Ranger Digital
Active Member
My god I thought texas was OUTRAGEOUS on kilowatts at 11.7 cents. YikeS!
Holy Power Costs, batman!
- Thread starter IVB
- Start date
After the manufactured energy crisis we had here in California several years back they implemented a tiered pricing structure for electricity, they set a ridiculously low baseline and then charge ever iincreasingly higher rates on the usage above that.
This was one of the bigest screw jobs to the people I have ever seen. Power plants were shut down on purpose to artificially drive prices up and then all the energy companies jumped on the screw California bandwagon. I expected to see the tiered rates abolished when the truth came out but it never seems to work that way.
IVB
Senior Member
1) I hate all of you non-CA folks. Enron is infamous for a reason. Check out the tiering structure below. Who actually uses only 300Kwh of power? I think the monastery near here is worse than that !
Baseline is ~300Kwh/month
Tier 1 (Baseline) - $0.11556
Tier 2 (101-130% of baseline) - $0.13139
Tier 3 (131-200% of baseline) - $0.22708
Tier 4 (201-300% of baseline) - $0.31555
Tier 5 (Over 300% of baseline)- $0.36190
2) I still don't get the value-add of the zTroller power-wise. Wouldn't you still need a 24x7 PC in your HA/HT setup somewhere? And if you have one, why not use that and not a zTroller? I.E., in the new world order, i'll have a single E6400 C2D running CQC Master Server/SageTV Server/FileServer/SQL*Server Express. The zTroller can't do all that, even if you could re-image the eXP. So if I'm going to have a PC run 24x7, why not just have the 1 PC?
Baseline is ~300Kwh/month
Tier 1 (Baseline) - $0.11556
Tier 2 (101-130% of baseline) - $0.13139
Tier 3 (131-200% of baseline) - $0.22708
Tier 4 (201-300% of baseline) - $0.31555
Tier 5 (Over 300% of baseline)- $0.36190
2) I still don't get the value-add of the zTroller power-wise. Wouldn't you still need a 24x7 PC in your HA/HT setup somewhere? And if you have one, why not use that and not a zTroller? I.E., in the new world order, i'll have a single E6400 C2D running CQC Master Server/SageTV Server/FileServer/SQL*Server Express. The zTroller can't do all that, even if you could re-image the eXP. So if I'm going to have a PC run 24x7, why not just have the 1 PC?
IVB - I'm in the same spot... my Sage server is on 24x7 (and my power bill has gone up with it... 1220kW but only a $90 bill). I've considered having it go to sleep when not recording, but now that it's my PC hub (I still have my HVPro doing the hard automation, but my Sage Server is the touchscreen master, etc), I've resigned myself to fit as much on it as possible.
Thankfully Sage doesn't use much resources... just lots of hard disk space when it's recording. The HD Extender pretty much eliminates CPU need during playback so I can put lots of things on my Sage server without problems. My next project is to move my music library onto it - but I'll probably still use JRiver as the music controller (I can't live without their smartlists).
One of the few times automation is costing me more money than it's saving me :angry:
Thankfully Sage doesn't use much resources... just lots of hard disk space when it's recording. The HD Extender pretty much eliminates CPU need during playback so I can put lots of things on my Sage server without problems. My next project is to move my music library onto it - but I'll probably still use JRiver as the music controller (I can't live without their smartlists).
One of the few times automation is costing me more money than it's saving me :angry:
Rupp
Senior Member
Just so you guys know. I just loaded SageTV on an XPe machine at work and and it works just fine.
damage
Senior Member
wow. looks like tier 4 costs are up a lot from a year ago ( http://www.cocoontech.com/index.php?showto...amp;#entry25676 )
damage
Senior Member
$1000 seems steep for a 1.6 ghz celeron system with 40gb hd & 512mb ram. (yeah i know there's other stuff on it but still...)
IVB
Senior Member
That can't be right, is it? There must be more on there; i was pricing a mini-ITX system last night at LogicSupply, and got wound up cuz I was crossing the $500 mark.
IVB
Senior Member
Well that was a depressing link, damage. Although it does explain why I've been cutting usage but the bill hasn't been affected...
damage
Senior Member
IVB
Senior Member
Ok. I guess that takes the $1095 down to $895. You can get a slightly more powerful PC with XPHome (no eXP) pre-built & tested from LogicSupply for $675 (1.86GHz, 80gb HD, 512MB RAM, 60Watt PS but dunno what it draws). So it seems like you pay a $220 or 35% premium for that box.
I do like the idea of a low-power box though, certainly value-add if you don't have another PC running 24x7. Probably only useful for those folks not running SageTV or a db server as you'd then need a NAS or fileserver box, killing off any power savings.