On an energy efficency drive!!

[Mr Sandman]

looks a bit complex to me that, I can shut down using logmein, I just hit the start then shutdown buttons on the remote PCs desktop.

Steve

[Mr Sandman]

as already said replace 500w with 150w

check thermostat setting, fit insulation behind rads, fit cavity wall insulation, draught excluding,

insulation boards behind rads? interesting. i suppose some airflex or similar would be ok too?

depends what theyre used for, but replacement with an old low cost laptop could wipe out most of that energy use. Not worth buying a new one though. Another poss is to underclock the machines as much as poss

- but it all depends what youre doing with them.

peanuts

essential - encourage use of full loads rather than part loads though

hardly worth trying to cut energy use further on those

What do you think you could do?

Looking on line, i see these dryer balls are supposed to make a big difference with efficency?

[Rod]

But you haven't declared any tumble dryers in your equipment list!

[Dave Liquorice]

AIUI WOL will switch a PC on from off, provided there is mains connected to it.

Got me there but I should imagine it is the MAC of the NIC of the PC you want to wake up. A specially constructed broadcast packet is sent that the NIC sees and turns it's host PC on.

By "4 way router" do you really mean a 4 way network switch or hub? A "router" is a box that inspects packets passing through it and routes them in the appropiate direction, which can include ignoring, dropping or rejecting. A switch or hub is the box that connects all the network devices together in a star topography.

The IP would have to be the public one of the cable modem, the MAC I suspect is that of the PC you wish to wake up. Note you will need to set up the cable modem to forward the relevant packets into your LAN and configure the "4 way router" (if it really is a router not a switch) to route them as well.

[David Hansen]

On Sun, 22 Jun 2008 10:02:51 +0100 (BST) someone who may be "Dave Liquorice" wrote this:-

I imagine it is what is called a cable router or broadband router

being one example.

Four internal network ports, switch, router and firewall built into one box. It has one external network port which is plugged into a separate cable modem (supplied by Virgin) or DSL modem (supplied by oneself or the DSL company).

[Tim..]

Jesus, our electric is £1000 / quarter!

Stop moaning.

Tim. .

[Andy Hall]

Has this plea helped to reduce it? :-)

[Mr Sandman]

It could be a hub I suppose, it has a cat5e from the cable modem and 4 outputs to wireless routers and PCs. Its just a small box not much bigger than a couple of ciggy boxes.

Steve

[Andrew Gabriel]

Depends on the PC.

The network card on the mother board.

This is complicated. You need to get a packet onto the lan which the PC will pick up. IIRC, the packet needs to contain the PC's ethernet address concatenated 16 times. It doesn't matter what else is in the packet, i.e. it doesn't matter what protocol(s) you use to carry the packet.

What you probably can't do is simply send the packet to the PC, even assuming your router allows you to. After an hour, the router's ARP cache will have forgotten the PC's ethernet address, and any attempt to reach it directly will cause the router to issue ARP requests for the ethernet address of your PC's IP address, which it won't respond to because it's asleep. (Having said that, there are now some NICs which will respond to ARP requests when asleep, but they didn't exist when I originally played with this, and they need special driver support.) Another way is to send to your LAN's broadcast address. This would result in the router sending a broadcast ethernet packet. All systems would pick it up, but as it contains only 16 copies of the ethernet address of one system, only that one system is woken. This is what I did. You will very likely need to configure your router to be able to send to your LAN's broadcast address though. Also, if you use some service such as above, you would probably need to configure your firewall to allow it through. (I just tried the one above, and it piggy-backs the wakeup on a UDP packet to the port specified on your network's broadcast address.) If logmein does what I suspect it does, your dynamic IP address could make this more complicated.

[meow2222]

make it foil faced stuff, as a lot of radiator output is radiant heat. Only wanted on exterior walls or party walls, there's no sense stopping heat flow from one room to another. Payback is quick.

As Rod said, I dont see how those would help if you dont have a dryer. Assuming you do, those waste a lot of energy and money. There are various options:

- use a condensing dryer if the present one isnt

- hang washing outside

- use a dehumidifier and hang indoors

-

'd help yourself a lot more if you told us what you were running.

Re dryer balls, any ball with holes in would reduce drying times by a miniscule amount. I cant see them ever paying the purchase cost back though.

NT

[The Natural Philosopher]

With electricity being made largely from coal and energetic neutrons, trying to save electrical energy whilst pouring pounds into gas or oil central heating is not the saviour it once was.

Not sure what latest off peak electricity is, but leaving computers on

24x7 may actually lessen your fuel bill.

I am fairly sure that at current prices, an all electric heating system with heat pump would be the lowest running costs here of all, and given the access to nuclear electricity, probably the most E-friendly.

[The Natural Philosopher]

efficency?

>>> Steve

I am becoming more an more convinced that the heaviest electricity users in this house are from the 24x7 freezers, and the dishwasher. I am virtually certain the latter is a complete waste of time really, as it chews juice, and doesn't actually do more than mildly power rnse dishes. Anything more stubborn needs soaking. And I can easily soak in cold.

Its only there for domestic harmony: Apart from parties I would prefer not to use it at all.

We don't use the drier at all. Clothes are hung in the boiler room which is hot and dry, and then stacked on racks over the boiler in its cupboard. Or they are hung out to dry outside.

[Pete Verdon]

In the consumer networking sense, a "router" is a box providing NAT and DHCP, and often also DNS caching, some sort of firewalling, and sundry other small-network infrastructure services. A 4-port one also incorporates a 4-port switch on the "internal" side of the NAT.

This is what the OP will have.

Pete

[Pete Verdon]

Very few people will be using Windows remotely without a GUI; those that do are probably Unix types and able to find the shutdown command anyway.

Most remote use of Windows will be either its own Remote Desktop or VNC, plus a few scattered proprietary offerings.

Pete

[The Natural Philosopher]

Check as some older ones only have a 4 port HUB.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I gave up putting desktops to sleep: with remotely mounted drives being an INTEGRAL part of my setup..even my mail directories are on te server..yes, it can be done..the sleeping computer dropped its mounted drives, and waking it up to use mail caused many nasty problems.

[Ian Stirling]

Yeah - of course it depends. There is of course no security benefit if you don't look out when the light goes on, it being on for 20 mins means you're very unlikely to be staring out at it.

It depends what they're for - a little thought, and turning them all to the appropriate length, and fitting 300W bulbs for nearly all of them helps lots.

[Ian Stirling]

If you examine the cost of electricity and fuels, you see that they are pretty much 3 times the cost of electricity.

This is not coincidental with the fact that the efficiency of your average power station running on natural gas (most do, nuclear is only 18%), has an efficiency of a bit better than 40%. Add some losses in the grid, and ...

It doesn't. on-peak is _really_ expensive for off-peak tarrifs.

Heat pumps cost at least several grand to install, and are at the absolute best (which is rarely approached even at the 5 grand level) output 6 times the input electricity in heat. You'll generally get much better returns simply superinsulating the house, and using gas.

[Ian Stirling]

It may use lots less water than doing it manually, and not have any waste hot water in the pipes.

Little power meters can be enormously handy.

My freezer has a couple of sheets of kingspan either side, and a little fan on the evaporator coil. (NOTE. Some freezers have their coils on the outside of the case, not the back DO NOT insulate over these, or you'll bugger them) This has reduced its power use by 30-50% or so.

[Ian Stirling]

No - those are not available in the same length as 500W - the 150W ones are physically shorter. 300W is however avaialbel in ghte same size.