A Marketing Study on RE

[BT Humble]

I've learned that some people consider it rude to have and state an opposing viewpoint.  I can't quite fathom how anyone could take anything in my original post as "rude", but some have stated as much and others merely suggested it with their tone.  I don't think I need any proof beyond that that this is indeed an insane planet.



Many people don't get the concept of "civilised debate", but instead see ANY opposing viewpoint as a threat to be crushed.  I believe you have a few extreme-right-wing TV personalities over there who fit into that category?

I seem to come off as a troll when I'm trying to incite some reasoned debate.  I seem to be much better at bringing out people's guns and ammunition than their reasoned responses.  I'm going to go back to technical issues and leave the RE evangelism to others who may enjoy it more than me.



I'm personally too lazy to try to adopt a Missionary Position with respect to RE here in Australia.  The people whom I work with in Fiji still use kerosene lanterns for home lighting, and when you earn $6 per day $2 per litre kerosene is pretty expensive.  The idea of having a 2-foot fluoro light that needs no fuel is pretty good to them, whereas most Australians (and presumably most Americans too) would be far more "So what?"

I've learned that some people will go on and on arguing with something they think you said rather than take the time to read what  you wrote and argue with that.

I noticed that nobody took the time to comment on the cost of expensive low energy appliances vs. an additional windmill added to an existing RE setup.



Rules of thumb that I use are:

• If your appliance is worn out and in need of replacement, pay the extra for an energy-efficient one;
  
• If your appliance is oversized for your needs and/or outrageously inefficient, replace it with a second-hand one that is more efficient;
  
• A cheap/free appliance isn't such a bargain if you can't afford to run it.
  
  

Some of you guys are alright.  I'd like to buy you a beer sometime.  Even some of you who disagree with me.



Just like any random sampling from any population in the world, eh? ;-)

My ultimate hobby project is to build a ten foot tall robot.



Realistically, I think you need at least a 100-foot-tall robot to stand any chance of taking over the world. ;-)

BTH

[richhagen]

To keep the lights on in my laundry room I need the following items:

Several 50 Watt solar panels  $200.00 US

Steel box with a homade combiner circuit board and fuses:  $50.00 US

10 guage wiring from the box to my laundry room:  $20.00 US

Trace C-12 charge controller:  $80:00

Deep Cycle Battery:  $50.00

Wiring to the lights:  $5.00

A few or more hours labor to run the cables and hook it all up.  

If this is proportional for every couple of lights I add, it is much cheaper and easier for me to conserve a few watts here and there.  Conservation is the path of least resistance when you make your own power.  Sure you could add enough RE sources, cables, Batteries, Inverters, ect. to power a typical city or suburban home, but it would be both MUCH CHEAPER and MUCH EASIER to cut the power usage as much as conveniently possible first.  (well the cheapest would be to put in the most efficient lighting, like some t-8 flourescents and leave it connected to the grid, but that doesn't make as good of a conversation piece)

Perhaps instead of calling it conservation some lipstick could be put on that pig and call it 'Work and Waste Reduction', but it means the same thing.

Rich

[Bruce S]

That would be "Bruce Down Under" I think, there a third Bruce as well I think he's outside Aledaide<-sp forgive the spelling.

You are correct I live in the city, not from the city mind you, but the job pays the mortgage, and our hobbies.

I'm the one making the Alky and trying to get enough coffee can together to make a VAWT.

Cheers;

Bruce S

[dinges]

Oh no!

Not the Monty Python sketch again!

:-)

Peter,

The Netherlands.

[Gagster]

As long as we're on the topic of efficiency and conservation, a good heating system doesn't send waste heat up the flue.  





That's why my 98% (advertised) efficiency furnace and water heater have blowers on them to draft the exhaust out PVC pipe through the side of the house.  The exhaust isn't hot enough to draft up a chimney on its own because all the heat is actually being used for its intended purpose.

[Gagster]

Try to explain why a desktop computer like an Intel Celeron/Pentium 4 can consume about 3 to 4 times the power of an "Intel M processor (laptop chip)" for the exact same performance.  Likely, because the Pentium 4 needs some more engineering!  Now, the Pentium M is sold with a hefty premium compare to the regular Pentium 4... The only reason is marketing since the Pentium M cost actually less to produce (smaller chip).





You had me up until this bit.  Try to explain?  Ok.  No problemo.  The laptop is inherently less power hungry due to design limitations.  The memory, while often comparable in capacity, is physically smaller, the motherboard is smaller, the components are all integrated.  This makes them smaller and closer together.  The hard drives spin slower than their desktop counterparts and have smaller armeratures to move.  A lot of laptops  don't have dedicated RAM for the video controller.  They also can't have the monster video processors that come in the desktops.  If it takes 3 heatsinks and 2 cooling fans to push all those frames, you just can't have it in a laptop form factor.





As for the CPU, there are 3 chips to talk about.  Pentium 4, Pentium 4-M, and Pentium M.  The P4 and P4M are basically the same chip but one has power saving features enabled.  This is probably actually a firmware option.  It wouldn't be unlike intel to release the exact same chip with two sets of features enabled.  If they only have to design, tape, fab, and test one chip, that's worth a lot of money to them.  The P4 and the P4M are roughly comparable in both performance and power consumption.





The PM, also known as Centrino, is an whole different monster.  The PM chip is the one you're talking about in your post.  The PM chip is basically a highly reworked P III core with lots of power saving features included.  The PM is highly optimized for the workload typical of laptops.  Laptop CPUs spend a lot of their time idle.  As with all CPUs, most of the time they spend on a task is waiting for data from RAM.  A fair bit more is spent waiting for disk (or other) I/O.  All RAM is slow, laptop RAM moreso than most.  Laptops also have horribly slow hard drives (See above Re: RPM).  This translates into a lot of time spent idling waiting for data.  The Centrino gets around this by having massive ammouts of cache on the chip.  How much more?  2x more than the P4.  That's a freaking lot!  32K L1 and 1MB L2 all on-chip?  That's insane!  That's heavy duty Unix server types of numbers.  You just don't see that kind of cache on a desktop let alone a laptop.  They add all that cache so that the CPU can get its data faster and go back into power saving mode for longer stretches at a time.  In order to get that kind of cache, they've massively bumped up the numbers of transistors per chip.  The P4 (Northwood) has 55 million transistors.  The PM (Centrino) chips have 77 million transistors.





All in all this chip was a massive engineering design effort that required a whole new tape-out, new fab setup, new wafers, all new debugging.  The idea that it was cheaper for Intel to produce this chip than just push the P4m or P4 is just not correct.  It cost them millions to get this chip to market and there's a very good reason why it's so expensive.





As for the P4, it is a generalized chip for any 1 CPU system.  That means it has to perform equally well browsing the web and typing email (your computer) in which it is mostly idle as it does crunching numbers for an architect running AutoCad, running stress simulations, and rendering walk-throughs.  Now, you can claim it is poorly engineered by comparing it to the AMD chips, which are an whole other beast, but not by comparing it to the PM.  The P4 is actually very good at what it does.  Intel is running into a scalability problem and they're having a hard time accepting that to fix it they're going to have to follow Sun and AMD's lead into the multicore world.  Other than that, the P4 is a fairly well designed chip especially considering the wide variety of tasks it has to perform (and perform well).

[JYL]

Thanks Gagster,

It was probably too late when I wrote this post. (and likely this time also)

First: My real consideration is not with any particular system (or electronic device per say) but with the law of BIG NUMBER.  Saving 50 Watts per computers might not seem a lot.  However, many millions of them are delivered every quarter.  Saving 50 Watts a million time's means 50 MWe or the equivalent of 250 Windmill rated at 1MWe.  Even the alarm clock example where the saving is a mere 1W per units is likely to save 150 MWe (base load) or 1,314 GW/h per year in the Unite State alone.  This is 750 Windmill rated 1MWe for the US alone (or many train of Coal).

Here MontainMan wanted to have a reason to invest in conservation:  Easy, 150,000,000 Alarm Clock costing 1$ more because of efficient part = 150M$.  750 Windmill rated 1MWe costing 1M$ each to build:  750M$ + maintenance +rent of the land+insurance+Grid wheeling fee + lost in transformer+++.

Now back to computer. What I really meant to say is "why a regular Pentium 4 (usually use in desktop) consume 4 time more energy than a Pentium M (usually use in Laptop)." Now, the Pentium M is also use in "Blade Server" and some "Near Silent Desktop", and yes, evens some credible and usable gaming machine.  (And you know that some laptop use regular P4 - But this is rare now)

I don't think that comparing AMD and Intel is appropriate for my line of thoughts.   I wanted to indicate that if an "Electronic Manufacturer" did invest the needed money, they can easily reduce the "power consumption" of the electronic.  P4 and PM are the result of two major (almost independent) investments from Intel.  The PM needs to be energy efficient when the P4 does not.  This is a "design" criteria that the engineering department has to fulfill or not.  

Not every body purchase the "top of the line" Pentium 4.  Many people purchase Celeron-D 34x or 35x that consume up to 73 Watts (Only for the processor).  Furthermore, great many companies does purchase Pentium 4 3.0 GHz or less since most business application are perfectly happy with them.  Saving 50 Watts of energy on the processor alone is not unrealistic in many scenarios.

I invite you to check this link: http://www.pugetsystems.com/max_pc.php, including the page #3 on power consumption of a credible "desktop" running on Pentium M.  Take also note that the PSU of 600 Watts used in this benchmark is "ridiculously" big for a Pentium M that is unlikely to exceed 200 Watts under the most severs condition.  When I don't have any benchmark data, the Enermax PSU 600 is unlikely to be particularly efficient with less than 1/3 of it rated capacity.  If you want more information, google a bit and you should see more of that.

My own experience is with Blade Server, Gigabit Ethernet and Fiber Connect disk (not really Laptop, I know).  Under these conditions, those Pentium M are incredibly effective on a "per watts" basis and we can stack many in a single cabinet (many more than any Xeon technology for sure)

Now that every one is gone because of the boring post, I will give you a scenario and a little bit more information about the Intel Processor.  We can make comparisons using current processor technology, available in store and using the same 90 nm process.  Consequently, comparing the Pentium M 780 where Intel has put the emphasis on "reducing electric consumption" and the Pentium 4 540, where the emphasis is clearly on "the highest performance possible" (well sort of).

 Now, according to many benchmarks I have seen and some that I have performed myself, the performance difference between those 2 chips is usually minuscule, even in gaming situation.  There are cases where the Pentium M 780 is clearly faster then the Pentium 4-540.  But you may also disprove it.  For example, the Pentium 4 is faster to handle MP3 and editing video content (where HT shine).

You were right that the Pentium 4 has fever transistor.  Here is the data I gather: Willamette 42 M Trans., Northwood 55 M Trans. , Pentium 4 540 is 125 M Transistors and sized at 81 mm2.  Finally, the Pentium 4 640 (the current Prescott 3.2 GHz  2M Cache) has some 169 M Transistor and 135 mm2 area.

Consequently, you are right when you indicate that a regular Pentium 4 have slightly less transistor.  About 15 Million less so I make a mistake there.  The Pentium M Dothan, is sized 84 mm2 - ~140 million transistors.    Consequently, the PM is slightly larger than a Celeron-D 346 or the Pentium 4 540 but smaller than the Pentium 4 640.

Power consumption max:

Pentium M 780    : 10.8 Idle to 27 W max

Pentium 4 540    : 84 Watts

Pentium 4 640    : 84 Watts

Celeron-D 346    : 73 Watts

The same reasoning can be done with the Graphic Accelerator.  For example, I own an Nvidia 6600GT and I am perfectly happy. So far, all the games I play do play good enough for me.  May be, I should have purchase the Nvidia 6800??, I don't know.  Nevertheless, I am convince that NVIDIA, if it invest it money for the goal of saving energy, can reduce the power consumption of the 6600GT, may be by half, and still provide the same gaming performance.  I don't know.  Furthermore, great many systems don't have a 3D accelerated card anyways.

In most house connected to the grid, there is several tens of devices that can save 1 Watts or more without modifying any of their function.  Many houses have several TV, VCR and DVD Players.  A sound system, a microwave, a door bell, one or many alarm clock, a computer or more, an ADSL or Cable modem, a printers, a few cordless phone, etc...

regard

[Gagster]

Believe me, I'm not arguing against conservation or selecting products that are made to operate more efficiently than the competition.  I'm not even arguing a case for the P4.  I just thought your original comment that the P4 was poorly engineered and that the PM was cheaper to make needed to be addressed.

I think you're going to see a lot more of the PM chips getting adopted in big business.  Blades are the perfect example.  IBM claims that you can fit 4 chassis each with 14 blades in a single rack in a data center.  Unfortunately, in the real world you can only fit 1 because of the amount of power and cooling required by the P4 blades.  If IBM releases a PM blade for the Blade Center chassis they'll make a killing because rack density can go up while environmental overhead goes down.  This isn't just conservation, it's also good business sense from both the manufacturer and the consumer (businesses like mine).

We have data centers all over the world and every one of them has the same problem.  They're at capacity.  Not physical space, mind you, but environmentals.  The power and cooling requirements for a data center full of UltraSparcs and P4s are HUGE.  This isn't just our problem either.  It's the entire industry.  Everyone is facing this. Seriously.  The amount of power consumed (and to a large extent wasted) by a single small datacenter full of P4 servers would make some of the devout RE'ers cry.  It's an amazing clear illustration of the point that it's better to reduce power use than build more energy producing devices.

Luckily, every chip and system manufacturer has been moving for the last few years to address this problem.  Now if only other industries would follow suit.  (Like the ones you mentioned: TV manufacturers, cordless phone manufacturers, etc...)

[Don Cackleberrycreations]

I fully understand the confussion.

your confusing conservation with current spend more pay less "conservative politicians"

which is a definate oxymoron.

but theres not a poltics topic so this should be avoided.

[MountainMan]

For what it's worth, I only have one alarm clock.  But once I am generating my own power for "free", I will probably throw it away.  Not because it uses up a watt of energy, but just because once I re-retire I won't need an alarm clock anymore.

jp

[valterra]

I agree with Mountain Man on much of his original post.  Here in the US, especially in the metro areas, people don't care about the big picture.  Sad to say, cuz I'm not one of those America-bashers.  I love my country and would never want to live anywhere else, but c'mon...

Watch the car commercials on TV.  They don't even tell you how much the thing costs - just what the monthly payments are!  Most of use are just one missed paycheck away from the poorhouse and not because we're poor!  Its because we're literally throwing our money away on impulses, never looking at the big picture.

Here in Nebraska we just had some really bad storms.  Thousands of people without power and the linemen can't fix the grid because the wind keeps blowing.  Think about it... No power and the wind won't stop blowing.  Oh, the irony!

His point about appealing to people with the solar powered SUV is right on.  Most people couldn't be bothered to invest in RE for thousands of dollars when electricity is "only" about 8 cents / kWH.

But MountainMan, your point of overproducing RE power is really just getting reeled into the "something for nothing" hype of some RE fanatics.  Don't misunerstand: I LOVE the idea of making my own electricity:

  I took apart a CD-ROM drive and put a little crank on the plastic gear attached  to the motor that opens the tray.  Using my own hands, I could produce enough electricity to run a 12V radio.  I got the hugest sh!t-eating grin on my face.  Why?  Cuz it felt like I was getting something for nothing.  That really gave me the bug for Wind Power.

Now, that zeal has to be qualified.  My house, according to Omaha Public Power District, uses about 1600 kW / month.  I've priced solar and wind at that rate.  It'd take 30 years to (maybe) pay me back.  After all, electricity IS only 8 cents per kW at the most!   AND, that's not including the thousands of dollars I'd spend on batteries in that amount of time!

So, I would never say RE is actually worth it (at today's prices) for someone like me.  Yet, I continue to persue it.  Why?  Beacause I really hate the idea of paying someone for something that I can "make" myself for "free."  And most of all, because I feel like a real CHUMP when the electricity goes out.  I HATE the fact that I depend on someone else for my "survival."  But RE is STILL too expensive for me to go off grid...

That brings us back to the main point.

Like money, electricity is about generation and consumption.  Sure, it'd be great to be so wealthy that money didn't matter.  

But most Americans, as I said, are one missed paycheck away from the poorhouse.  But they're NOT poor!  The average person could become wealthy if, intead of blowing money, they saved it.  Eventually, a person with good spending habits, a decent income, and no debt could amass large amounts of money.  It's true.  

But to get out of that dependency on that paycheck, you need to do one of two things:  Earn more, or Spend less.  I think we would all agree that not spending a dollar is easier than earning an extra one.

I bought a Kill-a-Watt meter to learn how much electricity things use.  My big computer has 7 hard drives and consumes over 280 watts.  It runs 24/7 and I use it about an hour a week.  (I tend to use my new laptop more now.)  I figured out that running that thing costs me $16 per month.  WHY?  Shut the darned thing off!  I'm not going to build a 300 watt windmill to run my ONE computer!

I don't know if I will ever go completely off-grid.  But with my wind turbines I'm going to build, i'll charge a battery that runs many LED nightlights around the house.  If I generate more power, i'll run some other appliances.  Meanwhile, I am trying to cut my consumption.  If you keep chipping away at it from BOTH ends (less consumption AND more generation) then one day when the neighborhood goes dark from an outage, YOU can be the a-hole whose lights are still on.

Bottom line:  As long as you are wasting it (money or electricity) no amount is EVER enough.  

God I bettter stop rambling!