Scheduling folding for off-peak electricity times?

[kelliegang]

So I got the biggest energy bill of my life for the last 3 months... $950ish Australian up from 580 in the previous 3 months [and I thought 580 was bad ]... granted we've just seen a 20% increase in electricity tariffs in my area and a lot of the energy usage occurs elsewhere in the household... BUT...

I was wondering if anyone had ideas on how I can schedule folding on my 2 desktops and 2 laptops to occur at offpeak times? They all use uniprocessor clients so it wont be a problem in terms of the deadlines. The clients all currently run as a service so perhaps scheduling within windows xp and vista?
Ideally I want a way that my computers will be dormant until off-peak times when they can turn on and turn up the heat.

As for the extreme electricity usage in the rest of the house, thats an issue which is being dealt with but I need to find a way to keep folding when I can without putting such a dent in our pocket, who knows the money saved over the next 3 months may pay for some upgrades to the extremely outdated hardware I use.


Thanks for any suggestions.

[MstrBlstr]

Just schedule it as a Windows Task, and set it to run only at certain times of the day, for so many hours.

Of course, that means removing the service option.




Multiple times a day if needed.


Set to run for 6 hours each time.

Result would be FAH running from 12:00AM to 6:00AM and 3:00PM to 9.00PM everyday. 3 to 9 is not a prime example for peak times, but you get the idea.

Or if you leave the services intact, you could create start and stop scripts (.bat), and run those as scheduled tasks accordingly. I believe it is "net start folding service name" and "net stop service folding name"... Or is it sc now?

[kelliegang]

Hehe thanks for the suggestion will get on that as soon as I get home... points might take a bit of a hit and contribution will go down but at least I'll be able to continue

[WangFeiHong]

Easier:

Create 2 .bat files (using notepad)

Code: Select all

net start [SERVICE1 NAME]
net start [SERVICE2 NAME]

where the service-name is the name(s) of the folding@home services (you can check this up in services.msc)

Code: Select all

net stop [SERVICE1 NAME]
net stop [SERVICE2 NAME]

Similarly.....

Then use task scheduler to run these programs at the stipulated times. This way, you won't get to see console window (However there will be <1sec where the .bat file will run and open a console)

[MstrBlstr]

LOL, Sorry... I was in the process of posting pics, and editing, when I was interrupted for a bit.

It was all explained well in the end though.

WangFeiHong, explained the service start/stop thing better than I did anyway.

Only issue with the service start/stop scripts, would be if the systems were rebooted during the times that the scripts were not expecting folding to be running. IE... Could possibly try and start the service again. Although, I am not all that sure it is possible to start a service that is already running. However, if it is not running, and the system is rebooted, it will be. At least until the next time that the stop script is run.

Edit: Unless, of course, you edit the service properties to start manually. Then they will not start upon a reboot, but will wait until the next time that the startup script is run.

[kelliegang]

Ah, thanks for the alternative...

After some quick calculations using our peak/offpeak tariffs for electricity it works out that running F@H 2100-0700 [10hrs a day instead of 24] would cost 1/2 the price per hour... a decent saving in running costs.
Looking at some of the other threads around it seems the 9600GSO would be the best 'all round' value for money card under the current points system... with a power usage of about 85watts and an initial cost of about $120.00 AU... running only during offpeak times could buy me another similar card in 1.5 years.... of course as the wattage and price go up this figure starts to look a little larger...

For continued support to the project it looks like running in offpeak time could be very beneficial, if the price difference allows the purchase of a new low-midrange card 2 years from now.