Taming your PC’s thirst for power

Re: Taming your PC’s thirst for power

hydrokevin wrote: »

A lot of data centers are going to hydrogen fuel cells for consistent off-grid or backup power. I agree though, that the thirst for energy continues and it will only escalate in the future.

Ahhh they are drinking the hydrogen kool-aid I see.

Re: Taming your PC’s thirst for power

During my career as an electrician I built many data processing centers.

All of them had a diesel generator for back up power. This would get them back on line before the UPS batteries went flat.

I can see value in solar powered fuel cells making hydrogen for kitchen ranges and water heaters. How far away is that?

Re: Taming your PC’s thirst for power

huh, never tried that
hydrogen power was invented to give the government an appearance of being concerned with fuel costs/emissions and our energy future, for the last few yrs. or at least thats a slightly modified version of my beliefs

mike90045 wrote: »

Much easier to reflect sunlight and make Hot Rocks to drop into water to make it boil for your soup.

Re: Taming your PC’s thirst for power

Recharge time is the issue. You can refill a tank of gas in less than 10 minutes, but it takes several hours to recharge a battery pack. To bypass this step we need a way to recharge batteries from dead to full in 10 minutes without blowing them up or setting them on fire. When we can recharge batteries in 10 minutes and have 300 to 500 miles of range from them, battery technology will be where it needs to be, at least for automobiles. Until then hydrogen's a better bet.

We can leave off about hydrogen's ability to seep out of a metal tank due to the size of the atom, because the seepage won't matter a whole lot when the tank is being drained and refilled on a constant basis. The seepage can be equated to gasoline vapors escaping from our cars today. Yes, it's a problem but it's not a dealbreaker.

Re: Taming your PC’s thirst for power

Telco wrote: »

Until then hydrogen's a better bet.

If we can make the hydrogen, (expensive to crack it from water), we can combine it with "carbon" and make whatever hydrocarbon fuel we need. We can utilize existing fuel transport system and stations, and not have to build an entire global infrastructure. (that's got to be factored as part of the cost of switching to hydrogen) (and it's not fossil carbon, just using existing carbon)

Short range EV's [40 mile range] would cover much of the existing transport needs, greatly reducing our need for existing fossil fuel requirements. Getting the 300 mi tankfull capacity can be dealt with later. Currently, we NEED to get off gas as much as possible

Even a coal power plant running at 45% eff, transmission lines, and nighttime charging, is better than an ICE at 12%.

Re: Taming your PC’s thirst for power

Yes, this can be done, that can be done, this is the reason, that is the reason, but none of you are addressing an important part of the equation: the users. Putting up one or two successful cars does not hold a mirror to the general population. The models listed are meeting a niche market, not the common market. And, being as you are hanging out on sites like this one, you may be forgetting that not everybody thinks as the people here do.

90 percent of the people with cars don't care about anything other than being able to get in their car and go. Refuelling, even when fuel was cheap, is seen as a necessary evil that they want to get over with as quickly and cheaply as possible. These are the same people that either skimp on their maintenance until the car breaks down, or take them to the dealer and say "Have at it!" These are NOT people who are going to readily accept having to plug their cars in at night and as they are the majority customers the manufacturers will continue to cater to them.

These people are also not going to accept a 40 mile per day limitation even if their commute is 10 miles round trip. The logic is, you never know when you will have to drop everything and drive across the country. I know because this is why I don't have an EV, and why I won't until I can work out a way to get a 300 mile range with a 10 minute refuel. Nobody wants to have a commuter car for daily driving with a long distance car that they have to pay to maintain and insure but only need a few times a year. Renting is expensive enough that you may as well own a second car unless your long distance trips take place less than about 3 times a year. For myself, I make regular 300 mile round trip runs to visit family and check on out of state property.

Now hydrogen, in addition to the whole tax thing, is also something that can be refueled in a few minutes as opposed to overnight, giving you unlimited range. A hydrogen vehicle will not have the speed or range limitations of an EV. This means you buy one car and it does it all. From the consumer's point of view, hydrogen is the best choice because of this. And, as existing engine designs can be easily converted to burn hydrogen, this works out to the advantage of the automakers as they don't have to retool whole cars, just the intake and fueling system with the added advantage of dropping all the exhaust emissions gear.

When thinking about all this, try thinking of it from the standpoint of the selfish consumer, not one of the minions of Captain Planet. There are about 150 selfish consumers for every private in Captain Planet's army, and the auto makers know this. Hemming and hawing about advantages and costs isn't going to matter either, as long as the majority only care about convenience.

Re: Taming your PC’s thirst for power

Toms Hardware has a new article out about SSD (solid state drives) for computers, and came up with them being a power hog !!
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-hdd-battery,1955.html

I suppose if you test the Fastest SSD's, always access them, you can burn the watts. My experience has been, with my homemade drive, using a CF flash card from a camera (half the speed of the stock IDE drive), that the entire front half of the PC (where the drive lives) went from nearly too hot to use the keyboard, to ambient temp. Had to be saving some power. Battery is dead on the laptop, so I could not compare runtimes.