Just for fun, does anyone want to take a stab at working out the monthly power bill for the total computing power contributed to SETI monthly?

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Too much variation from place to place on the price per kWhr to make a valid guess. Cheap where I live (mostly hydro), expensive elsewhere. But, I'd bet there's a bunch of power being used to heat spaces holding computers crunching for SETI. :-)

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That's my reasoning - it means I can turn down the gas in winter, so the energy's not wasted. I've just got a complicated room heater.

Just a very broad estimate - around $275,000 per month I reckoned.

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Just for fun, does anyone want to take a stab at working out the monthly power bill for the total computing power contributed to SETI monthly?

You could take the computing power for the project and then figure some kind of average watt per flop.
Well... you could if the credit system that was meant to be a measure of computing power was actually that. Since it isn't that makes the task quite impossible.
Given the differences between MB & AP credit being drastically different and the power consumption for a computer being the same in either case would also make it difficult.

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I just used RAC for SETI (144,115,652) and divided down by my own machine's RAC which runs at probably around 500 W. Then used local energy costs and converted to USD.
I think the figure gives an indication of the massive effort and commitment people make and must feel about this project.

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I just used RAC for SETI (144,115,652) and divided down by my own machine's RAC which runs at probably around 500 W. Then used local energy costs and converted to USD.
I think the figure gives an indication of the massive effort and commitment people make and must feel about this project.

Well, to take one (hopefully average today) machine... My GTX 750 Ti at work tops out around 20k RAC when conditions are good. It uses less than 75 W for the GPU and ~90 W for the CPU. So say 160 W total or 1/6 kWh/h -> 4 kWh/day at a local (domestic) price of £GB0.14/kWh -> £GB0.56/day -> £GB16.8/mo. Multiplied by 7206 from your RAC figure above -> £GB121k/mo -- which is getting on for £GB1.5M/year!

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That's my reasoning - it means I can turn down the gas in winter, so the energy's not wasted. I've just got a complicated room heater.

Just a very broad estimate - around $275,000 per month I reckoned.

Without attempting to calculate the power bill, I can tell you that your machine configuration has a lot to do with heat being generated. Prior to my last upgrade, I had two 1st generation i7 machines, one i7/950 running with 2 x GTX660SC and the other i7/930 with 1 x GTX460SE. The heat produced by these two machines was enough to keep the room comfortable even when the ambient temps were below freezing. Under the current configuration, I'm down to one machine, i7/4700 w/ 2 x GTX750Ti GPUs, and with the summer ambient temps reaching the mid 90F and rarely did I see the machine temps get above 70c and the GPU temps get above 60c. I will probably have to heat the room by other means this winter or wear a bulky sweater.

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I don't buy computers, I build them!!

My I7 920 with a GTS 250 throws twice the heat my Two I7 3770 with 550 TI's do.
But I really thought my old P4 was a space heater that thought it was a computer:) That was one reason I retired it.

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Old James

750,000 hosts costing about $80 per quarter per host is $60 million per quarter = $240 million per year world wide my guess

ops to much i run 3 hosts for $80 per quarter so that would be $80 mill per year

Still a lot of doe

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LOL, there is no way to answer this question - way too many variables. But assuming my measured power use of 280w (reduced to average of 200w) on my z400 system x 3.200.000 pcs (reported systems) = 600.000.000w. 6 hundred million watts across a wildly divergent cost for power has no way of being calculated.

I pay .014 per kwh, how much do you pay?

Robert

26 cents per kilo watt but then there is the 12% discount i get now i'm back on a contract (baastas put it up when the contract laps'd and did not inform me till i got the bill )and then a rebate for low income so really i'm not shore how much .

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I used to consume 170 kWh/month with 2 computers without graphic boards. Now I have a third PC with a graphic board and the total has risen to 243 kWh/month. All three run 24/7. I pay 32 eurocent/kWh with a 40% discount on the first 220 kWh/month, that is 19.2 eurocent/kWh.
This in summer, with no AC but with more frequent washing machine and lawn mower use, so maybe the fault is not all on the graphic board.
Tullio

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Tullio you using one of them electric lawn mowers !, they do use a bit of power depending on the motor in them .

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LOL, there is no way to answer this question - way too many variables. But assuming my measured power use of 280w (reduced to average of 200w) on my z400 system x 3.200.000 pcs (reported systems) = 600.000.000w. 6 hundred million watts across a wildly divergent cost for power has no way of being calculated.

I pay .014 per kwh, how much do you pay?

Robert

I pay on average $0.1863 KW/h. I am sure there is some kind of global average for the cost of a KW/h & an average power could be guessed.
Currently there are ~130,000 computers with a RAC > 0. When I last looked the BOINCstats said there were 3,000,000 active hosts. So that discrepancy does make it hard to figure things as well. However using the 130,000 machine with RAC >0 it comes to an average RAC of ~1100 per host.
Once you decide on what kind of RAC an average host should have then you could apply the average RAC value to determine annual electric use.

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Tullio you using one of them electric lawn mowers !, they do use a bit of power depending on the motor in them .

I think it uses 800 W, if I remember well.

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Don´t talk me about power bill, that´s scary me, just imagine, besides the power used to mantain the 7 computers on for 24/7 now sum the power used by 14 GPU´s (most high end) running at +/-98% of GPU usage (about 150W each), something > 3Kw/hr or >2100 kw/hr/month. Sure not a "cheap" hobbie. But´s it´s all for the cause.

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Tullio
so 1 hour lawn mowing is 3 - 4 hours for your computers that will add maybe 12 hours of computer time per month if you mow the lawn 3 times a month so it can add a bit to your bill for shore and a washing machine . well it takes me about 3 hours to do the washing each week and they don't have small motors in them either . you don't relize how much it costs till you sit down and start going over what you actually use .

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Downstairs I have an electronic meter which records the instant power rate and adds it for the bill. It is read at distance by ENEL (the state utility) I believe via Ethernet on the power lines. Once in the Nineties a friend engineer had built a modem which used the power lines to connect devices, but he found that the wiring inside houses was too unreliable to use for data transmission from one room to another, so he abandoned the idea.
Tullio

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Downstairs I have an electronic meter which records the instant power rate and adds it for the bill. It is read at distance by ENEL (the state utility) I believe via Ethernet on the power lines. Once in the Nineties a friend engineer had built a modem which used the power lines to connect devices, but he found that the wiring inside houses was too unreliable to use for data transmission from one room to another, so he abandoned the idea.
Tullio

They installed a meter for me that broadcasts the usage wirelessly. So the power company can just drive down the street in a van instead of looking at it. I think they are still working out which kind to use. As my meter has changed twice & my neighbor still has the older analog gear driven meter.
Having the LCD panel on my meter does make it easy to check my daily power usage. I have pondered setting up the equipment to read my meter using the wireless system. So I could get hourly usage data, but that doesn't look like an easy thing to do at this point in time.

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I'm behind a sub-meter, My monthly cost last month was $61.20 for 593Kwh of electricity. Winter costs would normally be lower, but until My gas heaters blower is fixed, My electric cost per month will probably rise by about $40 a month, the park is supposed to fix the blower, but I don't know when or what contractor will be doing that, so far one firm I contacted said $77.00 and that is so that they can estimate what the cost will be of the repair will be.

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