Solar Powered PCs & Servers

[Garacesh]

Regardless of any possible savings and how long it would take (or whether this kind of device would be useful/acceptable in a school environment) I do have to say.. Photovoltaic POE is certainly an interesting concept.

[PotNoodleTech]

So you would need nearly 7 rooms or 210 PC's to save £5K per year.

 

But you'd have to spend £210,000 up front in order to save that £5k a year.

[nikaso]

I've emailed the chap who demo'd it for me asking for some breakdown of the costings etc. Will post them up here if I get them.

[pcstru]

But you'd have to spend £210,000 up front in order to save that £5k a year.

A mere 42 years to wait before you are raking it in! Save the planet AND be praised for really thinking far ahead!

Edited November 28, 2013 by pcstru

[nikaso]

A mere 42 to wait before you are raking it in! Save the planet AND be praised for really thinking far ahead!

 

 

Unless the energy companies keep ramping up the prices of course! Might be profitable in a couple of years!

[VeryPC_Colin_M]

I've lost good sized orders to several schools in Wales who went with this Solar Ready + Windows MPS 2012 shared computing solution. Perhaps I should give them a ring and see how they've been getting on with it?

[nikaso]

Well I got a reply, they aren't launching properly until BETT so have limited literature but here is a shot of their overview

 

The chap said:

 

"Ultimately our solutions will reduce your electricity bills for everything that is plugged into our system, from 50%-80% depending on technology. If you then go one step further and introduce Solar Energy to charge the system, your savings could be between 80%-100%."

[nikaso]

I've lost good sized orders to several schools in Wales who went with this Solar Ready + Windows MPS 2012 shared computing solution. Perhaps I should give them a ring and see how they've been getting on with it?

 

Might be worth doing, I remember them mentioning a school in Wales, If it can work there it might be credible!

[SYNACK]

So they read about datacentres and their use of dc power supplies so it cuts out the inefficiencies of stepping voltage in each and every psu . The solar thing is a nice extra tack on. Like the others I'd be interested in the actual internal spec, what cpu, ram etc it fits in the power envelope.

[pcstru]

The chap said:

"Ultimately our solutions will reduce your electricity bills for everything that is plugged into our system, from 50%-80% depending on technology. If you then go one step further and introduce Solar Energy to charge the system, your savings could be between 80%-100%."

 

Their basic claim seems to be that inverter efficiency is poor (60% - i.e. 40% loss is what they state). Inverter efficiency varies from 0 on a trickle to 90% or when operating around the maximum output. Going the other way, switched mode power supplies are generally pretty good, the best ones can achieve 95% efficiency. They will still have switched mode supplies for PC's since most boards need a variety of voltages, not the 12 volts they are likely to be dealing with in the solar/battery setup.

 

They are a bit cheeky in claiming they have found a way to run things from DC directly (or at least that this is anything new). DC/DC power supplies have been around for years and used by folks to put small PC's in cars (or in my case I ran a Pico ITX a few hours a day from a 15W solar installation in my old shed).

 

Sounds like a whole bunch of dubious over-inflated claims. So some fun to look forward to at BETT!

[Greenbeast]

 

Imagine not having to worry about power cuts!!

 

Unless it's Grid Tied with no automated changeover, then the power goes out anyway.

[Greenbeast]

DC/DC power supplies have been around for years and used by folks to put small PC's in cars

 

indeed, I did this! /geek/

[chazzy2501]

I remember looking into carputers a long time ago. a DC/AC/DC conversion was surprisingly efficient so much so that it wasn't worth the cost of going direct DC/DC. I think I saw it in and old systm episode.