I just did a power consumption calculation and found that running SETI@Home on my desktop computer 24/7 is costing me $50 - $75 per month. I use it for other tasks perhaps five hours per day. That's a lot more energy than I thought it would be using.

Does anyone have any thoughts on how environmentally responsible it is to keep computers on all day just to run SETI? Also, I live in California's Central Valley where it gets quite hot in the summer, and air conditioners already stress the power system. And of course we had the energy crisis a few years ago.

I am thinking of trying to set up a solar power system to allow my computer to run off the grid. Has anyone done this? Any suggestions on how to go about it?

Thanks

Wow, your electric rates must be awfully high! Here in Colorado my total electic bill for last month including Air Conditioning was 100.08 tax included. That's for 1178 Kilowatt hours. Quick math shows that our cost per kwh is about $0.085. I'm just guessing that my PC (an Athlon 2400+ not the most power efficient) takes around 250 watts at most to run. (That's just the PC, not the monitor or any other accessories which I turn off when I'm away from the computer.) That's .25 kw. There are 720 hours in a 30 day month, so it takes 180 kwh to run the PC for a month. $0.085 x 180 kwh = $15.30 per month. Of course that doesn't factor in the addtional cooling that the house needs because of the PC heat.

Update: I just measured the current draw with a clamp type amprobe, and was surprised at how little the PC actually draws. At %100 CPU usage the unit draws 1.2 amps (144 watts at 120 Volts). That's 103.68 kwh for a month at a cost of $8.81. With the CPU at no load and CPUIdle Pro running the current load drops to 0.85 amps (102 watts at 120 volts). So you could make the case that Seti is adding an extra 42 watts to the load. That's 30.24 kwh per month at a cost of $2.57 per month.

I run various other jobs on my PC, so it would be on 24/7 even without Seti, although using %100 of the CPU time does raise the power usage as you can see.

Still, you raise a valid point about environmental issues. If you are looking for the most efficient way to do it, most notebook systems are more efficent than desktop systems and can be run on DC, which could be supplied by a battery and solar panel system as you suggested.

I live in the San Diego area. I have no AC, one modern fridge/freezer and the monthly power bill is hovering around $400. I have been considering a grid-tie solar system for a few years now; but the tile roof just makes me loose enthusiasm.

I also have a house in Baja that is a good distance from a power line. The house in Baja I am upgrading from a 2000w 12v solar system to a 3600w 48v system. To give you an idea of what your in store for, I am adding 36 90w solar panels $13,000; 3600w 48v inverter $2,000; 60a MPPT charge controller $600; 32 6v Golf Car batteries $1,200; lots of 0/1 and 2ga wire, circuit breakers and other misc. items $1,500. Now, the 3600w inverter will put out about 30a AC @ 120v, the 36 90w panels w/ my old panels will be about 3600w also, that means with 100% efficiency I could do 30a ac. The problem is that you never get 100% efficiency, and the panels only put out for about 4-5hrs/day. As you can probably guess, this system would struggle with a small window AC, running an air conditioner off an off grid solar system is extremely expensive and unpractical.

What I would suggest is looking into a grid-tie system. A grid-tie system would use solar panels and an inverter to dump electricity directly into the grid, spinning your electric meter backwards. Fortunately, California has some nice rebates of up to 50% for installing a solar system. Just get as many solar panels as you can afford and have room for, get a inverter that can handle the total wattage of your panels and think of the investment as paying your power bill, or a portion of it 10 years in advance.

Also, before taking the equipment to Baja, I setup 6 panels with some old batteries and an inverter. The 6 panels were easily able to power my gaming computer while the sun was out. My gaming computer is a water-cooled 3.0P4 @ 3.5ghz, 1gig ram, 3 HDDs, 2 optical drives, FX5900u @500/900 and lots of lights, so it draws quite a bit of current. And for some more wattage info, my UPS shows about 960w output with 3 dual and 2 single processor systems running, one with 12 hard drives.

> I just did a power consumption calculation and found that running SETI@Home on
> my desktop computer 24/7 is costing me $50 - $75 per month. I use it for other
> tasks perhaps five hours per day. That's a lot more energy than I thought it
> would be using.
>
> Does anyone have any thoughts on how envoronmentally responsible it is to keep
> computers on all day just to run SETI? Also, I live in California's Central
> Valley where it gets quite hot in the summer, and air conditioners already
> stress the power system. And of course we had the energy crisis a few years
> ago.
>
> I am thinking of trying to set up a solar power system to allow my computer to
> run off the grid. Has anyone done this? Any suggestions on how to go about
> it?
>
> Thanks
> Seti@h Berkeley's Staff Friends Club ©[/b]

> I live in the San Diego area. I have no AC, one modern fridge/freezer and the
> monthly power bill is hovering around $400. I have been considering a grid-tie
> solar system for a few years now; but the tile roof just makes me loose
> enthusiasm.

WTF?!? OMG! Tell me you have 1000-watt spotlights throughout your house/apt./whatever.

I nearly flipped when I saw the elec bill for last month cause the AC (one, small) was on most of the time ($150 in NYC).

And the guy running Enron wants 25 million for getting them out of bankruptcy? You guys in CA need to get your money back from them............



Edit: that or somebody in your building is running a tap on your line (that's happened to me).

At $400 a month you could build a new roof to take it.

You sure the decimal poiint is in the right place :)

Zy

There are a lot of things attributing to the ~$400 electric bill. I use enough electricity that I pay a higher rate than if I used the allotted amount. I also have a few items that I figure are sucking amps. Ie. pool, jacuzzi, 14 computers, lots of fans, battery charger on camper and boat, 2,450 watt surround system. I doubt that someone has taped the electricity, there is at least 20 ft of cement between the electric box and the neighbors house.

There's a subtle clue as to the problem - a tad different to the original power consumer of one fridge freezer ......

Buy shares in the local Utility - with them bills you gotta be in with a fighting chance of election to the Board :)

Zy

In all due respect I don't agree with you and your calculations
If your puter is eating that much power it must be powered by it's own nuke.

Make sure you turn off your monitor when not in use even with a screen saver
it uses a lot of juice. Upgrade your power supply is a good choice also.


This is off the top of my head and not accurate but close enough that
I think you have some type of electrical problem....

Rating in watts 300
Hours per day 24
Hours per Year 8760
Kilowatts per Year 2628
Est. cost per Kilowatt $0.07
Cost per Year $184.00
Cost per month $15.00

I just did a power consumption calculation and found that running SETI@Home on my desktop computer 24/7 is costing me $50 - $75 per month
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Thanks to everyone who replied to my post. It has been quite interesting to read your replies.

Actually, I seem to have made some worst case assumptions in my original calculation.

My computer's power supply can deliver 450 watts, so that was the figure I used. I realize that the actual consumption and the maximum can be quite different. Lets assume that my computer is actually using 300 watts / hour per mrvideo's suggestion.

The highest tiered rate for elictricity in my area is ~$0.21 / kwh. The actual rate I was charged last month, however, was $0.13321 / kwh .

So my original calculation was:

((.450 kw * 24 hours ) * 30 days ) = 324 kw / month
324 kw * $0.21 = $68.04 / month

A more realistic calculation would be:

((.300 kw * 24 hours) * 30 days = 216 kw / month
216 kw * $0.13321 = $28.77/ month

This is much less than my original estimate, but still significantly higher than the $15.00 that mrvideo calculated, due to the higher cost of electricity in my area.

To get back to my original question, does anyone have any thoughts on how environmentally responsible it is to keep computers on all day just to run SETI? Whatever the cost to the consumer of the electricity - and in some areas that cost is the result of government subsidies or cost increase regulations - the electricity has to come from somewhere, and most of the electricity in the U.S. comes from burning fossel fuels (coal, natural gas, oil, etc.) or nuclear. The increase in power demand caused by SETI users is probably quite small - almost trivial - compared the total electricity used (and wasted), but it is not zero, so running SETI presumably has some impact on the environment. Any thoughts on whether it is worth it? What about for other BOINC projects like ClimatePrediction or Predictor@Home?

You should get an meter to check your equipment and see what it actually draws under use....a 400 watt power supply doesn't draw 400 watts 100% of the time.



This link has a nice piece of equipment in it he uses to check actual power draw...you should get something similar and check what your equipment is actually using under load. For around $100 or so if your really worried about stuff like this it could be a good long term investment...be nice when you go shopping and you could probably take it with you and try out floor models of electronic stuff and pick out the model that draws the least actual current in full use and standby modes. You can probably find a place local to you and find/buy something similar.

http://www.pmb.co.nz/power_usage.htm

"Does anyone have any thoughts on how environmentally responsible
it is to keep computers on all day just to run
SETI?"

I think the question is a good one;

I feel it is a good investment to run my Puter 24/7
I feel that to shut down and restart the machine constantly, actually puts more stress on the components and waste energy.

I also feel I have made a small commitment to science and research. It's nice to search for E.T. and at the same time help someone like ROM and his group. Who knows what Rom may come up with in the future? So I am not just keeping
my computer on to run SETI I am contributing to science. Not waste..

Should we go to mars? Probably not, but the technologies developed to get there helps mankind.


Tim and Indy the Golden Wonder Dog



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> To get back to my original question, does anyone have any thoughts on how
> environmentally responsible it is to keep computers on all day just to run
> SETI?

CPDN has the best sum up I've seen. Read it here.

Work is work is work...



The whole point of BOINC or any other distributed project is to do work...you need to consume energy to do that.


Makes no difference if you leave your computer on for 6 hours a day or 365/24.


As long as there is WORK...there is going to be energy consumed. The only real question is what happens when there is NO REAL WORK(such as the old seti with the endless recycling of WU's to keep crunchers happy). Boinc solves this rather gracefully by having 2 or 3 WU's in agreement and then that WU is finished and never needs be crunched again...with BOINC as long as the WU's keep coming you know your doing usefull work.


click the sig for info on a good cross project BOINC team.

I'm completely amazed by what you guys out in California pay for electricity. I live in Pennsylvania and just bought a new house, now granted I haven't used the AC this Summer, but in the 6 months we've lived there the highest we've had to pay was $18.00 for the month. And I was kicking myself for using an expensive provider.

Why not just break it down to it's most basic part. If you can't afford it, don't do it. :-)

The climate BOINCers said if the monitor is off a computer averages about as much electricity as a 60 watt light bulb.

> The climate BOINCers said if the monitor is off a computer averages about as
> much electricity as a 60 watt light bulb.
>
>

That seems quite low to me. I wonder what their source is?

My electric bill is £20 a month.Leave my pc on all the time.Monitor switches off after 2 mins.My heating is by gas.Dont have air-con.I live in the Uk(cold weather ;-( )
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