I see they have posted a special page about energy usage in people's computers when running S@H and other BOINC applications. They state that it can cost an extra $10-$30 per month to leave a computer on 24/7 to crunch.
David

Others in this thread have answered the issue of idle vs. load costs, so I'll just add a little something from my own experience living in both the US and Germany. I've noticed that my elecricity bill is cheaper here in the states than it was in Germany, and I'm using the same computer. So I think that the folks in Europe are paying more than we are. By how much would probly vary from country to country.

... and it varies state by state, and even areas inside a state, and by total usage.

It's better now, but at the peak of the crunch in 2001, our top rate (over 300% of baseline) was nearly $0.26/kwh.

---

I see they have posted a special page about energy usage in people's computers when running S@H and other BOINC applications. They state that it can cost an extra $10-$30 per month to leave a computer on 24/7 to crunch.
David

Others in this thread have answered the issue of idle vs. load costs, so I'll just add a little something from my own experience living in both the US and Germany. I've noticed that my elecricity bill is cheaper here in the states than it was in Germany, and I'm using the same computer. So I think that the folks in Europe are paying more than we are. By how much would probly vary from country to country.

---

I currently work for a(UK)Home Office dept. which has thousands of PC's switched on 24/7/365.

Most such systems would have policies set to switch the monitor off after 5 minutes of inactivity & the HD after 15 or so minutes.

most offices have a policy of shutting down client PCs at night, but not due to power, the reason is one of air conditioning, and the fact that without it running at night (because no-one's there) the rooms get quite hot

the only room that has constant A/C is the server room obviously (with regard to computers anyway, other rooms may have constant A/C for other reasons)

---

Want to search the BOINC Wiki, BOINCstats, or various BOINC forums from within firefox? Try the BOINC related Firefox Search Engines

I currently work for a(UK)Home Office dept. which has thousands of PC's switched on 24/7/365.

Most such systems would have policies set to switch the monitor off after 5 minutes of inactivity & the HD after 15 or so minutes. Given the age of most such systems when in such a state & the CPU idle they'd be using less than 50W. But that is still a lot of power for when they're not actually doing anything.
Later systems would (or should) be set to go into a suspend or hibernate state after 30 or more minutes of inactivity.

---

Grant
Darwin NT

but take a flourescent lamp, they work in a totally different way, in short they require a fair bit of power to start (to begin glowing) but require relatively little to stay lit, so turning them on and off actually uses more

The 5 minute rule applies. If you're going to be out of the room for more than 5 minutes, turn them off. The main argument for not turning them off & then on again in a shorter time frame isn't due to power usage, it's because doing so significantly reduces their life expectancy.
The actual power reqired to start a fluro, while more than it's running requirements, isn't significant & just not worth considering.

the problem comes in that many devices (especially those in computers) are very sensitive to thermal stress, more-so than wear-out a hard drive for example will die due to thermal stress before it dies of wear-out!

I disagree- the biggest killer of HDs is heat (remember the DeathStar series?).
Thermal cycling is a problem, but much, {i]much[/i] less so than poor cooling.

---

Grant
Darwin NT

I currently work for a(UK)Home Office dept. which has thousands of PC's switched on 24/7/365. Governments care little about their enviromental impact or the added cost - this is wasted TAXes, then why would I be concerned about my 2 'puters running 24/7.
It's the policy makers' that should be reminded of these impacts!!!!

well, if you actually read my post, maybe that's exactly why they're left on permanently

---

Want to search the BOINC Wiki, BOINCstats, or various BOINC forums from within firefox? Try the BOINC related Firefox Search Engines

to put things in perspective, a quote from climateprediction.net:

Won't all those computers left on for 24 hours a day have a detrimental impact on the climate system?
Assume a computer running 24hrs/day requires, on average, 50W of power. If 100,000 computers join the climateprediction.net project, the project will require 5,000kW of power. There are 24 hours in a day, so each day the project will consume 120,000kW-hrs, or 432,000,000kJ of electrical energy.

That's a big number, so let's try and put it in perspective by calculating how much energy is necessary to boil water for a cup of tea. Let's use a tiny bit of physics to do it. Assuming a specific heat of water of 4.19 kJ/(kg-K), 0.237kg/cup of water, a necessary temperature rise from 20 degrees Celsius to 100 degrees Celsius, and that only one cup of water is boiled for each cup of tea, then about 80kJ/cup of energy are necessary (assuming our kettle is 100% efficient). This means that running the climateprediction.net project for one day is equivalent to boiling water for 5,400,000 cups of tea!

Is five and a half million cups of tea a lot? According to the Tea Council, some 37 million people in the United Kingdom drink, on average, 3.4 cups of tea per day. That's nearly 126 million cups of tea per day in the UK alone!!!

Each day, about 23 times more energy will be spent boiling water for tea in the United Kingdom than would be used by the computers involved in the climateprediction.net project. More seriously, a rough calculation suggests that 100,000 computers running 24hrs/day for one year at a power consumption of 50W will contribute approximately 0.0001% of the total amount of CO2 generated in one year. This is not an insignificant amount, but seems (to us) a worthwhile investment to better understand the climate system.

Assuming you are convinced this experiment needs to be done, there are basically two options: to buy a hangar-full of PCs and run it ourselves (not even an option right now, since the climate research community doesn't have the resources); or to recycle spare CPU out in the community, as we propose to do under the climateprediction.net experiment. Since the main environmental impact of a PC is in manufacture and disposal, not the power consumed in running it (never mind the air-conditioning costs and visual impact of that hangar on some innocent rural community), environmentalists will, we hope, approve of our strategy.

I currently work for a(UK)Home Office dept. which has thousands of PC's switched on 24/7/365. Governments care little about their enviromental impact or the added cost - this is wasted TAXes, then why would I be concerned about my 2 'puters running 24/7.
It's the policy makers' that should be reminded of these impacts!!!!

---

a bit of lateral thought on reducing cost (both in monetry terms and environmental):

i'm all for efficency, but i argue that turning things on and off may not have the desired long-term effect

take lamps for example (or "bulbs", however, you don't really get a flourescent "bulb" lol)
an incadescent filament lamp (a light bulb) is simple in that it uses power at the same rate for every second it's on, so turning it off when it's not needed is very sensible (however the argument further down adds some complexity to this, lots of on/off action will reduce the life of the filament, and the bulb will "blow" earlier)

but take a flourescent lamp, they work in a totally different way, in short they require a fair bit of power to start (to begin glowing) but require relatively little to stay lit, so turning them on and off actually uses more
but obviously if they're not going to be used for several hours, then sure, flick the switch before you go to bed

now, applying those simpler ideas to computers, there's something called "thermal stress", for comparison, you're probably familiar with "wear-out" which is exactly what you think it is, things getting old, and after a lot of use have trouble functioning in the same way as before, this will eventually lead to failure of the device, wear-out is mostly caused by increasing the number of "on" hours a device has during it's life, things are only built to last so long

on the other hand "thermal stress" is something quite different
the root cause is inefficiency (remember, i'm all for efficiency)
this inefficiency (in converting energy (electricity) into another form (such as kenetic (movement)) energy) causes heat to be produced (the "wasted energy" in the conversion), this heating causes the device components to get hot (obviously) which causes them to expand (albiet slightly)

when the device is switched off the components are no longer fucntioning, no longer producing heat, so they cool, and contract

if the device is repeatedly and frequently turned on and off, the device will experience many thousand of these "thermal cycles"

the problem comes in that many devices (especially those in computers) are very sensitive to thermal stress, more-so than wear-out
a hard drive for example will die due to thermal stress before it dies of wear-out!

so, further to the above, thermal stress (caused by lots of on/off action) results in components failing earlier than they would otherwise (if they were left in a constant state, usually "on" considering a device is useless when "off")

so, in computers this means that you'll be replacing hard drives, CPUs, motherboards, add-in cards etc. sooner than you should be

further still, the greatest cost of computers is in the manufacturing and disposal of them, and their associated extras like packaging and housing.
considering this, i question whether turning your computer off every night does actually help in the long run, in the grand scheme of things

to put things in perspective, a quote from climateprediction.net:

Won't all those computers left on for 24 hours a day have a detrimental impact on the climate system?
Assume a computer running 24hrs/day requires, on average, 50W of power. If 100,000 computers join the climateprediction.net project, the project will require 5,000kW of power. There are 24 hours in a day, so each day the project will consume 120,000kW-hrs, or 432,000,000kJ of electrical energy.

That's a big number, so let's try and put it in perspective by calculating how much energy is necessary to boil water for a cup of tea. Let's use a tiny bit of physics to do it. Assuming a specific heat of water of 4.19 kJ/(kg-K), 0.237kg/cup of water, a necessary temperature rise from 20 degrees Celsius to 100 degrees Celsius, and that only one cup of water is boiled for each cup of tea, then about 80kJ/cup of energy are necessary (assuming our kettle is 100% efficient). This means that running the climateprediction.net project for one day is equivalent to boiling water for 5,400,000 cups of tea!

Is five and a half million cups of tea a lot? According to the Tea Council, some 37 million people in the United Kingdom drink, on average, 3.4 cups of tea per day. That's nearly 126 million cups of tea per day in the UK alone!!!

Each day, about 23 times more energy will be spent boiling water for tea in the United Kingdom than would be used by the computers involved in the climateprediction.net project. More seriously, a rough calculation suggests that 100,000 computers running 24hrs/day for one year at a power consumption of 50W will contribute approximately 0.0001% of the total amount of CO2 generated in one year. This is not an insignificant amount, but seems (to us) a worthwhile investment to better understand the climate system.

Assuming you are convinced this experiment needs to be done, there are basically two options: to buy a hangar-full of PCs and run it ourselves (not even an option right now, since the climate research community doesn't have the resources); or to recycle spare CPU out in the community, as we propose to do under the climateprediction.net experiment. Since the main environmental impact of a PC is in manufacture and disposal, not the power consumed in running it (never mind the air-conditioning costs and visual impact of that hangar on some innocent rural community), environmentalists will, we hope, approve of our strategy.

---

Want to search the BOINC Wiki, BOINCstats, or various BOINC forums from within firefox? Try the BOINC related Firefox Search Engines

still taht is cheap compared to petrol (gasoline)
at £1 per litre (thats about $9 a (us) gallon by my rough working)

You need a better working calculator :)
1 Euro = 1.2779 US
1 Gallon = 3.7854L
Multiplies out is approximately $4.85 US dollar

Right now in the area I am in, it's approximately $3.00.

from the symbol used, that was pound not euro.

1 pound = 1.88 usd

7.116 USD the gallon


I use a laptop, P4 2.4Ghz, the wall to DC converter says 120W max at 19v and 6.32a.

using 120w as AC from the wall, x 31 days of 24 hours is 744 hours. now multiply that by .12 KW is 89.28 kwh p/m at 17c NZD per KWH thats 15.1776 NZD per month. or 9.44 USD per month

I can survive paying that much, epeciallt that 80+% of the time the screen is blank and not drawing it's share of that 120W since it runs while I'm at work and asleep.

You need a better working calculator :)
1 Euro = 1.2779 US
1 Gallon = 3.7854L
Multiplies out is approximately $4.85 US dollar

Right now in the area I am in, it's approximately $3.00.

£ != €


Hmm, seems the current exchange is...
1 Pound = 1.468 Euro
1 Pound = 1.874 Dollar

=> 1 £/l = 7.09 $/gallon


Hmm, maybe dasy2k1 also did a mistake, and was thinking 1 gallon = 4.546 liters, forgetting an US-gallon is smaller...


Anyway, looking on the local price... "cheap"-type (95 octane unleaded):
1.05£/l or 1.55€/l or 7.48$/US-gallon.
For 98-octane: 1.11£/l or 1.63€/l or 7.86$/US-gallon.

Actually the .08 & .06 don't have anything to do with day / night rates. The .08 was 'Winter 1st Step' and .06 was 'Winter 2nd Step'. Both were calculated over a 30 day period. 1st Step came out to 42.46 and 2nd Step was 3.17.

I'm probably being screwed some where since there is a nuclear power plant less than 4 miles from my back door. :)

Here in New Mexico, I think residential rates embrace a sort of reverse economy of scale for social reasons. You pay more per KWhr for the monthly usage above some base level.

Glancing at my most recent monthly bill, it appears I pay .0676070 dollars /KWhr for the first 200 kWhr in the month, the .0788440 for the rest (at least up to my total usage which was 921.

I think some power companies do this to encourage conservation. The more kwh they have to supply the more they have to invest in generating equipment, so they charge more for larger amounts of electricity. By giving a cheaper rate for small amounts of power encourages people to conserve energy which saves the power company big bucks in not having to provide extra expensive generating capability.

---

Jim

Some people plan their life out and look back at the wealth they've had.
Others live life day by day and look back at the wealth of experiences and enjoyment they've had.

Actually the .08 & .06 don't have anything to do with day / night rates. The .08 was 'Winter 1st Step' and .06 was 'Winter 2nd Step'. Both were calculated over a 30 day period. 1st Step came out to 42.46 and 2nd Step was 3.17.

I'm probably being screwed some where since there is a nuclear power plant less than 4 miles from my back door. :)

Here in New Mexico, I think residential rates embrace a sort of reverse economy of scale for social reasons. You pay more per KWhr for the monthly usage above some base level.

Glancing at my most recent monthly bill, it appears I pay .0676070 dollars /KWhr for the first 200 kWhr in the month, the .0788440 for the rest (at least up to my total usage which was 921.

---

We paid two different prices, .08$ & .06$, not real sure what the deal is with that.

the .08 would be your daytime "peak" rate the .06 would be the night time "economy" rate
so it is cheaper to run teh computer all night and swich it off all day!

Actually the .08 & .06 don't have anything to do with day / night rates. The .08 was 'Winter 1st Step' and .06 was 'Winter 2nd Step'. Both were calculated over a 30 day period. 1st Step came out to 42.46 and 2nd Step was 3.17.

I'm probably being screwed some where since there is a nuclear power plant less than 4 miles from my back door. :)

---

still taht is cheap compared to petrol (gasoline)
at £1 per litre (thats about $9 a (us) gallon by my rough working)

You need a better working calculator :)
1 Euro = 1.2779 US
1 Gallon = 3.7854L
Multiplies out is approximately $4.85 US dollar

Right now in the area I am in, it's approximately $3.00.

We paid two different prices, .08$ & .06$, not real sure what the deal is with that.

the .08 would be your daytime "peak" rate the .06 would be the night time "economy" rate
so it is cheaper to run teh computer all night and swich it off all day!
or at least taht is my justification for staying up all night,
still you guys have it easy your side of the adlantic, we pay nerly 10p per KWH here

still taht is cheap compared to petrol (gasoline)
at £1 per litre (thats about $9 a (us) gallon by my rough working)

and all your gas guzzelers are messing with our wether, we have a drought and hosepipe ban and yet it is tipping it down with rain! (all the boreholes are empty!) we had one of the driest winters ever and now one of the wettest mays!

---

I live in a 1470 square foot house (1770 square foot with garage). My bill is around $100/month or so in the hot, humid summer, and around $50/month in the winter. So, when it comes to your house, size does matter.

Programmable thermostats, fluorecent bulbs, and turning off lights and appliances when you're not using them always saves power. I also close the shades on the sunny sides of the house during the summer. That helps too.

It's great that the new lower-power processors are coming out. I look forward to getting one when they do!

---

John Miller
SpaceLinks.net
SpaceLinks.net News Page - Latest Headlines!

I am still waiting for the gas bill. Thought I would mention that since people might think I had electric heat. The heat, hot water, and cooking are all gas. I think I will come in around the same for the gas bill putting me at about $150 for both.

Energy Star is really the way to go for everything.

---

Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battle station. - Grand Moff Tarkin

Our house is also about 3000 sq/ft and the elec bill last month was $68 including the taxes for 539 KWH. We paid two different prices, .08$ & .06$, not real sure what the deal is with that. Total bill with gas was $115.

We have 5 systems running 24/7, the sixth one which I run BIONIC on, is only run on Monday night/Tuesday & weekends.

Energy star all around, from ridge vents/windows/insulation/appliances/CFL bulbs/AC/furnace/water heater/washer&dryer. The best thing anyone can do is spend the extra money on making their home as effiecent as they can, it pays off in the long run.

---

Wow I only live in a 3000 square foot house, and my power bill last month was almost 200$. Your lucky.

Mines also about 3000 sq/ft and my power bill was $240.

---

You know, I see this and understand what it says. What confuses me is that its not showing up on my power bill. I run 5 PCs 24/7 for Boinc. A new HT P4, two slightly older P4s and 2 P3s. My total power bill last month was $75. I have a 6000 square foot house and the weather was mild. The actual bill had about $30 of taxes and other misc charges. The actual power usage was about $35.

What am I missing?

Wow I only live in a 3000 square foot house, and my power bill last month was almost 200$. Your lucky.

---