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[JimH]

We're going to try to do a little work on MC22 to reduce its carbon footprint.  I recently found that my receiver has been drawing 40 watts in standby mode.  We'll find a fix for this kind of problem.

We already to a few things in this area, but I think we can do more.  

[dtc]

We're going to try to do a little work on MC22 to reduce its carbon footprint.  I recently found that my receiver has been drawing 40 watts in standby mode.  We'll find a fix for this kind of problem.

We already to a few things in this area, but I think we can do more.  

My amp, even in standby mode, draws more than MC could possible save. Nice idea, but I do not see how MC can change that.

[jachin99]

It might just be me but im thinking for whole house audio purposes you only need a small stereo reciever so i if someone plans their entire system for low powe consumptions and leaves the power hungary home theater recievers off when not watching tv or movies this could be beneficial.  Im thinking small low power pc and low power stereo left on or on standby 24 7

[jgreen]

I'm telling you, it's a daily struggle being Green!

[Matt]

It's not easy being jgreen.

[rudyrednose]

Just takes good planning.  You can have your cake and eat it too.
My home server, a 3.5GHz Xeon e3-1246 (similar to i7-4790) with 1.5TB of SSD and 6x5TB of hard drives, running Server 2012R2 and a Windows 8.1 VM, draws less than 44W most of the day !
Hard drives spin only when reading media files or transfering from SSD.

A right sized 80+ Gold PSU (360W) and SSD storage for OTA recording and other 24/7 background tasks goes a long way.

And power efficiency has to be considered in a larger scheme.  
In Canada, we have to heat our dwellings half of the year.  
Inefficient devices DO contribute to house heating.  So I am maniac about power efficiency only half the year  

[dtc]

.

Regarding power hungry receivers (on standby), a computer controled AC outlet would do the job.  Controled by JRiver obviously  
edit, just saw your post Jim...

Of course many leave pre-amps and amps on standby all the time because of the time it takes them to heat up and stabilize after being off. Some think that is silly, some think is a good idea. I turn off my receiver and whole house amps, but leave my stereo pre-amp and amp on standby. My amp takes 15 watts in standby mode and the pre-amp takes 25 watts (tubes). So 40 watts total - not good, but not awful either. The hot tube dwarfs that usage, especially in cold weather.  Of course, if the device has  discrete power on/off commands or you have 12v triggers on a device, you can simply control them from the remote.

[Hendrik]

I got a "sensing" power socket with a 12v line that turns my amps off when the Media PC that drives it turns off. The only thing that remains on is the DAC because it has some issues being turned on and off all the time, and doesnt offer 12v triggers, unfortunately.
I do however have a 24/7 home server. I'm afraid to measure it.

My power bill is like for 4-5 person household and I live alone. But I also work from home on a PC, so that drives it up quite a bit.

[rudyrednose]

Sorry folks, I edited my post a few times and deleted the part dtc referred to...

[RD James]

I do however have a 24/7 home server. I'm afraid to measure it.

Me too.

I should probably calculate the cost of leaving the HDDs spinning 24/7 vs letting them sleep or shutting the machine down at night and having to replace 1-2 drives a year.
I'm sure it must be cheaper to just keep them spinning though - at least at the rate that I've been replacing them due to requiring higher capacities anyway. (every 2-3 years)

It's the same thing with the server itself.
It's probably less expensive to keep what I have running until it dies, than the cost of buying something like a new NUC and a low-power NAS, for how much it will save me on the electricity bill.

When you work it out, it often ends up taking 10-20 years to recoup the cost of replacing functional but power-hungry hardware - by which point I would have replaced/upgraded the server anyway.

Honestly I'm more concerned about the cost of replacing hardware or buying these fancy sensing/networked power strips than I am about going green to "save the planet". Residential usage is such a small fraction of the problem and the majority of our power here is already provided by a wind farm.
 
I like minimizing my power consumption in theory, but unless the cost is minimal, it usually ends up not being worth it when you factor in how soon you are likely to replace the hardware anyway, and how much more efficient the new equivalent of that is.

However anything that can be done from a software point of view I am all in favor of because that has a direct impact on battery life when using portable devices. Things like not having to wake up the drive or accessing the network on every track change by storing the playlist in memory is sure to add up.

I got a "sensing" power socket with a 12v line that turns my amps off when the Media PC that drives it turns off. The only thing that remains on is the DAC because it has some issues being turned on and off all the time, and doesnt offer 12v triggers, unfortunately.

Now that is something I should probably look into.
My DAC does have a 12v trigger but I have no idea how to use it.
However there is a power strip that, when the DAC is switched off, none of those devices are required to have power.
At the same time, that's probably only going to save me 5W, and only for about 6-8 hours a day.

[JimH]

The Kill-a-Watt is a pretty neat device for measuring the power use of other devices.  I put one at the top of my power strip chain.

http://www.amazon.com/P3-P4490-Kill-Energy-Monitor/dp/B00CCJA2ZK

[mwillems]

Kill-a-watts are excellent.  

For the 24/7 server crowd, If you're like me, you may have invested in a UPS for your server.  Many UPS's will provide you with power statistics in real time that you can log.  For example, I've got my server on a cyberpower UPS which will tell you what your current consumption is in watts, etc.  I wrote a (trivial) munin plugin to graph my power usage over time (attached below).  I calibrated it with a Kill-a-watt, and found that it was generally understated by about 2 or 3 watts, which is probably the power consumed by the UPS itself.  The only glaring inaccuracy is that if the power consumed dips below 10 watts it just reports 0 watts, but that's not a very common occurence.

Just wanted to throw that out as I expect some of you may already have the technology in place to do monitoring and don't even realize it  

[RD James]

...I should really invest in a proper UPS.
 
Did some measuring and re-organizing today.
My power company sent out a wireless power meter (powered by D-cell batteries) to measure whole-house consumption so I hooked that up again , and also went around measuring specific devices with the equivalent of a kill-a-watt.
 
There really wasn't much that could be done without replacing hardware.
After going around the house I did find that each of the wireless doorbell chimes were pulling 10W so I switched one of those off as it wasn't necessary, and there were a couple of timer switches that are not currently in use but were pulling 5W each too. (only used in winter, but had been left powered to keep their settings)
After re-organizing things a bit, I separated devices that do need to remain powered all the time, and ones which do not onto separate power strips, which saves about 10W of power draw now that I can just leave some of those power strips off unless the device is actually in use.
 
I also dug out an IR-powered switch that the power company had sent out, which I had not been using, and have programmed that into my Harmony. So for 6-8 hours a day that will save another 10W.
 
Beyond that, there's really only another 5W that could be saved by powering off my networking hardware at night, but that's one of those things which is probably too much of an inconvenience unless it can be automated, and the cost of automation is greater than the energy savings.

[JimH]

When I added this power strip recently:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=105157.msg731359#msg731359

I figured that the payback is less than two years.

I hope we'll be able to automatically switch it from MC soon.

[blgentry]

If you're really interested in making an impact on the power consumption of your house, you should do Pareto analysis:  This is more commonly known as one incarnation of "the 80/20 rule".  Look for the big power consumers and optimize their use first.  If you target the parts of your house that use 80% of the power, you can make the biggest impact.  In no particular order, the biggest common consumers of power are:

1.  The heating and cooling system.
2.  Electric hot water heater.
3.  Electric stove (range top) and oven.

Those are normally, by far, the biggest consumers.  Worrying about 5 Watts here and there is nothing compared to the big power users.

Brian.

[RD James]

When I added this power strip recently:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=105157.msg731359#msg731359

I figured that the payback is less than two years.

I hope we'll be able to automatically switch it from MC soon.

It really depends entirely on how much power it's actually saving you.
In your case, you're already set up with Z-Wave, so the only cost is the power strip. ($90)
It saves you 50.3Wh for, let's say 20 hours a day - depends how much you watch TV. So that's 367.19kWh/year.
Average price in Minnesota is $0.12/kWh so that's $44/year, paying for itself in just over two years.

For me, the hub would only be saving 4.3Wh, and only for 6 hours a day.
I don't have any Z-Wave hardware, so there's an additional $45 cost to get set up.
The savings would be 1.13004/year, so it would take 120 years to pay for itself.
 
It's very easy to come out on the losing side of "going green" unless you are able to make big power savings for minimal cost.
 

If you're really interested in making an impact on the power consumption of your house, you should do Pareto analysis:  This is more commonly known as one incarnation of "the 80/20 rule".  Look for the big power consumers and optimize their use first.  If you target the parts of your house that use 80% of the power, you can make the biggest impact.  In no particular order, the biggest common consumers of power are:

1.  The heating and cooling system.
2.  Electric hot water heater.
3.  Electric stove (range top) and oven.

Those are normally, by far, the biggest consumers.  Worrying about 5 Watts here and there is nothing compared to the big power users.

Brian.

Agreed.
All of our heat/cooling is taken care of. The oven is something I had not really considered.
As far as "appliances" go, the biggest power consumers are the PCs.
But again, while they are a moderately high power consumption, the cost of replacing them vs the energy saved is a losing proposition.
I'm probably going to build a Kaby Lake system towards the end of the year anyway, so I'll get the benefits of 6 years of Intel focusing on power consumption rather than performance.

[JimH]

I believe that electric heating (including water) and electric cooking are 100% efficient.  Essentially all the energy is converted to heat.  So unless you can switch from electricity to another fuel, the only thing you can do to improve the usage is to use less.  

Reducing standby power and shutting down machines that aren't in use are clear wins.

Newer CPU's are also big improvements.  A NUC that uses 7 watts will do most of what my 5 year old desktop does for 50 watts.

[RD James]

Newer CPU's are also big improvements.  A NUC that uses 7 watts will do most of what my 5 year old desktop does for 50 watts.

But I'm not going to buy a new system to have the same performance.
I want more performance than I had before, so the power savings are not nearly as great.
The biggest power savings are probably with how low Intel can get the power consumption when the chip is idle relative to full clocks, and how quickly/often it can reach the idle state.
If you have a Skylake CPU, there are a number of improvements to be had from running on Windows 10 rather than another operating system for example.

[JimH]

Better performance can mean power or efficiency.

I bought a car a year ago that has a smaller engine but gets nearly twice the mileage.  It's a little slower, but not a lot, and I hardly ever step hard on the accelerator anyway.

If you do gaming, it matters.  For audio and even most video, the power requirements aren't that high.

[hacker42]

A 2012 Nissan Leaf gets about 34 kilowatt-hours per 100 miles or 340 watt hours per mile. That means if you drive something as efficient as a Nissan Leaf, and you were able to cut one trip out to the store 2 1/2 miles away each week, it would be the same as reducing your 24/7 electric load by about 10 watts. ( 24*7*10 ~ 350*5 ).

According to the US Government, a gallon of gas compares to 33.7 kilowatt-hours. A 20 MPG SUV gets 1,685 watt hours per mile. That's one mile a week for that same 10 watts 24/7. One 360 mile weekend trip? That's about 70 watts all day, every day for a whole year.

Also, you can buy green electricity. You can't buy green gasoline. I can't even find B100 Biodiesel around my area anymore.

I have a Kill-o-watt, but I decided it was easier just to buy green power and focus on other things to be more green.

Just my two cents.

Peace

[RD James]

Better performance can mean power or efficiency.
I bought a car a year ago that has a smaller engine but gets nearly twice the mileage.  It's a little slower, but not a lot, and I hardly ever step hard on the accelerator anyway.
If you do gaming, it matters.  For audio and even most video, the power requirements aren't that high.

Right, but you'll almost never recoup the costs of replacing a functional system pulling 50W by buying a system that only draws 7W.
If it costs you $500 for the new system, it would take 11 years to break even on that - and that assumes it's pulling that power 24/7.
You're not going to want to still be using the same computer 11 years from now - especially since that's already giving you the performance of a 5 year-old desktop PC.
 

I have a Kill-o-watt, but I decided it was easier just to buy green power and focus on other things to be more green.

Yeah, this is the right approach to take I feel.
When you're having to replace hardware for other reasons (dead hardware, too slow for use etc.) then focus on what power savings you can make, but it rarely ever works out to replace functional hardware with a lower power equivalent.
 
If you're already focusing on home automation and have a lot of high power draw devices sitting on standby, these connected power strips might be a good idea.
But the more I look at when revisiting this topic again now, the more I'm inclined to go with my initial assessment a few years ago, which is that it's a good way for companies to look good while getting you to spend money for little if any benefit if you actually work out the costs and factor in things like how long you would actually be able/want to use that device. No point buying something that will pay for itself in 11 years if you won't be using it by then.

[JimH]

Using less power isn't just about money.  It's the right thing to try to do.

Using "green" power doesn't mean that you can waste power.  If you can save power, some of your green power can be sold to someone else.

[Hendrik]

Using less power isn't just about money.  It's the right thing to try to do.

Using "green" power doesn't mean that you can waste power.  If you can save power, some of your green power can be sold to someone else.

If you take the energy required to build your new hardware into that, and the energy to dispose of the old one, you'll have a hard time to reach a positive (energy) bottom line.
I'm all for buying energy efficient hardware when buying something new, but replacing something perfectly functional has to have a real good argument behind it.

For cars the argument is a bit easier since you can also talk about the polution a modern car might reduce, but for household appliances...
Our entire society is based around throwing things away and buying them new, I think keeping things around for a bit longer might benefit the environment equally well.

I did buy a new switchable power strip and a smart socket to properly put my sound system in standby this year, such things can already help greatly.

This all comes back to the title of this thread - Its not easy being green - among other things because its not always super obvious whats the best way to go.
I could buy all new "green" things for everything and throw out everything else. But I'm not convinced that is the best course to go.

[JimH]

So how about the Swedish tile stove?

[buckeyewalt]

We're going to try to do a little work on MC22 to reduce its carbon footprint.  I recently found that my receiver has been drawing 40 watts in standby mode.  We'll find a fix for this kind of problem.

We already to a few things in this area, but I think we can do more.  

Here's the formula to figure the cost of running a device:

wattage   x   hours used  ÷  1000  x  price per kWh   =   cost of electricity

Looking at the formula the cost of running 40 watts of stand-by mode is roughly .15 cents if the cost of electricity is .16 cents PKWH which is on the high side.

[JimH]

I included the taxes in my calculation.  It's possible I made a small error.

I believe your .15 calculation is per day.  $50/year in round numbers.

[jgreen]

I'd like to offer a contrary perspective.  This is in no way aimed at JRiver, but aimed squarely at the computer hardware industry.

IMO, 90% of the root cause for blue-screen and/or black screen shutdowns is due to hairbrained energy saving implementation.  If you buy $10,000 worth of computer hardware, more energy was wasted in building it and bringing it to market than you can save in a year of buggy usb connections, black screens, etc.

Energy savings in hard drives is actually used as a method of forcing users to buy much more expensive drives.  If you recall Google's white paper of ten years ago or so, they declared that they found no performance difference between consumer drives and enterprise drives, so they were no longer spending the extra money on enterprise drives.

Shortly aftwards all drive mfrs REMOVED the logic chip on consumer HDDs that tells a RAID or host controller that the drive is merely sleeping and to wait a second before declaring it dead.  Since then USB systems have been FAR less reliable.  Energy savings?  Pennies a year, less than the gas spent driving to Fry's to buy a new drive.  Less than the energy spent to build the new drive when it wasn't needed in the first place. 

Less than, less than . . . oh, I give up.  People want to console themselves in life and illusory energy savings are the way they like to do it.  We have the power to make meaningful changes in our world and instead we just repaint the same old whining goat.   

[glynor]

Removed a chip? I think not. Changed a flag in the firmware, more like.

[Matt]

This seems like a reasonable place to share this fact.

A few years ago I went on a kick replacing every incandescent light bulb in my house.  I even replaced the refrigerator!

I'm probably still money behind since I spent a fortune doing it, but I get a warm fuzzy whenever I have lights on and that's priceless!

[syndromeofadown]

I would be interested in any green features JRiver comes up with. Not because I'm trying to save the planet but because I live off the grid and electricity isn't plentiful. My electric system consists of one deep cycle battery, a solar panel, and a small gas generator used minimally. I have wood heat, and propane lights, fridge, and stove. The only thing I really need want electricity for is movies, music, and cell phone. So JRiver is involved in 90 percent of my electricity use.

I am hopeful my situation is temporary. Currently we are looking into more efficient PC's, NUC or PI servers, and I have purchased a Axiom Air that runs on batteries. Instead of spending thousands on new more efficient equipment, I believe it makes more sense to spend thousands on proper electricity and continue to use our power hungry equipment that is sitting in boxes. (I miss my server and stereo). Where I live, our power comes from hydro. With my current system I will have to use the solar panel for 15 years before it makes back the power put into making it. My battery will only last 2 years then it will need disposed of and replaced by a new one made from finite resources.

If there are easy affordable solutions to save power I am all for it.

[RD James]

This seems like a reasonable place to share this fact.
A few years ago I went on a kick replacing every incandescent light bulb in my house.  I even replaced the refrigerator!
I'm probably still money behind since I spent a fortune doing it, but I get a warm fuzzy whenever I have lights on and that's priceless!

And here I am lamenting the fact that the manufacturer of my favorite 45W daylight CFL seems to have discontinued them before I could stockpile them, and that I can't seem to find good quality halogens any more, only cheap lamps that don't last more than 6 months.
I'm all for energy efficiency if it doesn't compromise on quality. Where are the high CRI (95+) LED lamps from reputable manufacturers?

[JimH]

Split Heat Pumps and Alternative Energy

[Gatherum]

I use a couple of these and one of these. My TV and A/V receiver essentially control the power to all devices in my home theatre system, including my subs. Between that and conditioning myself to turn things off when I leave, I save quite a bit on energy.

Still, making MC more energy-efficient is always welcome. Good on you guys.

[luker0]

I do however have a 24/7 home server. I'm afraid to measure it.

Moved all my drives from a tower PC to a QNAP NAS and saved almost $10/month in electricity usage.

[jgreen]

Great purchase, but you didn't tell us how much you spent on the NAS in order to achieve this $9/month (almost $10) savings.  Can we assume $1500 wihout drives?

That $1500 investment will pay for itself in evergy savings in only . . . thirteen and a half years.  That is almost a decade more than the useful life of the hardware.

And you didn't mention how much the total monthly power cost for the unit is.  I say this because if you're using the hardware 24/7, simply turning it off at night will achieve an immediate and cost-free 30% energy savings.

I like saving energy, but I don't like spending money to do so, and I hate it when devices introduce disabling features in order to save a sliver of energy, but make it difficult to turn them off and save meaningful amounts of energy.

Oh, and welcome to the forum!

[BryanC]

Can we assume $1500 wihout drives?

I'm guessing you're off by an order of magnitude. A home NAS is pretty cheap nowadays. You could even build one yourself with a Banana Pi and an old computer case for <$70.

[Mr ChriZ]

I bought a very small microwave/combined fan oven a while back to complement a not very good full size oven.  It heats up much quicker than the full size oven and if I'm just cooking for me it makes more sense.  Since it has a rotating turntable in the bottom I'm also finding I'm burning things less.  I've not connected it to MC yet though. 

[kstuart]

Saving energy is not being green.

There is a giant fusion reactor only 93 million miles away, enough energy for everything anyone could possibly contemplate.

So being green is simply stopping using fossil fuels that create carbon emissions.

[kstuart]

This seems like a reasonable place to share this fact.

A few years ago I went on a kick replacing every incandescent light bulb in my house.  I even replaced the refrigerator!

I'm probably still money behind since I spent a fortune doing it, but I get a warm fuzzy whenever I have lights on and that's priceless!

Ditto.

My refrigerator bulbs:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1-10PCS-Dimmable-G4-G9-E11-E12-E17-BA15D-9w-152-3014-SMD-LED-Silicone-bulb-lamp-/191586144714?var=&hash=item2c9b6c91ca:m:m_2aqltwn7cA0DdpOonmNLg

[BillT]

There is a giant fusion reactor only 93 million miles away, enough energy for everything anyone could possibly contemplate.

There's just a teeny problem with that; how do you, practically, turn that energy into a usable form?

For a realistic take on the difficulties I'd recommend "Without the hot air" by David Mackay, it's UK centric, but the principles are universal. https://www.withouthotair.com/

An interesting video made just before he died is available here, in which he discusses this very issue. http://www.marklynas.org/2016/04/david-mackay-last-interview-tribute/ (from 2:20)

[syndromeofadown]

Saving energy is not being green.

There is a giant fusion reactor only 93 million miles away, enough energy for everything anyone could possibly contemplate.

So being green is simply stopping using fossil fuels that create carbon emissions.

I would say saving energy is being green, or at least a step towards it, especially if you live in a country where a third of the electricity is produced from burning coal. Even in areas with hydro power, they have diesel and natural gas backup generators that kick in when more power is required than they can supply.

[bhampster]

I like to save energy and learn about how to save energy or harness alternative energy.

I imagine it's only going to be a bigger issue as time goes on.

I wonder if it makes sense for me to watch movies alone in my home theater with Projector, 110" screen, 7.1 sound system. I can surely stream them to my phone and put on headphones and sort of tune in better in some way to the whole feature.

Makes me wonder about VR because it seems like something that would use less energy than a full scale HT for each and every lone fella.

-Brian

[rudyrednose]

I wonder if it makes sense for me to watch movies alone in my home theater with Projector, 110" screen, 7.1 sound system. I can surely stream them to my phone and put on headphones and sort of tune in better in some way to the whole feature.

I am not ready to go there !
I am all in favor of reducing waste / saving the planet and I do save a lot of energy by having an extra efficient house, but I am not about to dump my PJ for a 5" screen 

[bhampster]

I agree... I still watch in my HT and mostly alone.

Reminds me of the time I felt I needed an extra game controller only to get one learn soon after that I don't actually have any friends... ( )

I do think often about headphones vs speakers tho. It seems to me a few things are true - Its far cheaper to get good headphones than it is to get great speakers and build a great listening room. Headphones must use less energy than a full scale system. Headphones have that feature that you can take them with you. And my headphones block other sounds which brings the signal very nicely. One big drawback to headphones is if someone tries to get your attention it's suddenly a problem.

I still love my HT... no doubt about that ... but if a Occulus Rift has a 4k-ish OLED beautiful screen and does the 3D with style and uses less energy and I can take it with me when I have to go places.... I'm beginning to think I want one. ! Seems like now isn't a good time to buy in as such devices will only get better.

I think about the future and someday may have to reduce the size or operating cost of my own stuff for one reason or another. Chances are I think about this type of thing too much. But it's what I like.

-Brian

[thecrow]

How about adding the feature to JRemote for Android, that was mentioned when it first came out, that allows you to shut down your JRiver server from the remote?

[Slim_Fishguttz]

Sounds like a job for a Raspberry Pi.