[mythtv-users] Power Saving Frontend Ideas

[Roger Heflin]

Brian Wood wrote:
> On Apr 13, 2008, at 6:49 PM, Roger Heflin wrote:
>>>
>>> Where on Earth are you getting a 6 cent/kwh rate? I may have to
>>> consider moving there.
>>>
>>> beww
>> Kansas, near Kansas City.    It is 5.4cent/kwh (total bill / KWH  
>> used).
> 
> Figures. I see a lot of coal trains going out of here (Wyoming) that  
> say "KCPL" on them, but of course we are paying more than twice what  
> you are. Something's wrong with this picture.
> 
> But we should all try and reduce our total load, no matter what the  
> cost. Of course driving to work is probably about a century worth of  
> energy for a Myth frontend.
> 
> beww

I looked a bit closer, and it looks to vary from 5.4 to 7 usually about 6.25,
mostly the varying seems to depend on how large the fuel cost is, which probably 
relates to how much of the more expensive fuels were used to produce the 
electricity, the fuel cost does vary quite a bit from 1/3 to 1/6 of the total bill.

Something to remember is that Westar Energy (it was KCPL a long time ago) has a 
Nuke plant that they run almost all of the time that has low fuel cost 
(<.018/kwh vs coal of 0.04/kwh-according to DOE charts-also coal fuel costs are 
rising and nuclear fuel costs are declining), and at least 1/5 to 1/4 of their 
total yearly power consumed is coming from that plant, which keeps the fuel cost 
down.

And actually if you look at energy use quite a lot of our energy use is heating, 
in a given year I spend about the same amount on Natural Gas, Electricity, or 
Gasoline.   And all of the Natural Gas goes to heating, and a significant amount 
of the electricity goes to cooling, so the most power saving overall is to do 
something to reduce the heating and cooling load in a major way.

On mine if I can find a way to spin down the 4 raid array disks that would 
reduce things by 35-40 watts, and that may be possible if a bit of thought was 
put into it and enough data was cached elsewhere to allow things to be spun 
down, though this would get harder on writing.

                             Roger