If your computer is still doing bursty jobs during that period, it will use less power but still as much energy. Sure, you can reduce the power but if you aren't also reducing what you ask it to do, it'll just use that max amount of allowed power for a longer period of time.
Show HN: Terminal dashboard that throttles my PC during peak electricity rates
11–20 of 61 posts
Re: Show HN: Terminal dashboard that throttles my PC during peak electricity rates
#12Nice project, but would it not be more rational to have your system running underclocked/undervolted at the optimal perf/watt at all times, with an optional boost to max performance for a time critical task? Running it away from the optimum might save on instant consumption but increase your aggregate consumption.
It's well established that completing the same task more slowly at a lower clock rate is actually less energy-efficient.
Right, "race to idle"
Re: Show HN: Terminal dashboard that throttles my PC during peak electricity rates
#13If your computer is still doing bursty jobs during that period, it will use less power but still as much energy. Sure, you can reduce the power but if you aren't also reducing what you ask it to do, it'll just use that max amount of allowed power for a longer period of time.
All the modern CPUs will boost into high clockspeeds and voltage to get work done quicker but at considerably higher power draws per operation. On that side of the equation its clear that it uses more energy. The problem is the entire CPU package is on longer if you don't do that and this costs power too and so its a trade off between the two. Generally we consider there isn't much difference between them but I don't know about that having seen the insanity that was the 13th and 14th gen Intel's consuming 250W when 120W gets about 95% the performance I think its very likely moving down to power save and avoiding that level of boosting definitely saves small amounts of power.
Re: Show HN: Terminal dashboard that throttles my PC during peak electricity rates
#14Had a quick look through the code but I can't find where he actually throttles the PC. Anyone can point me to it?
Re: Show HN: Terminal dashboard that throttles my PC during peak electricity rates
#15Nice project, but would it not be more rational to have your system running underclocked/undervolted at the optimal perf/watt at all times, with an optional boost to max performance for a time critical task? Running it away from the optimum might save on instant consumption but increase your aggregate consumption.
Bring back the "turbo" button on the front of the PC.
Re: Show HN: Terminal dashboard that throttles my PC during peak electricity rates
#16Why all this instead of a simple cronjob switching from performance to powersave profiles depeding on current time (=electricity price)?
A cronjob would definitely work in most cases if the goal is just to auto change freq profiles during set ToU periods. I just wanted a more flexible system where the system can auto change the profiles based on actual utilization so demanding tasks aren't slowed down.
Re: Show HN: Terminal dashboard that throttles my PC during peak electricity rates
#17If your computer is still doing bursty jobs during that period, it will use less power but still as much energy. Sure, you can reduce the power but if you aren't also reducing what you ask it to do, it'll just use that max amount of allowed power for a longer period of time.
All the modern CPUs will boost into high clockspeeds and voltage to get work done quicker but at considerably higher power draws per operation. On that side of the equation its clear that it uses more energy. The problem is the entire CPU package is on longer if you don't do that and this costs power too and so its a trade off between the two. Generally we consider there isn't much difference between them but I don't…
This is some pretty old analysis, but I remember when smartphones came out and people were thinking about throttling their applications to lower power consumption the general advice was to just "race to idle".
The consensus thus was that spending more time in lower power states (where you use ~0W) was much more efficient than spending a longer amount of time in the CPU sweetspot, but with all sort of peripherals online that you didn't need anyway.
I remember when Google made a big deal out of "bundling" idle CPU and network requests, since bursting them out was more efficient than having the radio and CPU trotting along at low bandwidth.
Re: Show HN: Terminal dashboard that throttles my PC during peak electricity rates
#18Wonder if a big UPS/power bank would be better? Charge it during periods where power is cheaper, and utilize it when power is more expensive. Then again if you do not need full performance all the time - this is a cool solution.
Definitely, I've been contemplating getting a 5-10kWh LFP battery backup with <10ms UPS switchover to run the workstation and home backup. This is an intermediate solution until then.
Re: Show HN: Terminal dashboard that throttles my PC during peak electricity rates
#19Could you share how much you have saved in $?
The power optimizer daemon has only been running for a few days, so it's hard to measure in $ value but based on my peak pricing I would estimate the savings to be around a few dollars since then.
Re: Show HN: Terminal dashboard that throttles my PC during peak electricity rates
#20Had a quick look through the code but I can't find where he actually throttles the PC. Anyone can point me to it? https://github.com/naveenkul/WattWise
Yeah I don’t see anything that even suggests it throttles the PC.
Looks like it’s just a display.