Summer is approaching in the No. Hemisphere. In California, as in other places, Smart electric meters are being installed, which make possible time-of-day electric pricing. e.g., electric consumption in afternoons when business and residential A/C loads are highest will be charged the highest per-KWH rates. My house in California is serviced by the utility Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E). I have one of the Smart Meters, and the pricing is by time.
Have any of the smart undergrads or grad students thought of coming up with an optimization of points-per-electricity dollar? If the cron-based FAH control could be coupled with that, then we might scale back FAH production (for instance, my relatively power-hungry GPU folding) during the times when the electric pricing is highest, and more intense production during the times when electric pricing is lowest. Of course, the pricing is intended to motivate lowering the peak demands, helping to cut back demand for ever more power generation capability.
Just think - making FAH not only support biomed research, but do it in a GREEN way.
Hardware configuration: Intel i7-4770K @ 4.5 GHz, 16 GB DDR3-2133 Corsair Vengence (black/red), EVGA GTX 760 @ 1200 MHz, on an Asus Maximus VI Hero MB (black/red), in a blacked out Antec P280 Tower, with a Xigmatek Night Hawk (black) HSF, Seasonic 760w Platinum (black case, sleeves, wires), 4 SilenX 120mm Case fans with silicon fan gaskets and silicon mounts (all black), a 512GB Samsung SSD (black), and a 2TB Black Western Digital HD (silver/black).
Already been there. Forum search for "environment"
Run v6 command line client as a scheduled task, and stop the client during peak hours in the afternoon.
There's also a LONG thread somewhere about making fah more green by doing a wattage offset, or watt exchange. Reduce your electricity usage in other areas to compensate for your fah usage. For example, replace 3-5 regular light bulbs with CFLs or LEDs for every computer you have running fah. Many have even installed solar panels to offset the cost of folding. Or paid a few extra cents per kilowatt to the utility company to make sure their usage comes from green sources. There's even a Solar PC build at Toms Hardware.
Do note that technically, peak-load mitigation is more about removing the need for grid upgrades and 'peaking' stations by forcing user behaviour change through cost incentives/disincentives. While I agree your proposal is beneficial in terms of reducing the bills of users and reducing the differential between peak demand and underlying demand, it's actual 'green' benefits are actually fairly limited except where the baseload supply to grids are largely renewable or nuclear fed.
The reason for this is that coal is still a very major baseload supplier of electricity (it is dirt cheap and it takes a LONG time to fire up a coal power station), on the other hand, 'peaking' stations tend to either be gas (still polluting but somewhat 'greener') or hydroelectric, or in some cases, really inefficient oil/diesel stations that cost a ton to run. In essence, it's a bit more complicated than this simple analysis, but by cutting back on peak usage, you're actually technically reducing your usage of less polluting generation more than you are reducing your usage of the really dirty coal production. While the US has a large nuclear base load of just under 20%, around 50% of the US's overall power generation is coal fired and less than 10% is non-nuclear baseload renewables (hyrdo can be used as base load). Hence, in terms of being greener, 7im's suggestion of watt offsetting throughout the day and not just at peak usage will actually be a 'greener' solution, it just won't help the flatten the grid utilisation spikes out as much. The most drastic way to be green would be to turn off your computer completely all day, and decrease the demand for base load, or force producers to use renewables through purchasing more expensive renewable power rather than dirty coal as mentioned.
That's not to say that avoiding paying high power prices isn't a valid concern of course - it is very valid one! After all, why pay 15c for one hour of folding if you can put that 15c into 3 hours of folding at a 5c an hour! The next point is that most 'smart' meters aren't actually that smart, they just log when you're using your power - they don't actually communicate information back into the house. So the next issue becomes - where do we get the information to tell us that load usage is high and how do we then integrate it into our digital environment - there are a ton of different in-home management systems and trying to develop for all would be near impossible as there is no standardised protocol for household power management systems. Most likely I see this being a user driven development rather than a Stanford driven development, perhaps through the third-party interfaces being developed by third parties.
As a result, I would think a more likely solution would be to configure dedicated F@H computers to either shut down during high usage by a control device connected to your truly smart meter (this interface being often propriety, or at least certified compilable), or have the client shut down during periods of known high usage (peak loads are fairly well known but can be particular to different markets*) as mentioned by Zim.
For example, here in New Zealand, the daily peak usage is between 5-8pm in the evening, as people return home and cook dinner and heat up their houses with electric heaters (in winter) for example, with smaller 'peaks' between 6 and 9 in the morning as people wake up. Seasonal usage peaks during cold winter storms...
[off-topic with respect to FAH / on topic with respect to GREEN]
The closest thing we have to managing household usage by cutting back on peak usage is a rate change based on voluntarily allowing the utility company to cycle the power to an air conditioner on a limited number of days per year. It turns out that the actual peak in our area occurs on the hottest days of the year when everybody's A/C is pumping excess heat from inside the house to outside the house.
As far as techniques for active peak mitigation, our water delivery systems get free power to pump water long distances. They start with a hydroelectric plant that has a good sized reservoir above the dam. They add a good sized reservoir below the dam. During the day, they produce power and sell it at a high rate using the equivalent of your smart meter plan. During the night, they reverse the generators turning them into pumps which put water back into the upper reservoir, consuming low cost electricity. They make enough profit on this phased generate/use plan to pay for all the power needed to deliver water throughout the entire state.
MIBW folds for [H]ardOCP, our top end folders live right on the cutting edge of F@H hardware - the current project is to get a 64 core/128 thread machine folding properly.
We are also seeing excellent results from G34 based rigs. and our long term multi CPU board of choice, the Asus Z8NA for xeons and its AMD counterpart.
These big rigs may cost a lot to setup - but they pay for themselves in lower energy costs vs GPU folding
I try to offset my electricity usage by being proactive in turning off lights... at work. I work at a large corporation, and when I walk the halls during my normal business activity (e.g., meetings, getting coffee, going to the restroom, etc.) I look for that meeting room with the lights still on, or that cubby by the freight elevator with the lights on, or that printer nobody uses that's on, or put the copier to sleep, etc. When I go home late, I walk the halls and turn off the hall lights before they'd go off automatically later that night.
It's a small thing, but you'd be surprised at the amount of mental effort it takes to keep from saying, "It doesn't matter that much" or "someone else will probably do it" or "I'll look silly" or "I'll do it later" or "I'll do it next time".
I'm sure the amount of energy I save doesn't equal the amount I consume for F@H, but it helps.
7im wrote:There's even a Solar PC build at Toms Hardware.
What's really interesting is that the Toms article is 4 years old, but it's even MORE plausible now. Their solar PC's DC power supply can output a maximum of 160 watts. Another Toms article has an i7 2600K machine using 158 watts at the plug under load. That system also included a discreet video card (Radeon 5850) and a 10k RPM harddisk (both idling), which could be replaced by the 2600K's built-in GPU and an SSD/low RPM HD for max power savings.
Imagine posting 25K+ PPD (whatever stock 2600's are getting) on a computer powered by the sun
For what it's worth, I just did a parts lookup and determined I could build an i7 2600 + 8GB RAM HTPC-style box for < $500 USD, and it would use less than 150W while folding -bigadv units. The thing will pay for itself in lower electric bills!
Hardware configuration: Intel i7-4770K @ 4.5 GHz, 16 GB DDR3-2133 Corsair Vengence (black/red), EVGA GTX 760 @ 1200 MHz, on an Asus Maximus VI Hero MB (black/red), in a blacked out Antec P280 Tower, with a Xigmatek Night Hawk (black) HSF, Seasonic 760w Platinum (black case, sleeves, wires), 4 SilenX 120mm Case fans with silicon fan gaskets and silicon mounts (all black), a 512GB Samsung SSD (black), and a 2TB Black Western Digital HD (silver/black).
GREEN 
(not that I disagree with that assessment w/r to bigadv).
