Electrical costs to run a home web server

[Eric Oyen]

Well, yes and no.
During the “dry months” it can be a little over efficient. During the 110 degree days with less than 5% humidity, it can maintain the place at 80-85 degrees. During the monsoon (especially this last week), it can be miserable, although cooler than outside. It was over 90 in the house today and almost as muggy as any coastal city. With that much moister in here, things tend to get sticky and mildew can build up rapidly. So, during the cool of the night (if you call 90 outside cool), we put it on vent and dry out the house a bit.

And yeah, all this moister can be hell on computer equipment. Contacts tend to corrode, dust starts to become more conductive, etc. Now, if I had an ammonia chiller unit here with the condenser coil being pre-cooled by the evaporations cooler, we could be dry as a bone in here and 80 degrees regardless of outside temp. The reason I specify an ammonia chiller, it doesn’t require a compressor to operate (just a low value thermal exciter to get the ball rolling) Sure, running an extra fan inside to blow air across the coil might take a few extra pennies, but the chill during the heat would be more than worth it.

-Eric
From the Central Offices of the Technomage Guild, HVAC Dept.


> 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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