Carbon diet

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It is called "Mountain top removal"

def: Mountain Top Removal

February 2006

I don't approve of people destroying Appalachia so we can heat our houses with electricity from coal-fired power plants. So I am putting myself on a low carbon diet.

Conservation begins with data collection

I have to establish a baseline of our current energy use. I will need to log electrical use and temperatures over a period of time.

My house uses gas (and optionally, wood) for heat. It has an electric stove and water heater. Only the antique gas/wood central furnace uses gas.

I can monitor its run time by monitoring the electrical circuits running to it. I don't have a good way to measure actual gas used other than gas meter readings. I suppose I could read the meter once a day and log it...

I can install a data logger and current taps at the main breaker panel to get readings on the whole house.

Current taps

I happen to have a couple split-core current sensors left over from my halcyon days at Coactive Networks. They are Magnelab Model [[Image:sct-0750.pdf SCT-0750]-100 and they say "100A to .333v Full Range". I bet that means that when 100 amps runs through the cable, it puts out 1/3 volt DC.

This is good for whole house. You put one around each cable coming into the breaker panel. 100A is a bit much for other applications though. I would like something with a bit more sensitivity.

CR Magnetics

Digikey Search catalog for Current Transducer or Current Sensor

Data loggers

Onset Hobo < $100 sells matched sensors including split core transformers
Pace Scientific Pocket Logger $499 expensive but full range of accessories

Measurements using Kill-a-watt

Computers

Old blue ATX case

  • Powerman 235W ATX supply with on/off switch
  • Pentium Pro 200 Intel Mars motherboard
  • Four 72 pin 32MB SIMMS = 128 MB
  • No CPU fan (power supply fan directs air directly onto heatsink)
  • Tulip network card (est 2W)
  • Soundblaster Model CT4180 card (2W)
  • Dual port Intel network card (3-4W)
  • Dual port SIIG USB 1.0 card (2W)
  • Trident video card (ISA) (3W)
  • Intel Mars motherboard PIIX chipset
  • PS/2 keyboard (no difference on power reading w/o keyboard)
  • IDE hard drive: IBM Deskstar 15 GB IBM-DTLA-307015

Boot: 55-60W, peaks to 70W
Idle: 36W
HD spun down: 31W
Stripped down: MB + 128MB RAM + HD = 23 W

Spinning down the hard drive saves 5 watts

Power supply has OFF switch; with the various and sundry network cards installed it burns

PS fan and CPU fan died years ago so I put the high quality fan from a Sun 3 workstation into the supply and dumped the CPU fan. CPU does NOT get hot under normal operation.

CDROM drives

Only needed occasionally; I can leave a drive in the system but unhook power to it.

  • Diamond 8X CDROM: 1 W when idle (no disc in drive)