Hint to keeping the power consumtion low?

[Entity_Razer]

Well hi all :)

I was reading some topic today and saw Servl or DDTUNG or someone alike say his power company would eat him alive this summer (powerbill :) )
Now I wanted to start a topic on how we can keep our powerbills low. small investments if need be that can help you in your fight against the bills :)


First off I'd like to start with a investment some of you (espesially the nevada/ sunny region folks) might enjoy.

Solar Panels.
they provide reasonable ammount of electricity and if you layer these across your house you will gain some money.

Secondly. Not directly power related but also in sink with it:
Solar pannels that heat up your WATER.
I know there are 2 solarpanels, one makes electricity the other uses the power of the sun to warm water. doing this will save you money that you don't need to spend to heat water for taking a shower etc ...

3) Windturbine?
Instead of solar power, if you have room, you could set up a small windmill to harness windpower and make electricity from that. Again , it saves you a bundle of money which you will be able to spend on a few new rigs to crunch with , or that phase change unit you've been eying for :) (like me :) )


I have another nice idea which I'll post later today buyt by all means, if you have more hint on how to keep the power usage to a minimum with the minimum of costs or a very good investment, please feel free to post here :)

lets help eachother out so that we don't spend huge ammounts of money just to keep crunching. Crunching is something we do for fun, we shouldn't need to be paying money for a hobby :)

[Big Deel]

Solar Panels, sounds interesting.
Who's got a link ?

[em99010pepe]

Every energy that comes from a renewable source is a good one. No polution.

The good thing about wind energy and the others is that when you have an excess of production you can always sell electricity to your electricity company. I don't think you guys will have that excess, maybe an excess of computers.

Before installing a wind turbine is always a good idea to measure the velocity of the wind. With a software called WASP and the map of your region you guys can easily estimated the production of a windturbine.
Imagine you make an investment and that place has no wind!?

Solar panels, here in Portugal, is too expensive although Portugal is a sunny place. Don't forget that excess of sun could decrease the efficiency of the solar panel.

More hints?

Carlos

[Entity_Razer]

Ok I have a hint but its only for people building a new house:

In your house, the smack dead center middle of it, you make a "room" of 5m by 5m (normal height) and you put a heatexchanger in it. Now you fill the room up with sand. white sand or just the best "thermal conductive" sand.

Now remember those solar panels who heat up water I was talking about?

you couple those to the heat exchanger (you actually need 2 but ..... )

So you have a room who (needs good isolation of course and a very sturdy construction) holds heat. Now you put in another heat exchanger and couple that to the central heating. So now if you turn on your heating your water gets warm by running throught the second heat exchanger in the sand room. this means you need to heat the water less with a boiler or something and thus saves you money :)



also, a good isolation of doors,windows etc will also help :)

[cjc_75]

I knew some folks that used extra car batteries to power various things throughout the house. They had extra leads to the trunk of their car and charged them up while on normal day to day errands etc.

I think they must have used some sort of inverter device?

They wanted to "return" some of the power they felt they wasted in driving their car and using gas etc.

[STEvil]

the inverter would be in the house.

they hurt their gas mileage by making the alternator charge more, but the overall effect was probably positive.

[trance565]

lol, this is the most helpful hint out there, and one of the most known, yet sometimes most unused...
TURN ANYTHING UR NOT USING OFF if ur upstairs for an hour or 2, turn off the downstairs tv or computer, turn off all lights in a room when u leave, close the fridge when ur not getting nething out of it, dont open itwithout knowing what u want out of it, so as to close it quicker, ummmmm hmmm think das it

[jjcom]

After I started running a rig in my basement I started turning off lights more than normal for me. Ever heard the Trace Adkins song "Every light in the house is on"?
"Every light in the house is, the backyard's bright as the crack of dawn. Kind of like noon in the dead of night. Every light in the house is on, just in case you ever do get tired of being gone, every light in the house is on...."

but anyway, so far so good, mom made it sound like she "loved" the latest power bill as much as she's "loved" the others. lol

jjcom

[lv_dicedealer]

Ok... to expand on Entity Razors idea of a large central heatsink in the middle of the house.

There are methods in which you can use the ground as a massive heatsink, even here in the desert. Very simple also!! It involves laying out pipe either vertically to a specified depth or horizontally at a specified depth and fill with water to be pumped continuosly. Use a heat pump and let the ground do all the work for you. In the summer, only the top several feet of soil get the increased temperatures; in the winter, only the top several feet get the temperature reductions.

In new construction, the foundation and the other floors in the house can be laid with radiant tubing; in existing construction a heat exchanger can be added to the central cooling system of the house and in conjustion with solar panel and a battery farm you can enjoy the benefits of smaller temperature swings in your home.

For cheap solar panels, look on ebay and dont be scared to buy used ones; they all have long warranties and still produce a high percentage of their rated power. You dont have to go after the really high out put panels either, go for the low $/watt ratio panels and just string a bunch together.

Also, FYI you do not have to answer to your HomeOwners Association before putting up solar panels; I understand that Federal Laws protect our right to use renewable energy resources as long as the construction of such devices complies with local building and noise (applies to wind generators) ordinances.

[PS2pcGAMER]

Most of you probably know this, but I'll mention some things anyway as these things would be cheap to do.

An easy way to save on some power for each individual computer is to unplug things you aren't using like cd-roms and video cards. You may have to set the BIOS to not halt on any errors.

Another thing you can do it setup a PXE server, so that none of the computers except the server are using a hard drive because they all connect to the server and get the files from there. Also, you can hook up a power supply to two computers using one of those splitter cables (that can either be bought or made yourself).

The latter paragraph may take a little work, but it will add up, especially if you have a farm.

[WindForce]

Here in Israel, 99% of houses have solar panels to warm water. It works great, even when not really sunny.
I agree you can work miracles just by paying attention to turn off stuff you don't use ( i.e tv in one room when you move to the other etc... )

[BigPanda]

about the solar panals my neibhors got 24 panels and put them on their roof. it only costed them about $12k after all the rebates from like the state and such.

With that they can power their whole house all year long and have never gotten a power bill since. so this would deffinatly power a farm

[trance565]

hmmm in texas.... solar panels might work, i think ima have to talk to my parents bout this one lol

[Entity_Razer]

just calculate in how many years they'll have their investment out of it by the money they save and then how much they will save per year.

I'll bet that (if they have the money to afford it, lets face it, not everyone can just spend 12000 dollars, some people might just have bought a house, car.... whatever or have kids in college) they will right away jump on the bandwagon

[jjcom]

mmm...12000/250=48months/12=4 years That would work well for the crunchers out there. After 4 years they might pay for themselves. Might. Depends on if the solar pannels can power a farm, but lets hope they do, even if they don't 150 at least shaved off the power bill a month would be nice.

jjcom

[shadowing]

CA works fine with solar panels. Now all i need is that room...

[jjcom]

yeah, they work with just alittle sun light. So for most places, I would think they would do a good job. The solar power used to heat water I believe works in some what low light enviroments as well. Main problem is cost, I was looking at a 230W solar pannel and it was like 3k or something :eek:

I had to research this for a paper in science, aren't reports great, you do 'em and forget some of it....I remember solar power ways...tubes, sythetic oil, molten salt...

jjcom

[Wiggy McShades]

this isnt going to save on power but you could save money overall which could go to paying for the higher powerbill. save your rain water. instead of having it drain off into the ground save it, drain it into a barel half burried in the ground. this water can be either filtered and restored in your basement or just to use for water plants and stuff.

for power saving, there are new floresent lightbulbs that arent the tubes, they work in regular lamps ands stuff, they save alot of power exspecially for those of you have have certain rooms that have the lights on all day. another thing that works is motion sensing light switches so you dont forget to turn lights off. i have em in my house and they are easy to install. when im in a room they are on once thers no motion at all for 2 mins the lights turn off. now both those combined you can save alot on power.

[heater918]

lol, this is the most helpful hint out there, and one of the most known, yet sometimes most unused...
TURN ANYTHING UR NOT USING OFF if ur upstairs for an hour or 2, turn off the downstairs tv or computer, turn off all lights in a room when u leave, close the fridge when ur not getting nething out of it, dont open itwithout knowing what u want out of it, so as to close it quicker, ummmmm hmmm think das it

Found myself looking in fridge lastnight, i quickly shut the door as this post flashed in my mind. I thought about what i wanted before opening door again.

[trance565]

lol

[13oost]

any alternative power sources can be reported to the irs and you can get a government tax break in the us...

problem about wind turbines= NOISE and for a efficient and something to power a small farm would generate quite abit of sound, thats the reason they are put in the middle of no where, besides b/c of bird migration patterns (yes they check that b4 putting some up)

2ndly Solar pannels are EXPENSIVE for decent stuff... i can ask one of my friends that is in appropriate tech (degree for people who apply technology for renewable not polutant technology to generate electricy or conserve electricity). a good solarpanel can generate ALOT of energy but you pay like mad for those...

best thing to do is try and make all your cooling solutions passive and power supplies passive if possible, also maybe sharing psu's btwn rigs... and also the forementioned of keeping as much stuff unplugged as possible

there is spray on solar cells now... you can spray your cases and leave them camped out side... :lol: good luck affording the stuff though.... you could about power your house (within reason) with solar power for the price it would cost to paint your cases with that stuff

[Gorgeous]

Edited due to useless comment... :slap:

[Entity_Razer]

Also you create a water turbine, where you have aim your bodys "excess fluid" into the water wheel which then turns the turbine and creates electricity...

knock it off. Don't go and hijack a thread. This thread is ment to be a good way for people to help keep the bills low and help XS's D2OL community to become Nr 1.

Furthermore, don't bother replying if it's some blatent idiot comment. I'm deadserius on this stuff. People are paying a LOT of money to keep their crunchers running for the team, least thing we can do is make a SPAMFREE thread where they can find some info on how to keep their bills low.


BTW:

Isolating your doors, windows etc will also help in the winter againt the cold and thus prevents unnecesairy heating costs because your heat doesn't dissepate as quickly

[Gorgeous]

knock it off. Don't go and hijack a thread. This thread is ment to be a good way for people to help keep the bills low and help XS's D2OL community to become Nr 1.

Furthermore, don't bother replying if it's some blatent idiot comment. I'm deadserius on this stuff. People are paying a LOT of money to keep their crunchers running for the team, least thing we can do is make a SPAMFREE thread where they can find some info on how to keep their bills low.


BTW:

Isolating your doors, windows etc will also help in the winter againt the cold and thus prevents unnecesairy heating costs because your heat doesn't dissepate as quickly

Eck, sorry...:(

On a serious note you can buy timers that plug into your plug sockets, so that way if you forget to turnoff soemthing power hungry, it will turn it off when it reaches the set time. Also can be used to turn the electricity on a certain times too.

[lv_dicedealer]

Avg sun hours per day play a very important part in the usefulness of solar panels.
Luckily in Vegas we avg 9.1 hours per day all year, only behind Dagget, California with 9.2 hours as the highest in the US. The big drawback here in Vegas is that Nevada does not offer kick backs or tax breaks or any of the nice stuff that California and many other states do offer.
No matter, once I get moved into to my freshly constructed home, I am putting up panels. I will be adding panels as I can afford them and adding it to my personal grid. Ultimately I want to be able to make enough power for my home and the battery backup system and still be able to keep the a/c on 68f in summer with a pool and a pc in every room in the house.

On a side note, after reading about refigerators recently; the best thing to do is have a full freezer and if you cant fill it with food, fill it with containers of water as it acts as a cold sink for the whole fridge. Also, veyr important to clean the condenser coils on the fridge (usually located on the back or undeneath the fridge) every 4-6 months.

[lv_dicedealer]

One more thing, USE FLOURESCENT LIGHT BULBS WHEREVER YOU CAN!!!!
They save on the power used to make the light and give off less heat

[StrikeRTM]

If I understand it correctly use a power supply with high efficiensy. Because then you can buy one with lower max power output in the mean while you have more efficiensy thus you're getting the same power, but spending less energy.

It's all about what you use and what turns into heat and warms up your room :).