parts sources

The servers could have a long payback period, no idea how powerful they must be. You can buy a Dell Vostro for around $300 and normally one should suffice as server. Just hook them into you power meter and watch, then you'll know what they eat.

As for power-down, Compaq was the leader of the pack in the 90's. Mine from 1993 could already do hibernate under DOS. You just hit the power button at the end of the day and left the office.

Why does it have to if there is no need for a graceful shutdown? She just needs to adopt the habit of frequent saves or turn auto-save on. I have no UPS here and occasionally it happens. Lowered Honda with tinted windows roaring down the road ... "tchk, tck, *BOOM*, tchk, tchk,

*BOOM*" ... taking the curve too fast ... screeeeeech ... pow ... poof ... power gone and computer falls silent. Never lost any serious work. Maybe 3-4 minutes worth.

--
Regards, Joerg

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The first time the power flickers and my kids lose (even part of) a homework assignment, I'll be buying (or re-inserting) a UPS. For very little money, I can get a refurbished super-efficient small UPS that will do just fine. We'll see how it goes without one for now.

That would be a perfect opportunity for a lecture by dad on how to avoid losing large parts of data. After all, one day they'll go out into the world and must be able to live with whatever their employer provides including Windows computers ;-)

Even larger clients of mine don't provide UPSes to all their engineers, only the server rooms have that. When the power goes, it goes. Que sera, sera. I remember one engineer at my first employer who never backed up to floppies. All my warnings were in vain. We used FutureNet Dash on three poor little IBM-XT computers in the basement that would run flat-out day and night. Then one fine day he was almost done with his (huge) umpteen page schematic and an awful screech was heard, signaling the untimely but final end of service of the hard drive. He made that mistake exactly once.

Ahm, you would be buying? In my days either I had the dough saved up or it wouldn't happen. I don't think dad would have bought me a UPS unless it was Christmas. I did sort of have a UPS for my ham gear made from the old battery that wasn't able to crank my dad's Chrysler anymore, several Ge transistors, a salvaged laminated core and some other stuff. Home made. Of course, in hindsight it was not a good idea to have a car battery in my bedroom (hint to readers: don't do that!) but I was young and naive back then.

We as a society depend too much on technology as it is. Need to learn how to cope when it ain't there. Once when the electricity went a neighbor called in a panicked voice. "I can't get my car out of the garage!" Walked over, pulled li'l red handle, voila. Eyes popped wide open. Then they told me how they had no dinner, just thawed up rubbery toast. Another guy drove to the fastfood place but no dice since the whole village had no power. I didn't want to rub it in but we had: Steaks, home-made whiskey peppercorn sauce, steamed asparagus, baked potatoes and a nice hot coffee from the percolator. All on the old Weber. Then card games using a camping lantern where we always keep a stash of fresh D-cells. Plus nice tunes from a portable shortwave radio from some Caribbean station.

--
Regards, Joerg

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At the moment, my computers have UPSs but the kids and wife don't. Our power here is not reliable enough to go without, mostly. Those one second flickers and you lose that hours-long job you've been waiting for...

The *house* however, has a standby generator. Without power, eventually the toilets stop working and the fish die :-( So the UPS only has to last ten seconds.

I have RAID on all my computers. I lost a drive once, even with backups it was a horrible mess.

$26 buys a refurbished Tripp-Lite ECO350, enough to keep that computer up until the generator kicks in.

Wife's computer, not the kids' computers. They do their homework on her computer because it's down here Where Homework Gets Done.

Having a UPS means we *don't* depend on the power company's technology :-)

Gas stove in the kitchen, works just fine without power.

I have one of those shakey-lights, no batteries to worry about.

If it's that often you need a UPS. Especially if you do hour-long compiles, builds or SPICE sims.

[...]

Ah, good policy. Also avoids "goofing off" to not so kosher web sites or hanging out on Facebook while procrastinating on the homework ;-)

Yep, you utility seems to have some issues there. Did you have a chat with them about it?

But there is nothing more manly than standing there in the driving hail in front of a Weber, beer in hand :-)

We've got two with cranks, the kind that has a weather radio built in. But later I heard there is just a little 40mAh NiCd in there which will eventually die.

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It's the weather, nothing they can do about it.

The shakey light has a coil, bridge rectifier, supercapacitor, and LED. Should last as long as I do. It's waterproof and glows in the dark, too :-)

Ok, lightning hits and subsequent trip-offs can't be blamed on them.

Don't be so sure. Some cheaper super-caps last only a few years.

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And it is definitely worth finding any bits and pieces that are gratuitously adding to your baseload without contributing anything at all. I found that when I started monitoring I had a base load of 250W. Total baseload now is half that.

This included 20W gratuitous standby for the TV (digital tuner eats power even when the set is off). Now on a live only when remote IR triggers it socket. 20W for the Fax machine (last inbound genuine fax over 2 years ago - not counting rolls worth of junk faxes). A couple of old modem wall warts hiding behind my desk. And one PC sound system that draws 20W continuously whether switched on or off (click on off volume knob). It appears only to switch off the "on/off" LED!

Surprisingly the big hifi power amplifier consumes > Replacing our inefficient fridge is a bad idea, because the payoff is

Insulation has a very fast payback in most climates. And finding the things that use the most total power continuously is worthwhile.

Increasingly this is possible. The claims made against standby devices are somewhat bogus. It is well within the design parameters to have something that can sit in standby at much less than 500mW. However, there are plenty of bad designs that are in standby at 10-20W or more.

It is worth having one of the sensitive LCD display plug that measures the appliance consumption in real time as well as a total consumption monitor. If you use the two together shaving 10% off the total electricity bill is easy.

It is a major saving for buildings where heating might otherwise be left on over the weekend by accident to have a realtime display of total power by the exit door.

They are win-win. So are the devices that see an IR signal from the remote and apply power to the unit with poor standby performance. Then when the device goes to standby it drops power off completely. For something that runs at 20-30W continuously payback is about a year.

Regards, Martin Brown

: :DJ Delorie wrote: :> :> "Michael A. Terrell" writes: :> > Not if it isn't in a usable range. :> :> It goes around once every 10-60 seconds, I can scale that easily, :> either by counting multiple revolutions (if it's fast) or using the :> 0-100 marks on the edge (if it's slow). I don't need to be *that* :> accurate ;-) : : : Mine is all digital. It is on the far side of the driveway, and out :in the hot Florida sun or pouring rain. It is over 100 feet from the :nearest workbench.

I was about to raise the question of Mike's project in relation to electronic meters which don't have a rotating disk. These meters have an output a pulse for use with energy management devices so I would imagine it might be easy to add this type of input to the project. For example, my meter is a Landis + Gyr EM3300 3 phase Import/Export meter (grid interactive solar PV installation).

Apology to DJ for incorrectly attributing the project to "Mike". Another "senior's moment":-)

The ADE chip I'm using has that pulse output pin too. Might even be the same chip those meters use - that's what those chips are for.