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World Community Grid Forums
Category: Community
Forum: Hardware Chat Room
Thread: Laptop Battery and AC switching to save electricity |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 13
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ericinboston
Senior Cruncher Joined: Jan 12, 2010 Post Count: 265 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Ok, thanks all...I should also probably move the laptops away from the oily rags, gasoline cans, and the skid of paper towels. ;)
----------------------------------------On a side note, if I were to remove the batteries...a)would that save on any kind of power draw and b)would it reduce the overall heat from the machines? These are Lenovo T460 and the batteries (there appear to be 2 in each machine) are buried internally to the machine. What I liked about the batteries is that if I lost power for any amount of time, all those laptops still run...no need to go reboot 20+ machines, log in, etc. And since the machines can run 1.5+ hours at full crunching, that typically would be enough. I could set BOINC to NOT run on battery and thus the laptops would stay powered on for 3-4 hours. It's too bad BOINC doesn't have an option such as "when on battery, use 50% CPU instead of 100%" or something similar. If there is, I haven't see it in the preferences (and I always use the Advanced skin). Thanks again, all!  |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
On your side note:
If the computers/batteries have good power management functionality, then I would expect the additional power draw from leaving them in to be either zero or too small to measure (at least over an extended period). The batteries will get warm, but only because the whole machine will get warm, not because they are generating heat themselves. Whether they are a useful heat-sink, or what the effect on airflow and cooling might be if you take them out, I cannot say. Again, just my opinion. I'm not a battery expert. |
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sunk818
Advanced Cruncher Joined: May 10, 2018 Post Count: 66 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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How much RAC are you getting?
How much do you pay in electricity for the 20 laptops? How much do you pay in electricity per kW? I pay $0.30 kW/h so 20 laptops (aside from taking up a lot of space, isn't feasible for me). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bk50IuWXg-c If you are able to charge a wall of batteries overnight (when the rate is cheaper), you could potentially use them during the day (especially summer) when the rates are much higher. That's the only arbitrage, I can think of... but your hardware investment cost may outweigh any savings in electricity. You may be better off getting Odroid MC1 because of the power savings in ARM long-term, or a high end Dell Server like PowerEdge R910 to crunch replacing all 20 of your laptops. I find laptops don't dissipate heat well and you can run desktop CPUs harder with less cooling. |
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