Funny how that sort of thing can work out. I was involved in an industrial optimization company years ago. Microsoft came out with power-save features in their new release.
The staff at a metal-recycling company we were installing at, started complaining that the furnace would stop optimizing overnight. We investigated.
The controller computer would go into power-save mode, which suspended our control app. So the furnace would just sit there wasting power and burning up electrodes.
I calculated that during that week our furnace site wasted more power than all the power saved in America that year with power-save mode.
It would literally have been better if they'd never invented power save mode.
So be careful how much fiddling around we do. The law of unintended consequences will bite you in the butt every time.
be very careful what you define as “consumer grade”, microsoft officially positions variants of windows as professional, industrial and enterprise grade.
Linux as she is written comes with no warranty of anything, it is much more “consumer grade” than those variants of windows.
I think even enterprise linux does not come with support for industrial applications.
(I say this as a huge proponent of Linux supremacy)
Worse: a consumer grade OS with a reputation for blue screens and random reboots, remote updates and other niceties that you really don't want when you're controlling real world hardware.
> It would literally have been better if they'd never invented power save mode.
Only if you considered the purpose of power-saving mode to reduce total energy usage, vs to reduce amount of power (and consequent wear & tear) an individual machine uses.
However that MS would release a feature like that which automatically kicks in on upgrade without any sort of consideration of what the machine was used for - it could be running life-support systems! - seems an issue. But I'd also expect a fair bit more diligence on behalf of engineers responsible for monitoring and maintaining systems that need 24x7 uptime.
Or… the controller app could be written to prevent suspension via available APIs. If that wasn’t an option, you could turn off power saving mode on the computer as well.
The staff at a metal-recycling company we were installing at, started complaining that the furnace would stop optimizing overnight. We investigated.
The controller computer would go into power-save mode, which suspended our control app. So the furnace would just sit there wasting power and burning up electrodes.
I calculated that during that week our furnace site wasted more power than all the power saved in America that year with power-save mode.
It would literally have been better if they'd never invented power save mode.
So be careful how much fiddling around we do. The law of unintended consequences will bite you in the butt every time.