[oclug] Server hydro costs

[Kevin Everets]

On Mon, Jun 09, 2003 at 02:35:32AM -0400, Ian! D. Allen wrote:

> > I did a quick guestimate and figured that my server probably cost me
> > at least $75 of that.
> 
> http://www.hydroottawa.com/residential/daily_rates-e.cfm?TEMPLATE_ID=118&LANG=E
> 
>    "The provincial government's Bill 210, Electricity Pricing,
>     Conservation and Supply Act and Business Protection Plan cap the
>     price of electricity at 4.3 cents per kilowatt-hour for residential
>     customers, business customers (whose consumption is 250,000
>     kilowatt-hours per year or less) and "designated consumers"."

Unfortunately that 4.3 cents is only part of the bill.  My bill also
includes 1.78 cents/kWh for Distribution, 0.7 cents/kWh for Debt
Retirement, 0.57 cents/kWh for Transmission Network Service, 0.5
cents/kWh for Transmission Connection Service, and 0.62 cents/kWh for
Wholesale Market Service, which brings me to 8.47 cents/kWh (plus, of
course, the standard Service Charge... but as I have a fridge running
anyway, I'm going to have to eat that one regardless).

> So, a server with a 200W power supply running steady-state at half
> capacity (?) might use 100W.  100W times 24 hours times 30 days divided
> by 1000 times 4.3 cents is $3.10/month or $37.15/year.

So, using the above (well, with a slight modification to use 365.24
days/year), it comes out costing me (with the 100W figure) about
$74.25 per year in electricity costs to power one server.  Which makes
the original posters' estimate of $75 remarkably accurate (assuming he
meant per year and not per month).

> It could have been worse:
> 
> http://www.energyprobe.org/energyprobe/index.cfm?DSP=content&ContentID=5655
> 
>    "Hydro Ottawa said yesterday its electricity price averaged almost 9.5
>     cents per kilowatt hour in the first three weeks of September. That
>     was almost three times the price in May and June, when the average was
>     slightly below 3.4 cents per kilowatt hour after the market was opened
>     to competition."

If 9.5 cents/kWh kept up for a year (and there were no other changes
in the charges on my bill), I'd be looking at a bill of $119.82/year,
or about $10/month.

I'm curious if 100W is an adequate estimate, though.  Has anyone tried
measuring the actual power use of their server boxes?  I imagine it's
pretty close for the Pentium-75 I've got working as a server right
now, however I'd suspect much higher power consumption numbers for
Pentium 4's and SMP boxes with more than the 2 HD's I've got in mine.

Kevin.
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