Power Cost Management

Message boards : Number crunching : Power Cost Management
Message board moderation

To post messages, you must log in.

AuthorMessage
Profile RueiKe Special Project $250 donor
Volunteer tester
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 14 Feb 16
Posts: 492
Credit: 378,512,430
RAC: 785
Taiwan
Message 1944398 - Posted: 15 Jul 2018, 8:11:51 UTC
Last modified: 15 Jul 2018, 8:34:12 UTC

With the arrival of summer, my power bill is getting excessive again, so I have investigated possibilities to manage cost more effectively. Not sure how different power rates are in Taiwan vs the rest of the world, but here we have a couple of options to consider. I am currently on the default plan with the following calculation:

    Cost = NT$1.63*240KWH + NT$2.10*420KWH + NT$2.89*340KWH + NT$3.94*400KWH + NT$4.60*600KWH + NT$5.03*10600KWH + ...


The more I use, the higher the rate and most of what I use is at the highest rate. Rates will be even higher in Jun-Aug. I have just signed the paperwork to convert to a plan where rate varies by time of day, day of week, and summer vs. non-summer:


    Weekends and weekdays from 10:30pm - 7:30am are charged at a rate of 1.8NT/KWH in summer and 1.73 non-summer.
    Weekdays non-summer are charged 3.88NT/KWH
    Weekdays summer 10-12,13-17 6.20NT/KWH, 7:30-10,12-13,17-22:40 are 4.07NT/KWH.
    Anything over 2000KWH in the 2 month billing period has an adder of 0.96NT/KWH.


I did the calculation for the last non-summer bill and the new plan should save me 26% based on continuous usage. For the summer rules, the savings is 16%. Both of these should improve even more if I charge my car after 10:30pm. I am now considering not running SETI during the highest rate time in the 3 summer months to cut the power bill even more. This is where I need help. To accomplish this on my Linux machine is easy with this crontab entry:

# m h dom mon dpw command
0 10 * 6-8 1-5 pauseSETI.sh
0 17 * 6-8 1-5 resumeSETI.sh

Any suggestions on how to implement the same rule in Windows10? TaskScheduler doesn't seem anywhere near as flexible as crontab. Doesn't seem like I can implement a don't compute time in the middle of the day in boincmgr Daily Schedules.
GitHub: Ricks-Lab
Instagram: ricks_labs
ID: 1944398 · Report as offensive
Profile Jord
Volunteer tester
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 9 Jun 99
Posts: 15184
Credit: 4,362,181
RAC: 3
Netherlands
Message 1944406 - Posted: 15 Jul 2018, 8:45:10 UTC - in response to Message 1944398.  
Last modified: 15 Jul 2018, 8:47:59 UTC

Doesn't seem like I can implement a don't compute time in the middle of the day in boincmgr Daily Schedules.
Why not?

Set the times you want BOINC to do calculations, and if not during four hours of the day in the middle of the day, omit those.
E.g. calculate from 16:00 to 12:00 - that'll do calculations all day, excluding those four hours between 12 and 16.
You can set these overrides for all days (top option) or per day.

What's not possible is to set multiple time slots, like 16:00 to 08:00 and 10:00 to 12:00 on the same day. But otherwise, just play with the 24 hours.

Edit: and if power use is really your concern, consider going for other devices. I'm running a couple of Android devices which among themselves, the 200mm fan they lie on and the 12V adapter powering the fan, use about 1 KWH a week. Just saying. ;-)
ID: 1944406 · Report as offensive
Profile RueiKe Special Project $250 donor
Volunteer tester
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 14 Feb 16
Posts: 492
Credit: 378,512,430
RAC: 785
Taiwan
Message 1944409 - Posted: 15 Jul 2018, 9:12:19 UTC - in response to Message 1944406.  

Thanks for the feedback. I am trying out those settings now. Maybe it needs to shift a day in order to only impact weekdays?

I don't want to significantly reduce my contribution to SETI, just manage the cost of it.

Set the times you want BOINC to do calculations, and if not during four hours of the day in the middle of the day, omit those.
E.g. calculate from 16:00 to 12:00 - that'll do calculations all day, excluding those four hours between 12 and 16.
You can set these overrides for all days (top option) or per day.

What's not possible is to set multiple time slots, like 16:00 to 08:00 and 10:00 to 12:00 on the same day. But otherwise, just play with the 24 hours.

Edit: and if power use is really your concern, consider going for other devices. I'm running a couple of Android devices which among themselves, the 200mm fan they lie on and the 12V adapter powering the fan, use about 1 KWH a week. Just saying. ;-)
ID: 1944409 · Report as offensive
Profile Jord
Volunteer tester
Avatar

Send message
Joined: 9 Jun 99
Posts: 15184
Credit: 4,362,181
RAC: 3
Netherlands
Message 1944411 - Posted: 15 Jul 2018, 9:39:07 UTC - in response to Message 1944409.  
Last modified: 15 Jul 2018, 9:40:25 UTC

You have 24 hours to play with. Just don't think of it as a strict 24 hours, only counting from 00:00 to 23:59, you can go through midnight with the settings, and have the start time this day and the end time tomorrow. If you set it for the main "Only use between" hours, it'll do it every day of the week. Setting separate days with separate hours, you need to check the check box before the day and set separate hours.

So if Main is 16:00 to 12:00, but you want Saturday and Sunday to run 'always', check Saturday and Sunday and set times 00:00 - 23:59
The present versions of BOINC still have the one minute lost time bug, where at 23:59 BOINC will pause and continue at 24:00 (0:00). That's being fixed in a future version - I don't think it made it into the just released 7.12.1

Do know that you can use these overrides in Linux as well. You can copy the <start_hour>N</start_hour> and <end_hour>N</end_hour> and if you set them the overriding days from your global_prefs_override.xml file and make/copy them into a global_prefs_override.xml file on the Linux system(s).

From mine:
   <start_hour>21.083333</start_hour>
   <end_hour>6.000000</end_hour>
  <day_prefs>
      <day_of_week>0</day_of_week>
      <start_hour>0.00</start_hour>
      <end_hour>23.98</end_hour>
   </day_prefs>
   <day_prefs>
      <day_of_week>6</day_of_week>
      <start_hour>0.00</start_hour>
      <end_hour>23.98</end_hour>
   </day_prefs>

Yes, the values above show 'weird' numbering, but these are correct for 21:05 - 06:00 and 00:00 - 23:59
So take the values as they are, don't change them.
ID: 1944411 · Report as offensive

Message boards : Number crunching : Power Cost Management


 
©2024 University of California
 
SETI@home and Astropulse are funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, NASA, and donations from SETI@home volunteers. AstroPulse is funded in part by the NSF through grant AST-0307956.