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Mac Pro and the electric bill

M

Mr Ski 73

macrumors regular
Original poster
Dec 11, 2007
237
0
Hi

Just wondered what everyone is doing regarding switching on/off or using the energy saving function. I must admit I leave mine on 24-7 and am starting to think that is excessive. My experience is that energy saving function in OS X creates problems but I am happy to be told otherwise
 
Mr Ski 73 said:
Hi

Just wondered what everyone is doing regarding switching on/off or using the energy saving function. I must admit I leave mine on 24-7 and am starting to think that is excessive. My experience is that energy saving function in OS X creates problems but I am happy to be told otherwise
Click to expand...
I put an 8.5 Kwatt solar array on my roof, so I don't worry about the electric bill. The last time that I paid for electricity was in late fall 2010.

Some of my home systems run 24x7, others sleep when not in use.
 
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AidenShaw said:
I put an 8.5 Kwatt solar array on my roof, so I don't worry about the electric bill. The last time that I paid for electricity was in late fall 2010.

Some of my home systems run 24x7, others sleep when not in use.
Click to expand...

When they run, they run and make $. If not running, they go in stand by but wake on LAN.
 
AidenShaw said:
I put an 8.5 Kwatt solar array on my roof, so I don't worry about the electric bill. The last time that I paid for electricity was in late fall 2010.

Some of my home systems run 24x7, others sleep when not in use.
Click to expand...
Has the hardware paid for itself yet?
 
H2SO4 said:
Very nice. They’re so expensive to buy it’s ludicrous.
Click to expand...

Not to steer the thread, but I agree. I see them popping up all over the neighborhood, but I can't see spending $30,000+ now to have no electric bill for 10 years. By then, my "new" solar system will be old and outdated. Did I gain anything?

I see the systems getting cheaper and more efficient so it's only a matter of time when the total cost would be 1/2 and the longevity of the system is longer.
 
dmylrea said:
Not to steer the thread, but I agree. I see them popping up all over the neighborhood, but I can't see spending $30,000+ now to have no electric bill for 10 years. By then, my "new" solar system will be old and outdated. Did I gain anything?

I see the systems getting cheaper and more efficient so it's only a matter of time when the total cost would be 1/2 and the longevity of the system is longer.
Click to expand...
Yep. I get the impression you guys are in the states, (land where everything is cheap to buy?), so I wasn’t sure of the initial outlay. I’m in the UK.
I rememebr going into a DIY store a good few years ago and a chap stopped me on the way out of the store, I paraphrase for brevity but it went like this;
  • Are you interested in solar panels sir?
  • How much are they?.
  • I can’t say as I’d need to measure up.
  • Well surely you can give me a ball park?
  • No not really, there is a lot of variation. Why don't I take your details?
  • What’s the payback?
  • It depends on the size of your house and your energy consumption.
  • Ok, I can see that but you must have some Idea?
  • Sorry no, I don’t want to give you the wrong information.
  • Ok, tell you what, I’ll give you £500 for the lot and let’s say it’s for a 3 bed semi so that I know it’ll be more?
  • I’m not sure that’ll be enough sir.
  • What about £1000?
  • There are a lot of different costs involved in a full installation sir.
  • £10,000?
  • It might be a little more than that sir.
  • So you could have said how much in the first place?

Crickets………….
 
H2SO4 said:
That would make my ROI even worse.
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I've had 4Kw of grid-tied panels on my roof since 2012. Payback is rapid because retail electricity on this island runs about $0.47 / KwH. Yes, that's right. With net metering, my bill went from a typical $300, sometimes $400, to $10-$20 per month. And I have solar hot water, too. Power is killer expensive here.

As for the actual question, all our Macs are set to sleep, but are not usually powered down at the end of the day. My old Mac Pro was sometimes unhappy to be awakened, but all the others (MBP, iMac) wake OK. For reasons having nothing to do with my iMac itself, I went through a period of about 6 weeks when I would end the day by shutting down. The retina iMac (SSD) boots so quickly that each morning I found myself wondering why I bothered with sleep at all. Even so, when I didn't have to do it anymore, I did go back to sleeping it.
 
H2SO4 said:
Yep. I get the impression you guys are in the states, (land where everything is cheap to buy?), so I wasn’t sure of the initial outlay. I’m in the UK.
I rememebr going into a DIY store a good few years ago and a chap stopped me on the way out of the store, I paraphrase for brevity but it went like this;
  • Are you interested in solar panels sir?
  • How much are they?.
  • I can’t say as I’d need to measure up.
  • Well surely you can give me a ball park?
  • No not really, there is a lot of variation. Why don't I take your details?
  • What’s the payback?
  • It depends on the size of your house and your energy consumption.
  • Ok, I can see that but you must have some Idea?
  • Sorry no, I don’t want to give you the wrong information.
  • Ok, tell you what, I’ll give you £500 for the lot and let’s say it’s for a 3 bed semi so that I know it’ll be more?
  • I’m not sure that’ll be enough sir.
  • What about £1000?
  • There are a lot of different costs involved in a full installation sir.
  • £10,000?
  • It might be a little more than that sir.
  • So you could have said how much in the first place?

Crickets………….
Click to expand...

I believe the saying "About as useful as solar panels in Fort William." may be the advice you are looking for.
 
monokakata said:
I've had 4Kw of grid-tied panels on my roof since 2012. Payback is rapid because retail electricity on this island runs about $0.47 / KwH. Yes, that's right. With net metering, my bill went from a typical $300, sometimes $400, to $10-$20 per month. And I have solar hot water, too. Power is killer expensive here.

As for the actual question, all our Macs are set to sleep, but are not usually powered down at the end of the day. My old Mac Pro was sometimes unhappy to be awakened, but all the others (MBP, iMac) wake OK. For reasons having nothing to do with my iMac itself, I went through a period of about 6 weeks when I would end the day by shutting down. The retina iMac (SSD) boots so quickly that each morning I found myself wondering why I bothered with sleep at all. Even so, when I didn't have to do it anymore, I did go back to sleeping it.
Click to expand...
That's about the price here in So. California also. I keep reading about national averages of 10-14 cents/Kwh, and look at my bill and see 45 cents! We are tiered pricing here, and half of the price is for the electricity itself, then half more for the "transmission" of the electricity, plus fees galore. It's like McDonalds charging 99 cents for a burger but after you pay for their gas to cook it, "transmission" of the burger from the grill to the front counter, and associated fees (cashier, cleaning, lights, etc.), that 99 cent burger is $4.00.

How much was your solar system, installed?
 
dmylrea said:
How much was your solar system, installed?
Click to expand...
I had no idea that SoCal power could be that expensive.

My system came to a bit less than $30K, but this was in 2012. And I did get some tax credits, so the actual out-of-pocket was around $20K. I understand that panels have come down a lot, so an equivalent system now would probably be a lot less. For various reasons I had to have additional electrical work done because I had to relocate the feed from the pole and upgrade it to 200 amps even though the utility obviously knew I was going to use less of their power, not more. My system cost a little more because my roof was laid out such that I had to have 2 arrays at right angles to each other, which meant microinverters (one per panel) rather than a single main inverter.

When I got my system, the local utility was solar-friendly. Florida Power & Light (NextEra) is trying to buy the entire Hawai'i system, and they are very solar-unfriendly, very renewable-unfriendly. There's a small but significant chance that our island (like the island of Kauai) could have its own power co-op. Unlikely but not impossible.
 
Wasn't the OP asking something about Macs or something? ;)

As for me, I put my Pro to sleep when I'm not using it. Never had an issue with sleeping my machines, and I don't forsee having any.
 
Yep. Def not interested in solar just asking if people switch it off or sleep and if they have had any other issues?
 
I find if its on / sleep for more than a week things can go a bit iffy

So once a week I shutdown / restart - guess it needs a nap now and again
 
With the exception of my laptop, I shut down my computers when not using them. SSDs make booting a painless process.

That stated, I put up my own roof mounted 6.6 kW solar system. Contractors wanted $24k. I did it for $12k less a $3,600 tax credit. Payback period approx 4 years based on So Cal rates. Micro Inverters, easy roof access, and plans prepared by an experienced helper made the job quite easy... installation took maybe 20 hours, mostly solo.
 
I leave my nMP on both so I have Plex available (seems not to wake up the Mac as it should) and as I have issues with disks not properly ejecting thereby causing my Time Machine backups to become corrupted. CyberPower's PowerPanel for my PR1500LCD shows me running about .2 kWh during these quiet periods overnight. With an average rate of $.19 per kWh (California) this means about $.04 an hour or $.96 a day.

I turn off my 30" Cinema display. This does include the power needed to run my Pegasus R6 as well.
 
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monokakata said:
I had no idea that SoCal power could be that expensive.

My system came to a bit less than $30K, but this was in 2012. And I did get some tax credits, so the actual out-of-pocket was around $20K. I understand that panels have come down a lot, so an equivalent system now would probably be a lot less. For various reasons I had to have additional electrical work done because I had to relocate the feed from the pole and upgrade it to 200 amps even though the utility obviously knew I was going to use less of their power, not more. My system cost a little more because my roof was laid out such that I had to have 2 arrays at right angles to each other, which meant microinverters (one per panel) rather than a single main inverter.

When I got my system, the local utility was solar-friendly. Florida Power & Light (NextEra) is trying to buy the entire Hawai'i system, and they are very solar-unfriendly, very renewable-unfriendly. There's a small but significant chance that our island (like the island of Kauai) could have its own power co-op. Unlikely but not impossible.
Click to expand...
As a Floridian and former Hawaii resident please do everything you can to prevent that. I'll likely be headed back that way again soon and don't want to deal with Florida Plunder and Loot
 
I leave mine on 24/7 unless I'm going to be away for at least a week. I don't like power cycling it. If it's booted into OSX I'll let it sleep, but not if Linux (only because suspend seems to be broken for the nouveau/GT120 combo).

We also have an iMac of the same vintage (late 2009) and it stays on, but sleeps. This can cause issues with external USB drives and El Cap, but Mountain (appgineers.de) takes care of that well enough for our purposes. I know of no other issues with letting it sleep.

I'm sure we pay a few extra dollars a month in electricity, but that's a lot cheaper than replacing power supplies, drives, or worse.
 
kschendel said:
I leave mine on 24/7 unless I'm going to be away for at least a week. I don't like power cycling it. If it's booted into OSX I'll let it sleep, but not if Linux (only because suspend seems to be broken for the nouveau/GT120 combo).

We also have an iMac of the same vintage (late 2009) and it stays on, but sleeps. This can cause issues with external USB drives and El Cap, but Mountain (appgineers.de) takes care of that well enough for our purposes. I know of no other issues with letting it sleep.

I'm sure we pay a few extra dollars a month in electricity, but that's a lot cheaper than replacing power supplies, drives, or worse.
Click to expand...
Coming out of sleep is virtually the same as power-cycling. Same shock to the power supply.
 
MultiFinder17 said:
Wasn't the OP asking something about Macs or something? ;)

As for me, I put my Pro to sleep when I'm not using it. Never had an issue with sleeping my machines, and I don't forsee having any.
Click to expand...
Sorry, yes. I sleep mine but cold boot it probably once a month.
 
AidenShaw said:
Coming out of sleep is virtually the same as power-cycling. Same shock to the power supply.
Click to expand...

Mmmm, unless your machine removes power from the primary during sleep, that is not the case. Current draw is way down during sleep but voltages remain. True power off removes all voltages, bleeds off caps, etc. I don't think it's the same thing at all.
 
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