Our Linux Benchmarking Power Use Still Around 3,000 kWh A Month

[duby229]

No, you wouldn't. You'd end up with massive fines for running a "business" in an area zoned for strictly residential use.

Thankfully it doesn't work like that in the US. Area's are zoned, but most business (not all) can be legally run out of a household. Zoning is useful for people that want a store front or need a factory. That way those places will exist for them.

Countries like Russia refuse to accept this fact, but most business is run out of households. The largest number of employers are small businesses that don't have commercial properties. Entrepreneurship is pretty hard most places in the world because policies are made that make it difficult.

[Michael]

Thankfully it doesn't work like that in the US. Area's are zoned, but most business (not all) can be legally run out of a household. Zoning is useful for people that want a store front or need a factory. That way those places will exist for them.

Countries like Russia refuse to accept this fact, but most business is run out of households. The largest number of employers are small businesses that don't have commercial properties.

Yep.

Oh hey, I'm also Russian thanks to my wife for those that didn't know...

[brauliobo]

hey michael, you might want to donate old and obsolete hardware, you don't need to keep testing them all

[duby229]

Yep.

Oh hey, I'm also Russian thanks to my wife for those that didn't know...

I wasn't meaning to pick on Russians, they aren't the only ones. Greece is another example. They have huge unemployment and refuse to let people do their own business.

[wujj123456]

OK, crap. Last time auto renewal charged my money but I didn't get premium on the website. So I cancelled it while Michael manually extend my membership. Looks like I forgot to renew this year. Just fixed that and hopefully next year the auto-renewal works. Though I don't really login these days (clear cookie automatically after closing browser), I just refuse to not use Adblock.

[wujj123456]

hey michael, you might want to donate old and obsolete hardware, you don't need to keep testing them all

Agree, but I think it's better to keep one HW per generation for last few generations. Many folks don't really upgrade for years, especially if they are not really into latest games. That doesn't mean no one needs to catch it when things break...

[vortex]

Anyway to install solar? You would never have to sell energy back to the electric company.

Where is the location of this server farm anyway?
Are the electrical rates tiered--if so, have the servers all run at the same time, instead of whenever.

Solar isn't an option in LOTS of places, well, I mean, you can throw up panels, but that don't mean you will get the required amount of sun to get anything back.
Same goes with wind.

In some states, it would be around $250 for 3,000kWh.

[Soul_keeper]

The idea of solar first came to mind for me also.
There are companies that rent a complete solar install, i'd suggest getting quotes on that.
Someone I know just had that done and they installed like 42 panels along with everything else. I'd imagine the rental fee would be a good deal less than the savings to make it worthwhile.

[Ardje]

Michael: never mind the naggers. I like to know it. To know power usage is essential. Especially on small systems. But also your complete works.
I do 6+MWh a year and I already have solar panels. Price is about 0.215 EUR/kWh, of which 0.058 is actual energy price, and > 0.12 EUR is tax.
Yes, electrical energy is taxed much higher in the Netherlands than car fuel (benzine), and despite that, electric cars are cheaper to drive.
Digressing...
Anyway: I am now looking at a power meter for my desktop that went from 15W peak usage to 6W peak with changing some small settings.

[milkylainen]

Do you have control over power in data?
PF over the entire house/lab? How much is active Power?
It would be interesting to see.
Are you paying for Apparent power or Active power? As far as I understand, different countries / power companies have different rules.
Do you really need to run the datacenter 24h? I know this sounds like a stupid question but sometimes you can do off-hour power grid consumption at 50% the cost or more.
Scheduling batches at a 24/7 node and powering up work nodes at night to do all batch jobs sequentially, pushing 0 idle time.
Of course results would be delayed until next day and you would have to do more careful planning, but then again, saving quite a few bucks on a shoestring budget might be the only real option?