It is true that most "consumer-level" UPS/battery backup units have poor resolution when displaying current load in watts. On the CyberPower units which I have, it is 9 watts. On the PC on which I write this, it is bouncing between 162 and 171 watts. I can pretty much tell that the bounce comes mostly from the slightly varying load and speed of the CPU cooler.
Considering that I'm running 4 x WCG on a Phenom II X4 945 CPU at 3GHz and 2 x Einstein BRP6 on a GTX 650 SC, I'm pretty satisfied with that number. And that number is accurate enough for me to do a ballpark estimate of how much that box is costing me each month to run 100%/24/7 (at this past month's kWH rate, around US$14).
The benefits of a UPS are not always obvious, beyond the graceful shutdown in the case of a power loss (although it is nice to tell Windows to shutdown automatically after the battery drops to a certain level).
My units have power conditioning -- EMI, RFI, brownout protection, surge suppression (1500 joules/105,000 amps), with a US$500,000 connected equipment guarantee. I've had a couple of brownouts (both times vehicles hitting power poles up the line from my house), and all systems kept ticking as the municipal utility quickly rerouted power.
There is also an alarm/notification of power loss. I like being awakened if there is a power loss during the night. Since the UPS installation, I've not had a single time where my alarm clock losing power caused me to oversleep. Often, that power loss/alarm is an indication of some event of which I'd like to be aware (e.g. severe thunderstorms affecting the grid and maybe me?).
I use them beyond the just the PC's themselves. When a hurricane came through and left me without power for a few hours, I was still able to charge my mobile, and have good lighting in specific areas for short periods. Plus, my setup includes support devices, which is why I bought devices with twice the total wattage/VA that I expect each PC to pull.
Media center PC: Switching to a spare, low power LCD monitor in place of the 40" Sony LCD TV and headphones for sound, I can monitor weather events from local broadcast TV (or analog cable TV, which often still works during an outage). In Windows 7, power conservation settings kick in when running on battery, so using it for only short periods of time, and putting the computer into sleep mode in between, gives me several hours of sporadic runtime. In sleep mode, that PC uses so little power that it doesn't even hit the 9W resolution of the meter on the UPS, so it reads 0 watts on the front panel.
Server/router/switch/cable modem: I chose each of these devices to be as green as possible, so I can power all of my devices' connections to the internet for a reasonable amount of time (about an hour at full load). But I really like that short outages or brownouts do not interrupt, or at least provide graceful shutdown, for all of my devices, including those in the middle of critical online activities.
Lighting: Two lamps with low wattage CFL bulbs in key spots -- meaning at least one is always on when I'm awake and it is dark -- so I'm not plunged into darkness when the power goes.
Of course, without main power, if the UPS is powered up and the alarm has not been disabled, that alarm is going off, but I treat that as an incentive to do only what must be done and then shut it down to conserve the charge.
There's also a utility that keeps me from crawling under the desk to check UPS/power status. Note that I can run 32 minutes at full power, but much longer when Windows 7 detects I'm on battery.
Nice! I don't plan on going that large but that array makes my mouth water!
Phil, it's easy to size your system. Just look at your total yearly power consumption by either using your utilities online account management application or get out the calculator and add up 12 months of bills. The object is to size your system just for what you use and maybe about 10% more to cover new loads. Even that is questionable since appliances and lighting are getting even more efficient. I knew I was going to add the car to my load so sized accordingly to cover a year's worth of driving and charging along with running two computers. It doesn't pay to oversize your system usually since as you mentioned the utility pays you wholesale rate (in my case $0.04/kWh) and then turns around and sells your power you shove onto the grid at retail, high tier rates. And still, the utilities are fighting back against residential consumer solar because in the end they will be losing paying customers. A lot of states are surcharging for residential solar now. It will be a vicious cycle of people getting fed up with their high power bills and turning to solar, which drops the utilities revenue so they jack their rates, which forces more people off the grid and the cycle continues till the utilities go out of business. I foresee where power generation is local to the demand as the future business model. It will be interesting that's for sure.
@Mark, your reasoning is exactly the same for me running backup units. Takes the care and monitoring time demands out of the equation when it is all automatic. As far as for long term power outages, I have several very large AGM batteries in the garage on trickle charge that I use for my astrophotography hobby and a largish inverter that provides me with many days of radio, TV and lighting to cover long term utility outages due to pole equipment or substation failure. I missed out by one product year on getting the SunnyBoy inverters for my solar array that have standby power available when the grid goes down. That would be handy indeed with my excess production during the day. But the times I have lost power during long-time outages in the last ten years I can count on one hand so not too upset. When the replacement cycle for the inverters comes in 10 years I'm sure they will have even more efficient and capable models. My $0.02.
Note that I can run 32 minutes at full power, but much longer when Windows 7 detects I'm on battery.
I have three computers running on two different CyberPower UPSes, and whenever I install the PowerPanel software, it seems that the built-in Windows power management features are disabled. I can use PowerPanel to have the computers automatically shut down, but battery status is not passed to BOINC. Since I've only had one or two major power outages lasting longer than a few minutes, it would be nice to have BOINC paused while the computers are running on battery for maximum battery life and minimum downtime when power is restored. How do you have yours set up?
I've ordered from Amazon the current $19.95 version of the Ensupra "electricity usage monitor", which clearly differs from the one I own. I should caution that multiple user reviews (including favorable ones) consistently rate the instructions for this model as atrocious, and at least imply that the behavior is not so intuitive as one would wish to just get it to do what one wants by button-pushing. Most agree that it works and seems accurate.
I'll give it a try and post my impressions by late next week--pending that please don't think I'm a strong advocate on this one yet.
Regarding the thread drift to customer-owned solar power: the question of power company payment varies greatly by jurisdiction, and even by month of installation. Here in New Mexico the regulatory regime imposes "green" power targets on the power company, which in part sets the rates they pay home solar generation installers for back-pumped power to meet the targets. This gave the anomalous situation that prosperous homeowners in my neighborhood who got on the bandwagon early enough have locked in agreements requiring them to be paid for power they pump back into the grid far above what the power is worth for many years to come--and, the reality of the economics is that that excess payment comes from the pockets of their fellow customers of the utility, who in this state are on average far less prosperous than are the people installing home solar generation systems.
it would be nice to have BOINC paused while the computers are running on battery for maximum battery life and minimum downtime when power is restored.
I don't think most UPS management software has that fine granularity. Most just bring down the whole server safely after power is lost. I can't remember correctly if it could kill individual programs but I seem to remember APCUPSD could script events. This is an open source-forge project software. I used to run it when I was running OS/2 in the servers. I would think that business class software, particularly in the Linux languages could accomplish the task also. I know that you can kill individual power outlets of the UPS in a sequenced manner but don't have any direct experience in trying to sequence a shutdown and killing processes individually. I can see the utility in wanting to bring down BOINC separately first since that process uses the most power. That way you could use the computer for a short period of time and get the benefits of power reduction through sleeping or "green" power configurations and have the extended power for a lot longer than when BOINC is running. If you find an answer let the thread know.
I don't think most UPS management software has that fine granularity
The wish here is not for any more granularity from the management software than to set the operating system status to "system is running on batteries" just as laptops do.
If they did, then the existing granularity provided by the BOINC computing Preferences item "Suspend work while computer is on battery power?" would actually work on PCs using UPS with that management software. Pity it does not.
I am also a Cyberpower user. I've been pretty happy with their units--but think their provided consumer software is really pretty bad.
Note that I can run 32 minutes at full power, but much longer when Windows 7 detects I'm on battery.
I have three computers running on two different CyberPower UPSes, and whenever I install the PowerPanel software, it seems that the built-in Windows power management features are disabled. I can use PowerPanel to have the computers automatically shut down, but battery status is not passed to BOINC. Since I've only had one or two major power outages lasting longer than a few minutes, it would be nice to have BOINC paused while the computers are running on battery for maximum battery life and minimum downtime when power is restored. How do you have yours set up?
On the PC from which I took that screenshot, I have the PowerPanel software installed, so I did misspeak about Windows 7 detecting the change. On the others, I use the features in Windows 7's Power Options for "On battery." This works for me, because, in the event of a power failure, I am most likely to take control of that PowerPanel-equipped machine, since, when I built it, I carefully chose the components to draw the least power of any of my desktops (including the lowest power-draw 23" LCD-LED display panel I could find). PowerPanel helps on that machine, because the UPS is positioned where it is the most difficult to reach. I force the others to sleep until really needed or main power returns.
Yes, PowerPanel takes over the battery settings; the "On battery" options don't even appear in Win7's Power Options dialog on that one PC. I tested Windows 7 + BOINC on my one remaining notebook on which I crunch -- as soon as I pull the power cable, Windows 7 responds by dropping the processor speed and dimming the display panel, and BOINC suspends all running units. If I don't interact with it, the standard sleep settings on the notebook take over.
I realized early on that BOINC activity, when running on AC power, looks to Windows as activity that should prevent sleep. I learned that when a project I was running had server problems and I didn't notice at first. When all of the work was completed, the notebook promptly went to sleep. When I finally noticed the notebook had gone to sleep, I woke it up to find the work unit cache empty except for the completed work.
Under PowerPanel, my choices are:
Keep Computer Running -- shutdown the computer when remaining battery is 5 to 8 minutes; I chose 5, so I am in control until the last minute, but this is not my default setting. I manually change to this if I want the machine to keep running.
OR
Preserve Battery Power -- shutdown after battery backup runs for 1 to 5 minutes; I chose 5; this is my default setting. This gives me five minutes to get to the machine and manually control how it is using power (e.g. first thing to suspend is BOINC). If I don't respond in 5 minutes, it shuts down to save power.
On my other desktop machines, I have a custom power plan with the following settings for "On battery":
Hard disk: Turn off after 3 minutes
Desktop background settings: Slide show Paused
Sleep after 5 minutes
Allow hybrid sleep
Hibernate Never (depends on hybrid sleep instead)
PCI Express Link State Power Management: Maximum power savings
Processor power management System cooling policy: Passive
Display off after 3 minutes
Critical battery action Sleep (leveraging hybrid sleep)
Low battery level: 30%
Critical battery level: 20%
Low battery notification: On
Low battery action: Do nothing
Reserve battery level: 7%
I don't think most UPS management software has that fine granularity
The wish here is not for any more granularity from the management software than to set the operating system status to "system is running on batteries" just as laptops do.
If they did, then the existing granularity provided by the BOINC computing Preferences item "Suspend work while computer is on battery power?" would actually work on PCs using UPS with that management software. Pity it does not.
I am also a Cyberpower user. I've been pretty happy with their units--but think their provided consumer software is really pretty bad.
You are correct, BOINC should work on desktops with battery backup just as it does on laptops and cellphones. Why hasn't anyone not reported this to the developers? Or have they? Windows laptops communicate to BOINC when they are on battery power and BOINC suspends itself, why don't desktops? Does anyone have BOINC suspending when on battery power for desktops? Is the failure in the UPS management software not communicating to the Windows power management API? Or in BOINC not picking up the messaging?
You are correct, BOINC should work on desktops with battery backup just as it does on laptops and cellphones. Why hasn't anyone not reported this to the developers? Or have they? Windows laptops communicate to BOINC when they are on battery power and BOINC suspends itself, why don't desktops? Does anyone have BOINC suspending when on battery power for desktops? Is the failure in the UPS management software not communicating to the Windows power management API? Or in BOINC not picking up the messaging?
Keith
The Win7 PC on which I write this is plugged into one of my CyberPower UPS units, which is also connected to a USB port on the PC. This PC is not running their PowerPanel software. I see a battery icon identical to the one that displays on a Win7 notebook.
I just pulled the UPS plug from the wall socket. Since the monitor is also connected to the UPS, I was able to watch Windows and BOINC respond. BOINC properly responded and suspended computation, writing the following into the log:
04/03/2015 18:40:18 | | Suspending computation - on batteries
It is true that most
)
It is true that most "consumer-level" UPS/battery backup units have poor resolution when displaying current load in watts. On the CyberPower units which I have, it is 9 watts. On the PC on which I write this, it is bouncing between 162 and 171 watts. I can pretty much tell that the bounce comes mostly from the slightly varying load and speed of the CPU cooler.
Considering that I'm running 4 x WCG on a Phenom II X4 945 CPU at 3GHz and 2 x Einstein BRP6 on a GTX 650 SC, I'm pretty satisfied with that number. And that number is accurate enough for me to do a ballpark estimate of how much that box is costing me each month to run 100%/24/7 (at this past month's kWH rate, around US$14).
The benefits of a UPS are not always obvious, beyond the graceful shutdown in the case of a power loss (although it is nice to tell Windows to shutdown automatically after the battery drops to a certain level).
My units have power conditioning -- EMI, RFI, brownout protection, surge suppression (1500 joules/105,000 amps), with a US$500,000 connected equipment guarantee. I've had a couple of brownouts (both times vehicles hitting power poles up the line from my house), and all systems kept ticking as the municipal utility quickly rerouted power.
There is also an alarm/notification of power loss. I like being awakened if there is a power loss during the night. Since the UPS installation, I've not had a single time where my alarm clock losing power caused me to oversleep. Often, that power loss/alarm is an indication of some event of which I'd like to be aware (e.g. severe thunderstorms affecting the grid and maybe me?).
I use them beyond the just the PC's themselves. When a hurricane came through and left me without power for a few hours, I was still able to charge my mobile, and have good lighting in specific areas for short periods. Plus, my setup includes support devices, which is why I bought devices with twice the total wattage/VA that I expect each PC to pull.
Media center PC: Switching to a spare, low power LCD monitor in place of the 40" Sony LCD TV and headphones for sound, I can monitor weather events from local broadcast TV (or analog cable TV, which often still works during an outage). In Windows 7, power conservation settings kick in when running on battery, so using it for only short periods of time, and putting the computer into sleep mode in between, gives me several hours of sporadic runtime. In sleep mode, that PC uses so little power that it doesn't even hit the 9W resolution of the meter on the UPS, so it reads 0 watts on the front panel.
Server/router/switch/cable modem: I chose each of these devices to be as green as possible, so I can power all of my devices' connections to the internet for a reasonable amount of time (about an hour at full load). But I really like that short outages or brownouts do not interrupt, or at least provide graceful shutdown, for all of my devices, including those in the middle of critical online activities.
Lighting: Two lamps with low wattage CFL bulbs in key spots -- meaning at least one is always on when I'm awake and it is dark -- so I'm not plunged into darkness when the power goes.
Of course, without main power, if the UPS is powered up and the alarm has not been disabled, that alarm is going off, but I treat that as an incentive to do only what must be done and then shut it down to conserve the charge.
There's also a utility that keeps me from crawling under the desk to check UPS/power status. Note that I can run 32 minutes at full power, but much longer when Windows 7 detects I'm on battery.
RE: Nice! I don't plan on
)
Phil, it's easy to size your system. Just look at your total yearly power consumption by either using your utilities online account management application or get out the calculator and add up 12 months of bills. The object is to size your system just for what you use and maybe about 10% more to cover new loads. Even that is questionable since appliances and lighting are getting even more efficient. I knew I was going to add the car to my load so sized accordingly to cover a year's worth of driving and charging along with running two computers. It doesn't pay to oversize your system usually since as you mentioned the utility pays you wholesale rate (in my case $0.04/kWh) and then turns around and sells your power you shove onto the grid at retail, high tier rates. And still, the utilities are fighting back against residential consumer solar because in the end they will be losing paying customers. A lot of states are surcharging for residential solar now. It will be a vicious cycle of people getting fed up with their high power bills and turning to solar, which drops the utilities revenue so they jack their rates, which forces more people off the grid and the cycle continues till the utilities go out of business. I foresee where power generation is local to the demand as the future business model. It will be interesting that's for sure.
@Mark, your reasoning is exactly the same for me running backup units. Takes the care and monitoring time demands out of the equation when it is all automatic. As far as for long term power outages, I have several very large AGM batteries in the garage on trickle charge that I use for my astrophotography hobby and a largish inverter that provides me with many days of radio, TV and lighting to cover long term utility outages due to pole equipment or substation failure. I missed out by one product year on getting the SunnyBoy inverters for my solar array that have standby power available when the grid goes down. That would be handy indeed with my excess production during the day. But the times I have lost power during long-time outages in the last ten years I can count on one hand so not too upset. When the replacement cycle for the inverters comes in 10 years I'm sure they will have even more efficient and capable models. My $0.02.
Cheers, Keith
RE: Note that I can run 32
)
I have three computers running on two different CyberPower UPSes, and whenever I install the PowerPanel software, it seems that the built-in Windows power management features are disabled. I can use PowerPanel to have the computers automatically shut down, but battery status is not passed to BOINC. Since I've only had one or two major power outages lasting longer than a few minutes, it would be nice to have BOINC paused while the computers are running on battery for maximum battery life and minimum downtime when power is restored. How do you have yours set up?
Click Here to see My Detailed BOINC Stats
I've ordered from Amazon the
)
I've ordered from Amazon the current $19.95 version of the Ensupra "electricity usage monitor", which clearly differs from the one I own. I should caution that multiple user reviews (including favorable ones) consistently rate the instructions for this model as atrocious, and at least imply that the behavior is not so intuitive as one would wish to just get it to do what one wants by button-pushing. Most agree that it works and seems accurate.
I'll give it a try and post my impressions by late next week--pending that please don't think I'm a strong advocate on this one yet.
Regarding the thread drift to customer-owned solar power: the question of power company payment varies greatly by jurisdiction, and even by month of installation. Here in New Mexico the regulatory regime imposes "green" power targets on the power company, which in part sets the rates they pay home solar generation installers for back-pumped power to meet the targets. This gave the anomalous situation that prosperous homeowners in my neighborhood who got on the bandwagon early enough have locked in agreements requiring them to be paid for power they pump back into the grid far above what the power is worth for many years to come--and, the reality of the economics is that that excess payment comes from the pockets of their fellow customers of the utility, who in this state are on average far less prosperous than are the people installing home solar generation systems.
RE: it would be nice to
)
I don't think most UPS management software has that fine granularity. Most just bring down the whole server safely after power is lost. I can't remember correctly if it could kill individual programs but I seem to remember APCUPSD could script events. This is an open source-forge project software. I used to run it when I was running OS/2 in the servers. I would think that business class software, particularly in the Linux languages could accomplish the task also. I know that you can kill individual power outlets of the UPS in a sequenced manner but don't have any direct experience in trying to sequence a shutdown and killing processes individually. I can see the utility in wanting to bring down BOINC separately first since that process uses the most power. That way you could use the computer for a short period of time and get the benefits of power reduction through sleeping or "green" power configurations and have the extended power for a lot longer than when BOINC is running. If you find an answer let the thread know.
Cheers, Keith
RE: I don't think most UPS
)
The wish here is not for any more granularity from the management software than to set the operating system status to "system is running on batteries" just as laptops do.
If they did, then the existing granularity provided by the BOINC computing Preferences item "Suspend work while computer is on battery power?" would actually work on PCs using UPS with that management software. Pity it does not.
I am also a Cyberpower user. I've been pretty happy with their units--but think their provided consumer software is really pretty bad.
I have my two full time
)
I have my two full time crunching systems hooked up to a Kill-A-Watt meter. This way I can check power draw and kWh at any time.
Jeroen
RE: RE: Note that I can
)
On the PC from which I took that screenshot, I have the PowerPanel software installed, so I did misspeak about Windows 7 detecting the change. On the others, I use the features in Windows 7's Power Options for "On battery." This works for me, because, in the event of a power failure, I am most likely to take control of that PowerPanel-equipped machine, since, when I built it, I carefully chose the components to draw the least power of any of my desktops (including the lowest power-draw 23" LCD-LED display panel I could find). PowerPanel helps on that machine, because the UPS is positioned where it is the most difficult to reach. I force the others to sleep until really needed or main power returns.
Yes, PowerPanel takes over the battery settings; the "On battery" options don't even appear in Win7's Power Options dialog on that one PC. I tested Windows 7 + BOINC on my one remaining notebook on which I crunch -- as soon as I pull the power cable, Windows 7 responds by dropping the processor speed and dimming the display panel, and BOINC suspends all running units. If I don't interact with it, the standard sleep settings on the notebook take over.
I realized early on that BOINC activity, when running on AC power, looks to Windows as activity that should prevent sleep. I learned that when a project I was running had server problems and I didn't notice at first. When all of the work was completed, the notebook promptly went to sleep. When I finally noticed the notebook had gone to sleep, I woke it up to find the work unit cache empty except for the completed work.
Under PowerPanel, my choices are:
Keep Computer Running -- shutdown the computer when remaining battery is 5 to 8 minutes; I chose 5, so I am in control until the last minute, but this is not my default setting. I manually change to this if I want the machine to keep running.
OR
Preserve Battery Power -- shutdown after battery backup runs for 1 to 5 minutes; I chose 5; this is my default setting. This gives me five minutes to get to the machine and manually control how it is using power (e.g. first thing to suspend is BOINC). If I don't respond in 5 minutes, it shuts down to save power.
On my other desktop machines, I have a custom power plan with the following settings for "On battery":
Hard disk: Turn off after 3 minutes
Desktop background settings: Slide show Paused
Sleep after 5 minutes
Allow hybrid sleep
Hibernate Never (depends on hybrid sleep instead)
PCI Express Link State Power Management: Maximum power savings
Processor power management System cooling policy: Passive
Display off after 3 minutes
Critical battery action Sleep (leveraging hybrid sleep)
Low battery level: 30%
Critical battery level: 20%
Low battery notification: On
Low battery action: Do nothing
Reserve battery level: 7%
RE: RE: I don't think
)
You are correct, BOINC should work on desktops with battery backup just as it does on laptops and cellphones. Why hasn't anyone not reported this to the developers? Or have they? Windows laptops communicate to BOINC when they are on battery power and BOINC suspends itself, why don't desktops? Does anyone have BOINC suspending when on battery power for desktops? Is the failure in the UPS management software not communicating to the Windows power management API? Or in BOINC not picking up the messaging?
Keith
RE: You are correct, BOINC
)
The Win7 PC on which I write this is plugged into one of my CyberPower UPS units, which is also connected to a USB port on the PC. This PC is not running their PowerPanel software. I see a battery icon identical to the one that displays on a Win7 notebook.
I just pulled the UPS plug from the wall socket. Since the monitor is also connected to the UPS, I was able to watch Windows and BOINC respond. BOINC properly responded and suspended computation, writing the following into the log:
04/03/2015 18:40:18 | | Suspending computation - on batteries