I have to stop crunching

Well, I have 4 rigs crunching now and last month's power bill was over 540Kwh- before that it was 120Kwh. SETI is costing me too much- I am afraid I have to stop it.

Are you sure it's not your cooling costs going up? I live in the South, and during the summer my power bill increases about $300 a month just for AC use. In winter with the same computers running 24/7 it's only $90 a month. About a year ago I measured the power my computers are using, and it's about like having a light bulb on all the time for each one - not that much.

I have 4 rigs crunching and wasn't able to even notice a difference in my bill.

This discussion popped up last year about this time too, I think....

I don't get a huge jump in my electric bill with 3 XPs, two TBirds and a P3 duallie running 24/7; it is a bit higher, but not a huge difference.

Running one ac unit is a bit less- two a bit more (my ac units are OLD!)

If you must, you must though!
But i do have a suggestion: if you can't find anything else that might have increased the power usage, shut the rigs down for 1 billing cycle, but try and keep all other power usage the same. See how much of a difference.

Perfect cruncher config: PSU, cpu, ram, HSF, 4 or 8 mb agp video, NIC(or modem) and a hard drive.
No unnecessary components to draw power that isn't needed.

I agree that it isn't your computers. A computer is equivilant to running a lightbulb 24/7. Try thinking about what changes you made around the house from the powerbills.

I have no cooling eqipment (and I am quite unhappy about it, my room temp i susually around 30C now). The only difference between last month and this month is the SETI. I see absoultely nothing else that could be draining the power (and no, I do not think that a computer is draining as much power as a lightbulb -- a 400 watt PSU, even when not utilized fully, drains quite a bit of power)

Sorry to see you go.. Maybe we'll see you back again.?
I do have to agree with the others, computers dont eat up that much.. I run a min of 8 comps in my apartment at any given time,untill recently my total electric usage in a month wasnt going over 400Kwh thats including everything in the apartment.. without the computers it runs about 275-325. But now with the new AC that 400 has about doubled..

A "normal" computer will note user a whole lot of power. Before you start killing your machines that are running seti, I'd seriously look into other factors.

1) make sure you turn your monitor off. don't depend on it to blank the screen. Monitors use a lot of juice

2) make sure your TV is off when you aren't watching, they use a good bit of juice too I believe

3)it's warmer, just because you don't have A/C, it doesn't mean that you don't have more power is going into cooling. Your fridge and freezer probably have a higher ambiant temperature to deal with, and if they arn't efficient to begin with, then they will probably need to run more ofen to start, and the ambiant temperature causes them to need to run longer. One suggestion is to clean the dust off the piping at the back of the fridge. That will help.

4) what about fans? I know they don't use much power compared to the above, but they will still add up...

If all of those suggestions are already in effect (monitors and TV off, and fridge and freezer are not running excessivly) then I'd suggest you power down half your rigs to start. If that changes your bill much.

I have on average 4 machines running, and they don't compare at all to things like water heaters, A/C units, refrigeration unites, monitors and TVs.

For me running my computers 24/7 doesn't make much difference in my power bill, but then I will often spend several hours working with an arc welder, and run motors on 220 lines... Still I don't like to spend more than I half to, and I've found that for a person needs to be tight with their money, there are probably other places that they can save the money...

I don't watch TV and all but one of my monitors are LCD, and they are off when I am not using the mashine.
The fridge may have to use a bit more power, you are right about that, but not to the extent of more than trippling the power usage (besides, I turned it doen to the lowest setting).
The only fans that I have are in my PC, they are not temperature-regulated and they are exactly the same ones I have been using for a while so I do not see how they may affect power usage.

Oh, there's always the possibility that Con Edison is screwing with us (the meter we have is not human-readable so I wouldn't know)

This is a really complicated issue. Most people really don't see that much increase in their power (meaning lots of machines might double it but thats about it). I run 10 machines at home full time and they don't quite double my bill. It will run $40 to $50 without them and stays under $100 with them. For me this is acceptable as my puters provide a lot of entertainment for my wife and I and also help with work for both of us.

You two good suggestions. Turn half off for a month and see what happens or turnt hem all off for a full month and see. Participating in SETI is a great way to help science and be active but its not meant to take food off the table. :/

Good luck.

Cy

Yes, it is very unfortunate that I have to quit. I might still be running it on a spare duron 700 though.

I'd be willing to bet your power company is changing rates on you. Plenty of them pull that during the summer months when they have to buy extra juice from other companies to meet demand. As far as computers go, I measured mine with a Fluke clamp on meter about a year ago. I found that a basic computer with one hard drive, one cdrom, etc was pulling about 175 watts under full load - so for a simple computer it really is about the same as 150 watt light.

TC said:

I'd be willing to bet your power company is changing rates on you. Plenty of them pull that during the summer months when they have to buy extra juice from other companies to meet demand. As far as computers go, I measured mine with a Fluke clamp on meter about a year ago. I found that a basic computer with one hard drive, one cdrom, etc was pulling about 175 watts under full load - so for a simple computer it really is about the same as 150 watt light.

Click to expand...

Well, (175Wattsx24x31)/1000=130KWh

No?

parkan said:

Well, (175Wattsx24x31)/1000=130KWh

No?

Click to expand...

LOL nope not that bad. If you figured power consumption like that I would have been using a TON more electricity than my records show. Look at the chart below. In March when my power consumption was at its lowest I was running 15 computers 24/7 at my home. If you figured power consumption like that my computers alone would be using more than all of that. I think it's just the rates varying in your area. If I can run 15 computers 24/7 and still have a power bill under $120...well you get the idea. Also look at my bill from June 2001, versus this month. Last June I had 3 computers running 24/7, and now I have 9, but my bill is only $9 more = less than $1 per month per PC. But whatever the case do what you need to. We'll be here when you're able to start crunching again

TC said:

LOL nope not that bad. If you figured power consumption like that I would have been using a TON more electricity than my records show. Look at the chart below. In March when my power consumption was at its lowest I was running 15 computers 24/7 at my home. If you figured power consumption like that my computers alone would be using more than all of that. I think it's just the rates varying in your area. If I can run 15 computers 24/7 and still have a power bill under $120...well you get the idea. But whatever the case do what you need to. We'll be here when you're able to start crunching again

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Yeah, of course that is only theoretical, but with the addition of the fridge, monitors, etc it will get the power consumption to that 540Kwh level.

I don't even see how your power consumption could be that low. I mean a fridge and a few light bulbs would use more than that in a month I would think, but I'm no expert. I guess you live in an apartment? I'm trying to remember what I paid when I last lived in an apartment. It was at least $200 a month in the summer, and I only had 1 computer running 24/7 back then. We're in a house now obviously, and it's about 2900 sq ft. I'm surprised my power bill is not 3 times what it was in an apartment. Cooling costs are hell when it's 95-100 every day with humidity in the 70-90% range.

Wow TC your bills in the summer doubled.. Must be all that passive cooling.

TC said:

I don't even see how your power consumption could be that low. I mean a fridge and a few light bulbs would use more than that in a month I would think, but I'm no expert. I guess you live in an apartment? I'm trying to remember what I paid when I last lived in an apartment. It was at least $200 a month in the summer, and I only had 1 computer running 24/7 back then. We're in a house now obviously, and it's about 2900 sq ft. I'm surprised my power bill is not 3 times what it was in an apartment. Cooling costs are hell when it's 95-100 every day with humidity in the 70-90% range.

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Yes, I do indeed live in an apartment ( a rather small one, unfortunately). I also use all means to save power (i.e. energystar compliant applianced, LCD monitors, very short monitor sleep timeouts, energy-saving lightbulbs etc), that's how my usual power bill stays under 180Kwh and under $100.

That's what I do here. I only have two monitors - both of which are LCD. All of my computers use ram drives for seti so the hard drives can power down. We replaced all of our regular light bulbs with the fluorescent kind - very expensive up front, but I know it's saving on the power bill. Our appliances are pretty good since the house is just 3 years old. The only thing I can't do much about is the cooling costs. We have decent ac units, but my wife refuses to set the temp any higher than 72 during the day, so the units run all the time. Last summer I installed power ventilators in the attic, and that helped a little upstairs. This year we finished part of the basement and added a third ac unit, but the basement stays pretty cool without the ac. Summers are just a pain here. As I type this I see the thermometer out on the deck is reading 98.

98 is around 36C, right? Sorry, I still can't work with the american measurment system.