parenTessaLation<p>Major update to the layout & arrangement of our prototyping lab.</p><p>Been about a month and a half in progress.</p><p>As of today's grid measurements, when the printer kicks on and all the monitors power up, the workstation comes on and the laptop boots, power level usage will peak below a kilowatt.</p><p>We've got about 7-20 watts of solar that keep small pieces of it going without routine intervention. About half of it is just sticking the panel out the window until the light fades, every day. A manually switched network of solar power, less a grid than a series of buckets and several fountains.</p><p>It's not <a href="https://hackers.town/tags/permaComputing" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>permaComputing</span></a> or even really sharable..and...we'll get there eventually. <a href="https://hackers.town/tags/slOwpenSource" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>slOwpenSource</span></a> maybe?</p><p>This sub-kilowatt energy usage peak means a 2/3 reduction in overall lab computing energy usage over the last 5 years, and once the network stack is...appropriately hardened for today's network environment...we'll see how remote services compare to before the jump. I expect to break the 1kw boundary again slightly when things like the game world backend are at full load, and, managing that will be the point of the next iteration of optimizations.</p><p>This also means that my entire professional computing stack runs off less than two hundred watts under moderate load, and when the workstation isn't necessary, that number drops into the double digits. This iteration of the lab is capabilities-driven, so when idle systems shut down we drop from 75ish watts to like 13-17 watts, total computing stack draw. And I'll often just pull the mains breaker on my way out for the night, so it's like 2/3 duty cycle if that.</p><p>We're aiming for total wattage in the single digits or below (what can you do for a <a href="https://hackers.town/tags/watt" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>watt</span></a> is <a href="https://hackers.town/tags/actuallyAlot" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>actuallyAlot</span></a> XD) and <u>also</u> ...</p><p>...this is us celebrating, as the old lab (circa 2015) was over 1kw idle and 2kw average.</p>