S@H electricity costs

[Howard L Ritter, Jr]

Title: S@H electricity costs

Food for thought indeed--

At the US average of $0.08/kWh, this is approximately $50,000 worth of electricity daily, or nearly $20M annually.

For the 680,000 WUs done in the last 24h, the cost would then be approx $0.07/WU, which is consistent with the approximations that each WU requires on average 14hr of CPU time and that the use of approx 1/14th of a kW of power is required by each operating computer, thus approx 1 kWh of energy per WU.

Since my average time/WU since joining S@H about 2.5y ago is very close to the current overall S@H average, and I have nearly 2500 WUs completed, and I do leave my several computers on 24/7 to run S@H, this means I've spent nearly $200 on electricity alone on the hunt for E.T.!

I'm going to turn off all those slow machines at home and just continue with my new 2GHz P4, which under SetiQueue runs a WU in 3.5h and is therefore four times as cost-effective as the rest of my flock together!

--howard



Just a bit different perspective:  seti@home consumed 1063.5 years of computer time during the last 24 hours only. If each comp takes 70 watts on average (my own estimate....not all comps have monitor on all the time), you need about 653 MWh every day, thus 27MW of constant electrical output is necessary to feed this project. We all are paying this fun. Jan     Nick Elliott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

<<  
This is the crux of the project if you want long term success. I have run a
max of 24 CPU's on my home network all 24/7. SETI is a long slog and so if
you want to achieve a decent amount of units against the coporate boys
accept no substitute. I now run 12 CPU's and all are on 24/7/365, not always
SETI though as they are all gaming rigs also . They are all dual CPU so they
consume a little more power than most machines, however I've never noticed
an excessive electricity bill even when I maxed out at 24 CPU's for 8 months
or so (all monitors powered off always).

The only point I would make would be if we were to make contact due to SETI
we could solve the world energy crisis with new tech we discover from them.
Unlikely I know!!. However I hardly think that a "few" machines running SETI
are causing pollution to a large enough degree to worry about ! even though
fossil fuels are burnt to power our machines.

You can work out how much power your machine uses easily and its not much.
I'm sure someone has some links to more info. This has been done to death on
many of the Team SETI forums.

Nick