I need help figuring out how to save money on power consumption. I am a college student still living at home....yes yes AT HOME. Don't make fun of me. Anyways my dad is worried about running up the electricity bill once my projector is built. Any idea to save some power? Any tricks or gear?

Hopefully this will become a good thread to help people save money and electricity.

Thanks guys.

the projector is something like 25 cents a day. So dont supersize your mcdonalds at lunch and you have 3 days of movies.

turn it off when you're done

does anyone have any super quiet economic fans they would recommend? i know some fans are designed to save power. any personal preference?

Fans draw a miniscule amount of power, about as much a night light, so their cost of running is minimal.

Ask your Dad how much electricity costs (he can find it on the elec bill). $/Kw-Hr ?

Basically the lamp is the main source of power consumption, but if you want to factor in fans add in 3 watts/fan. The LCD also draws very little power (the backlight is the thing using most of the power in an LCD)... add 10 watts for the LCD.

If your using a 400W lamp on an eballast, use about 430W for calcualtions, if your using a magnetic ballast (coil and core) use 460W for your calculations.

So:

electronic ballast, 2 fans, LCD: 430 + 6 + 10 = 446W/1000 = 0.446kW ... now just multiply this by the $/kW-hr [from above] to get the $/hr it will cost to run your PJ.

for a magnetic ballast, 2 fans, LCD: 460 + 6 + 10 = 476W/1000 = 0.476kW

Using an electronic ballast is the best way to reduce operating costs for our PJ's because fans and the LCD use such a small amount of power. As you can see though, either way, the PJ does not use a lot of power and monthly costs to run should be fairly managable... even for a poor college student as yourself !

cheers,
gs

Two days ago my wife was updating her work timetable or the projector and went out of the theatre and had a rest on the bed. Yesterday I opened the theatre door and there it was still running. It was on for about 35 hrs. It’s a common occurrence around here, I often fall asleep watching a movie and wake up in the morning with the projector still running.
AND I'm not in the least worried about the power bill or lamp life.

The projector uses roughly 400w and the national power average is .08/kwhour. It's takes 2.5 hours of a projector running to achieve 1kwhour. For each 2.5 hours run time the projector costs .08. You would have to run the projector 7.5 hours/day to hit a quarter!

How do you factor in the different bulbs? Say if I were to use a 1000W MH with a magnetic ballast, would I do
1060 + 6 + 10 = 1076W/1000 equals 1.076kW then what? Divide it by .08?

Multiply. 1.076 * .08 = .08608 dollars per hour to run. A lttle more than 8 cents per hour.

Take 1.076kW x $0.08/kw-hr = $0.0861/hr (roughly is will cost 8 cents an hour to run) ... if you use your PJ 4 hours/day x 30 days/month = 4 x 30 x 0.0861 = $10.33/month

The 400W magnetic ballast would be $4.57/month for the same usage.

I don't know if you were talking about a 1000W lamp only as an example, but if you want to save money, stay with the 400W setup as it has been shown you don't get 2.5x the output by simply going to a large 1000W lamp.

cheers,
gs

What's the difference between electronic and magnetic? How does it save power? Does anyone know where they sell electronic ballasts for 1000W MH?

I was looking at a 1000W was because I want to use the PJ in a fairly well lit room. Anyone done a side by side compare of the 400 vs the 1000?

Basically an electronic ballast loses less engergy in the form of heat than a magnetic ballast. For one single ballast it's not too much of a savings, but for companies that are lighting warehouses, or sporting event venues where they run hundreds of them, the savings can really add up over the course of a year. There are other benefits to an electronic ballast: they are light, they operate at a higher frequency making them less "flicker" prone, they generate longer lamp lives, etc.

I do believe there are 1000W electronic ballasts, but they are pretty expensive. As i've already stated a 1000W lamp is not so good... this is due to the fact that the 1000W lamp has a much larger arc size, and due to a limit on the size of the projection triplets available (at a reasonable cost), much of the light is wasted and never makes it into the triplet... light that doesn't make it into the triplet never makes it to the screen. This is a generalization for typical 1000W MH lamps... take a look at arizonavideo's PLOG... he's using a small arc 1200W lamp and getting just over 500 lumens at the screen. Take a look at Supraguy's PLOG, he generated over 400 lumens using a 400W lamp. There is a lot more to the numbers here, but basically you can see that for 3x the power we are not generating 3x the light at the screen... not even close... If you're into experimenting though, go for it, and please keep us informed of your progress. Not too much information on 1000W setups... Mediosracing is also another one to look for, he's done some work with a 1000W lamp, I believe...

cheers,
gs

The cost for running the thing is quite small. We didnt really notice any change. When we bought the 13,000 BTU air conditioner, we noticed!

The real 'silent consumer' of energy are any remote-control operated AV equipment, because they aren't really 'off', they're really just in 'sleep' mode, constantly using electricity, waiting to be fully fired up.

Recently I heard that a TV that's in off/sleep mode for 20 hours consumes more electricity than a TV that's on for 4 hours. During the same conversation I was told that a honking big plasma screen TV annually consumes the electrical equivalent of 2 refrigerators, which I believe (no links to prove it though, sorry). Most household appliances (dishwashers, refrigerators, etc.) have already been held to an 'EnergyStar' standard to try to cut down on power consumption, but currently there is no such attention being given to (or enforced upon) AV equipment.

In relation to the new Nintendo Wii (which is to have a 24 hour around the clock mode that downloads content while you sleep, etc.) I did hear something about the UK starting to restrict 'always on' appliances, so that might be the beginning of something that will likely spread to the US as well (where I am).

So, if you're concerned about energry consumption, it seems to me that building a Projector with a manually operated on/off switch is actually a pretty great step in that direction.

Another consideration is to possibly have a 'kill' switch on the power for the rest of your AV equipment, if you don't already have one. Lately I've been trying to find a power strip for our TV setup which has 1-2 'always on' outlets for the DVR cablebox (which does always need to be on), and putting the TV, receiver, and dvd player all on the on/off switch on the power strip. Perhaps with my newfound comfortability with wiring I'll make my own kill switch, but I'm not quite that electrically bold yet.

this is a topic that interests me as well. I plan to have a sustainable house completely off the grid in the near future and so I have to be very careful in my power consumption. (will be getting power from solar and wind, possibly hydro). The lamb is obviously the biggest drain on system. Ive done some searching here and saw some posts on using flourecent lights though they were dismissed as not being a point source. I never saw anyone actually try it though, so I may experiment with one. Another idea is to use a high gain screen with a lower watt light to accomplish the same brightness. Screens like the da-lite high power or vutec silverstar are somthing to look into. The cost would be much more, but for someone off the grid it would be necessary.

as far as quiet fans http://www.silentpcreview.com/ is a good place to check out. I got some panaflow fans and replaced all the ones in my computer and swapped out the hard drive for a barracuda 4, also installed a zalman heatsink and the computer is inaudible at 3 feet. Its a great mod if your computer is in the room you sleep, and the concepts can be carried over to projectors.

have the lamb sleep outside and teach it to turn off the lights.

I made mine using an array of led's

The whole projector takes about 12v and 500ma current and thats everything

no fans, All running cool

Can you tell us more about your build ? This is an interesting topic and there would be many people interested to see what you have done.

cheers,
gs

Ok so your saying you have a 6 watt LED projector.?
sounds like someones been smokin' something.

What you need is a old fashioned computer power strip. I had to look all over until I finally found out that my dad wasn't using his. What it is is a powerstrip the size of a common sized dvd player. There is a master rocker switch, and a switch for a x number of componets. Each componet is plugged into the back. Mine has master, computer, monitor, printer, aux 1, and aux 2. It was made by Memorex and is called a Power Center. And no, I won't sell mine.

Kinda like this: http://www.nextag.com/Tripp-Lite-CCC-4-363716/prices-html

Here's one like min on ebay: http://cgi.ebay.com/Memorex-Power-Center_W...1QQcmdZViewItem

http://cgi.ebay.com/Memorex-Power-Center_W...1QQcmdZViewItem


I just may have to get one for my AV setup at some point.

Jim