Re: gEDA-user: pcb, howto partition power planes?

[Joerg <joergsch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

DJ Delorie wrote:
>> Another nice tool: Maybe you could borrow a FLIR camera. That would
>> show every ever so slight hot spot in a room, like something that
>> consumes a couple of watts of standby power but has long since been
>> forgotten.
> 
> That won't help me figure out how often the well pump runs.  It's 480
> feet down, on the far side of the yard.  And even though I CAN get to
> the septic pump, I'm not going to ;-)
> 

That's going to be more serious work. Holding tanks, fine control of 
pressure and so on. Almost like adjusting the carburetor of a vintage 
Alfa Romeo to get it to run lean and clean (where they said only 
Giuseppe can really do that).

Oh, and if you have teenage girls tell them that the daily shower does 
not have to exceed 30 minutes/person ;-)


> We're talking megawatt-hours, not tiny dribbles.  Our house uses about
> 23 MWh each year.  I expect this project to pay for itself FAST.
> 
>> description: font position out of range
> 
> Oops, I have a new version of pcb that supports accented characters.
> Fixed.
> 

Works now. You've got some traces and parts already crossing that 
barrier, compromising it. I can understand that you are cautious about 
the point-blank statement "turn it all into one common plane" I and 
others made. What I recommend to clients in that case is to sprinkle 
resistors pads across. Maybe 12-15 in your case. Then you can later 
stuff them with zero ohms (or close to that). Or leave them out. On PCB 
Designer it looks like there is plenty of space between the ADCs and 
elsewhere. This avoids nasty rework in case the ground split does fly 
into your face.


>> WRT to energy savings, if you find some gizmo that consumes next to
>> nothing but has to run and its transformer gobbles up 95%+ you could
>> try to replace i.e. a 115V-12V transformer with a 230V-24V. "Modern"
>> transformers are often operated a hair below or right at the onset
>> of saturation.
> 
> Interesting.  At the moment, though, I don't have any idea where the
> power is going.  I suspect my computers are eating a big chunk, but
> there are a LOT of other things in the house that are suspect.
> 

Well, 23MWh is huge. Unless you guys heat with electricity. Computers 
will be a mere drop in the bucket there.

Recording runtimes of the big motors, compressors etc. would probably 
help a lot. Also, current surges like when the pump cycles. That can 
give you an indication of how well investments such as additional 
holding tanks would pay off.

-- 
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.
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