Intelligent energy saving with FAH

[NCFR62]

Hello everybody!

I'm looking for "green" options for running the FAH client.

I mean solutions allowing to run it at some scheduled times, but smartly flexible enough to respect the deadlines and not start a new WU if it's soon time for shutdown.

This would allow to not use extra energy at bad times and a better respect for the environnment.

And why not extra points for "energy saving" workunits, folded during off-peak hours?

See you soon, and sorry for my English writing


Nico

[JimboPalmer]

As a rule modern GPUs will make the most Points per Watt.

I generate via solar, so I don't worry about being frugal.

[NCFR62]

Hello,

I thought about solar generation but unfortunately I live in the north of France and the sky is the most often darkly cloudy, solar cells are badly efficient here.

But anyway there are also everywhere many other people living in towns, in a flat and no surface for solar generating.

A solution for them could be useful too!

Edit: I use RTX3090 gpu, it is not the latest released one but it does stay still relatively modern


See you

[PaulTV]

As far as I understand you're also looking for ways to limit folding to specific hours. There are several options:
* Send pause/unpause at scheduled times (via the OS's scheduler), which is what you can do without additional tools
* Send a finish command some time before the end of the off-peak hours, so that fahclient won't start a new job. Caveat: there are CPU jobs that take well over a day, so you may want to combine that with the previous option

For pause/unpause at scheduled times: viewtopic.php?f=108&t=37542
Using a script, e.g. to send finish commands: viewtopic.php?f=14&t=37403

I imagine it may be possible to make something to check the solar power output, and only start folding when that crosses a certain threshold. Pausing folding when it gets too dark may be tricky when you have a spell of bad weather, which would cause the job to cross the timeout. Finishing jobs when it gets too dark would work fine.

[NCFR62]

Many thanks PaulTV!

There might be some layout changes to do in order to launch your script at the ideal time, but I'll try it by myself

See you!

Nico

[bruce]

I generate via solar, so I don't worry about being frugal.

Me too
... but the Electric company still charges me more between 1600 and 2100 (local) in an attempt to get me to offload things during their peak hours, depending on my annual total generated vs. used. They're trying to discourage rooftop panels. It is cutting into their profit margins.

[gunnarre]

The opportunity cost of having an expensive GPU sitting idle needs to be included into the calculation. Especially if you have a recent expensive card.

Personally I use the GPU folding as a thermal baseload, and manually start CPU folding when it's cold outside. For acheiving the correct temperature in the house, I use thermostats on the normal heating, rather than trying to regulate the folding based on temperature and energy cost. As pointed out in this thread, there are timeouts to consider, so you shouldn't just pause folding randomly (rather finish a WU).

In the summer of 2020, we had some days where wholesale electricity prices were negative, so I happily folded for open windows then, but this summer electricity has cost more, so I have avoided folding when it's warm enough.

All that said, if you want to regulate folding power based on need, you might look into adjusting the power limit for the GPU. That will slightly harm PPD, but since the sweet spot for efficiency is lower than the regular power limit, you might actually save on both electricity and get a less noisy system for not much loss in PPD. I think that's smarter than shutting down an RTX 3090. With more marginal cards like my 950 and 1050Ti, I tend to stop those when their heat isn't needed, using a "Finish" command either manually or from a cron script.