I have never paid my electrical bills directly before, since moving out of a dorm from a dorm into an appartment. For the past few months, the total electrical costs for an appartment of 3 people costed approximately $76 bucks per month. Actually, last month electrcity costed us about $90 between 3 people. Which equates to $30 bucks/person. When I used to live in the dorms I only paid about $22 for electricity for some and up to $30 in the winter seasons when I used electric heaters in the winter. The thing about living in the dorms is that everyone gets a combined itemized bill, but the amount of power I used was never listed so I didn't know how much power I was using at the time.
Personally, I automatically assumed that pretty much all utility costs would be somewhat cheaper when moving in with roomies. The one thing that (obviously) shouldn't scale down on the per people count is electricity. There are other costs that do scale down however, things like "basic charges" which utility companies charge you regardless of the amount of energy you use. For example, listed on my energy bill is a $10 "basic charge" which is divided by 3 between us.
I made a quick estimate of energy usage at our home and I'll present my results below.
Cost per KWh (kilo watt hours in Japan) ~ 6 cents
Note: I guessed at the number of hours we used each electrical applience. Monthly costs are estimates!
Light bulbs (fluorescent):
4 bulbs * 70 watts @ 6 hours/day= 1.68KWh/day = 50.4 KWh/month
Cost/Month ~ $3 for lighting between 3 people ($1/person)
Fridge:
336 watts (estimate) @ 24 hours/day = 8.064KWh/month = 241.92 KWh/month
Cost/Month~ $14.50 for a fridge
Computer (laptops) :
70 watts @ 6 hours/day = 1.26KWh/day = 37.8 KWh/month
Cost/Month ~ $2.27 for notebooks between 3 people ($0.70/person)
Estimated Energy Use = 330 KWh/month
Measured Energy Use = 322 KWh/month
Error in estimate = 2.5%
These numbers look reasonable.
Hot water bill (electrically heated):
Measured power consumed: 179 KWh/month
Calculated wattage --> 247 Watts (this number is within reason)
Meaning that the water boiler uses as much power as say 2.5 100 watt light bulbs!
Cost/Month = $28 (the KWh/hour is on a different, but higher rate for some reason)
Question: What does it cost to host your own server/web server from home?
I am considering putting together a server for the home using old desktop computer parts I salvaged from the dump site at the university (note: Desktop computers, generally use more power). I currently have an operating 1 Ghz computer on hand. So, what does it cost to run my own server at home for 24/7? Assuming that the computer runs at about 200 Watts (at about 50% load of a 400 Watt power supply) for 24/7 the total works out to $8.64/month just in electricity costs!
Here's the interesting point: According to some webpage host providers, the cost to buy webspace is approximately $4/month! Assuming that you're hosting only 1 webpage from home, it's cheaper to leave the computer off.
1 comment:
When I was back in Canada, I just kept my computer running because I never had to pay the electrical bills.
I used my computer as a webserver and remote file server which was indespensible for when I was at UBC. I usually fired by assignments between home and the school labs whenever I needed to instead of lugging any sort of physical media or having to e-mail it to myself over to some online mail service.
Actually, after doing this calculation, the energy costs to run a server farm becomes non trivial. Suppose, you had 100 computers. You're looking at about $864/month just in power costs.
Well rack servers might use less power perhaps, but people could be looking on the order of this magnetude.
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