Energy saving project

Post by **JeroenE** » Sat Sep 06, 2008 10:57 am

Halogen is dimmed by lowering the voltage and led is dimmed by lowering the current. Hence you can't use a halogen dimmer to dim led lights. So it'll be a challenge to find a (small) led replacement which is dimmable.

Perhaps you should think about changing the entire lamp?

Post by **Digit** » Thu Sep 25, 2008 12:23 am

Today i got the yearly bill from the Gas-/Power-company. A small amount will be payed back to me, cause i payed to much the last year (period 8-2007 till 8-2008). The new monthly payment has been raised with 33 euro.

However, recent calculations show i should be able to save 20% on power for this calendar year. A full year should mean a reduction of 30-40%. So i think i'm going to give them a call to keep my old monthly payment, instead of raising it...[;)]

Post by **Willem4ever** » Thu Sep 25, 2008 10:14 am

<blockquote id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Originally posted by Digit
 
However, recent calculations show i should be able to save 20% on power for this calendar year. A full year should mean a reduction of 30-40%. So i think i'm going to give them a call to keep my old monthly payment, instead of raising it...[;)]
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">Now there is a challenge

Post by **TANE** » Fri Oct 10, 2008 11:02 pm

From 100 watt per hour to < 1 watt

One of lights in my house was using about 100 watt per hour

I replaced the 5 X 20 watt G4 lights with 0,15 watt G5 led lights with warm whit

Two problems:
First the lights did not burn because of the to low consumption. Minimum of the adapter is 30 watt.
I replaced the internal adapter with a simple 12 volt 500 mA adapter

Second problem is the color temperature
this is something between 3000-4000
original was +/- 2700
For this I'm going to test some filters.
Without the filters it's okay but can be better.

Savings:
+/- 600 watt per day thats 219Kwh per year (cost +/- 50 euro)
Investment 3 euro per led total 15 euro

Post by **TANE** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 12:02 am

Another reduction of 600 Kwh per year.

My home automation server is replaced
I have now the Asus EEE Box
What works fine for Homeseer, Plugwise, Touch Screen and Music server

Server was using 77 watt
Asus is suing +/- 10 watt (after replacement of the 2,5" HD with SSD)

Post by **Digit** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 1:35 am

That's about the same i'm going to reduce my annual power consumption with by replacing a freezer with a defective thermostat by a new one, next week

How is your EEE Box performing? Noticing any peaks in CPU?
Do you see any difference in performance while starting up HS with HD before replacing it with SSD?
Maybe you can comment on performance of the EEE Box.

Quick look at this topic says you will save at least ~1000 kWh compared to last year. Well done!
What is your projected power usage for the coming year?

Post by **Sooty** » Tue Oct 21, 2008 9:53 am

<blockquote id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Asus is suing +/- 10 watt (after replacement of the 2,5" HD with SSD)<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">Chak. What brand / size SSD are you using?

I have an OCZ 64GB http://www.ebuyer.com/product/146928 in my Via C7 based Homeseer system. I have not performed any real comparison tests against the 80 GB SATA Seagate Momentus 5400 that it replaced but I would say that cold booting XP to a working Homeseer window is at least 20 seconds faster than with the Seagate drive.

In general operation, the system was pretty fast before because it is only really running Homeseer with a couple of plug-ins, so it is difficult to say if it is faster or not in general operation although all the specifications of the SSD would suggest that it should be.

My main reason for changing to the SSD was for reliability. I now have a system that has no moving parts at all. Also, it consumes almost no power from the grid as it runs at 12 volts directly from my solar system.

Paul..

Post by **TANE** » Tue Oct 21, 2008 8:34 pm

Paul,
It's the Transcend 64Gb
I hope the drive will be delivered this week.
From the info that i found is idle mode almost zero.
read write is about 0,7 watt

Post by **Bwired** » Tue Oct 21, 2008 10:59 pm

<blockquote id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Originally posted by sooty
I have an OCZ 64GB http://www.ebuyer.com/product/146928 in my Via C7 based Homeseer system. I have not performed any real comparison tests against the 80 GB SATA Seagate Momentus 5400 that it replaced but I would say that cold booting XP to a working Homeseer window is at least 20 seconds faster than with the Seagate drive.

In general operation, the system was pretty fast before because it is only really running Homeseer with a couple of plug-ins, so it is difficult to say if it is faster or not in general operation although all the specifications of the SSD would suggest that it should be.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">He Sooty
Could you do me a favor and run this little program to test the SSD.
I hope you have the latest SATA controller.
http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public/in ... est=HdTach
on my Intel ATOM mini itx with a WD Raptor HD I reache
Burst speed 241MB
Avarage read 80mb

Post by **Sooty** » Tue Oct 21, 2008 11:27 pm

<blockquote id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">He Sooty
Could you do me a favor and run this little program to test the SSD.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">

No problem. I will do this tomorrow for you. I'm no hardware expert. Although I have the latest chipset drivers, the SATA controller is not the latest and greatest so I don't think it will get the best from the SSD. As I said before, my main reasons for changing to SSD were for reliability and power use. My system basically runs Homeseer with the RFXCom plug-in. I have quite a lot of RF devices of various sorts (about 60 ish now I think) so the RFXCom plug-in is working almost constantly but other than that the system has very low usage.

I read this http://www.ocztechnology.com/images/Con ... p-SSDs.pdf on the OCZ site before I purchased the SSD. It seems to suggest that HDTach is not ideal for testing SSD's. All the same I will give it a go and let you know the results.

Paul..

Post by **MindBender** » Wed Oct 22, 2008 9:35 am

<blockquote id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Originally posted by sooty
 My main reason for changing to the SSD was for reliability. I now have a system that has no moving parts at all. Also, it consumes almost no power from the grid as it runs at 12 volts directly from my solar system.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">
In that case you're in for a big disappointment. That is: If your SDD uses MLC NAND flash technology (see http://www.domoticaforum.eu/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1569). For reliability you need SLC NAND flash technology; And it's faster too.

From the other hand; You may still be better off because Seagate Momentus drives are notoriously unreliable. Especially 2.5" drives, which are unsuitable for 24/7 operation.

Post by **Bastiaan** » Wed Oct 22, 2008 10:27 am

Just for fun to compare:
I am running Homeseer on a eee-pc netbook (7 inch screen with 4gb SSD HD)

HDtach:
access time 0.5
CPU use 0%
Average Read 30MB.sec

Post by **Sooty** » Wed Oct 22, 2008 10:31 am

<blockquote id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">In that case you're in for a big disappointment. That is: If your SDD uses MLC NAND flash technology (see http://www.domoticaforum.eu/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1569). For reliability you need SLC NAND flash technology; And it's faster too.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">Mindbender,
I'm no hardware guru, as I said before. This OCZ SSD uses the MLC technology. I see that the SLC technology is quite a bit more expensive so I expect it should be better.

I bought it at a test really, just to see how it performs in a real-world situation in relation to power use and general stability. If it dies a death in a few months, then I suppose I can put that down to experience and wait for the next new thing to come down in price.

It would appear that you have a much better knowledge of hardware than me, so I will ask you: which 2.5" SATA hard disk would you recommend for 24/7 use?.

Paul..

Post by **Jeroen Bartels** » Wed Oct 22, 2008 10:39 am

Question for the experts:
As my old Vaio notebook that is used as a HS2 server is showing some problems (hdd not so reliable anymore and sometimes stops) I'm also looking for a energy friendly replacement for this. I'm also thinking about the EEEPC but I don't want to have to invest into an SSHD as well. Would it be possible/advisable to use the normal HDD for the OS and install HS2 on a 2 Gb USB stick? In that way my data (oregon sensors and other read/write actions for homeseer) will be done on the stick and the HDD can stay in sleep mode most of the time. I have no idea is this will work or will the HDD spin up anyway?
Jeroen

Post by **Bwired** » Wed Oct 22, 2008 10:45 am

I would not worry to much, regardless if your SSD drive is MLC or SLC it will probably last longer then a normal traditional harddisk. There are Harddisks on the market specially for 24/7 heavy use. But I guess your harddisk is not heavy busy all the time.
If I buy a SSD drive, i would buy for sure the SLC version because of better speed. As told before I use now WD raptors 10.000rpm and they are very fast. In several drive compare tests on the Internet the Raptor is still comparable to SSD regarding speed. But SSD makes less noise, saves me some energy and is more reliable.