Electrical costs to run a home web server

[David Schwartz]

If this is just for learning, do you want or need it to run 24/7/365? If not, you can shut it off when you don’t need it if you’re concerned about power.

Note that a lot of old PCs have power supplies where the fans run all the time. They can end up consuming quite a bit of power.

You might consider a 2012-vintage Mac Mini. It already has Unix built-in and everything you need to run as a server.

They’re between $150 and $250 on eBay and sometimes as low as $100.

FWIW, thru most of the 90’s I had a little box I ran as a dedicated server at a co-lo facility in town.

It was a mini-ITX with a 600 MHz x86 clone chip, 256 MB of RAM, a 20GB HDD, and 10MB ethernet. I ran Debian on it. After the third HDD died, I moved to a reseller-type WHM/cPanel hosting account that was a LOT cheaper per month. (My current one is less than $20/mo.)

(The co-lo facility’s biggest monthly expense was their A/C bill.)

The Rasperry Pi Zero W costs $10, and has these features:

	• 1GHz, single-core CPU
	• 512MB RAM
	• 802.11 b/g/n wireless LAN
	• Bluetooth 4.1
	• Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)
	• Mini HDMI and USB On-The-Go ports
	• Micro USB power
	• HAT-compatible 40-pin header
	• Composite video and reset headers
	• CSI camera connector

It consumes 120-170 mA (but can source over 1A to USB), so can run off of a USB battery pack if needed.

This puppy has more power and features than that mini-ITX machine I had!

It comes with a ready-to-run Linux on an SD card and fits into a box about the size of a pack of cigarettes. No fan is needed AFAIK.

You can plug nearly any size storage you want into the USB port, although the SD card can be used for additional storage.

-David Schwartz



> On Jul 21, 2021, at 6:50 PM, Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss <plug-discuss at lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:
> 
> 
> Hi Eric,
> 
> I assume you live in the valley? And you use a master cool evaporative cooler... Off topic question - Does your master cool, cool your house reasonably in the summer and more so during the monsoons?
> 
> 
> On 2021-07-21 15:50, Eric Oyen via PLUG-discuss wrote:
>> Back when I ran a home server on my Athlon X2 with 1500 W supply, the
>> machine never drew that much. Even with several disks spinning, 8
>> VMWare instances going and a few other goodies, that machine never
>> drew more than 600w at maximum. I kept it live 24/7 for a few years
>> and it added less than $120 yearly to the electrical bill. These days,
>> that machine is out of service and is only good for parts. My Mac
>> mini, which draws at most 100 W under full load is on 24/7 and I don’t
>> even see it add that much to the electrical bill here. There are
>> really only 3 high draw appliances in this house now:
>> 1. The refrigerator
>> 2. The stove/oven
>> 3. The master cool evaporative cooler. Everything else either runs on
>> wall warts or only gets used occasionally. In fact, we spend less than
>> $150 a month here for electric. Now, if I put that Athlon X2 back into
>> service, we might see $10 a month in extra use. I am still
>> contemplating putting it back up and using it as my go to linux
>> development machine.
>> -Eric
>> From the Central Offices of the Technomage Guild, Utilities Dept.
>>> On Jul 21, 2021, at 7:33 AM, Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss <plug-discuss at lists.phxlinux.org> wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>> I just read this quote about the electrical costs to run a web server from home:
>>> Cost: While it may sound cheaper to use that computer lying around doing nothing when creating your web server, when you factor in the cost of powering an old computer 24 hours a day, it can get very expensive. A 250W desktop computer running 24 hours per day at 12 cents per KW/h is a whopping $262.00 per year!
>>> ---
>>> I think their math is wrong.
>>> The average residential electricity rate in Chandler is 10.85¢/kWh.
>>> I'm thinking a low traffic PHP web server running on an old Dell with a 400 watt power supply is not using but maybe 100 watts on average.  I've read that the computer should use no more than half the power supply capacity.  Is this correct?
>>> If my home web server is using 100 watts an hour that mean 100 watts * 30 days * 24 hours or 72K watts.
>>> I'm thinking 72 * .1085 = $7.81 a month.
>>> Any thoughts are much appreciated.
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