzweil Creations at: http://www.dv-clips.com/theater.htm
Business sites at:
www.dv-clips.com
www.mwcomms.com
www.adventuresinanimemusic.com
-