DreamOn Technical Blog

How expensive is it to run a server at home (electricity)?

Ever asked yourself the question how much it will cost to run a server @ home ?
Well I did, I wanted to now how much exactly it costs on electricity to run my server @ home.

First of all you need to know how much energy your server consumes. I have a HP DL380 with the buildin power management in the ilo so I can readout how much the server consumes. If you don’t have that, maybe you have your server hooked to a ups that can readout the power consumption. If you don’t have that, there are also devices available to measure power consumption for a device (energy meters).

I took a readout of all the 3 devices: the energy meter, the ilo power manager and my UPS.
My readings told me that my server is using about 300 Watt this means 0.3kW (thank you captain obvious).
If this system is online for one hour, that means it uses 0.3 kWh’s (kilowatt hour) of electricity.

Now before I go on I need to explain how I get billed for my electricity and how much.
My electricity company works with day, night and weekend rates. This means that between 21PM and 06AM we have night rate, obviously between 06AM and 21PM it’s day rate. In the weekend day and night are at the same rate as night rate in the week. This means that for a whole week I have 75 hours calculated on day rate and 93 hours calculated on night rate.

The rates that where billed to me on my last bill were:

  • Day rate @: 0.0924 €/kWh
  • Night rate @:  0.0571 €/kWh
Now that we have all the variables we can start calculating.

To run the system for one daytime hour:
0.0924 €/kWh * 0.3 kWh = 0.0277 €
To run the system for one nighttime hour:
0.0571 €/kWh * 0.3 kWh = 0.0171 €
I’m not running my server for an hour, but 24/7/365
Remember the calculated day rate hours (75) and night rate hours (93) for a week ?
Well we’ll be needing them now.
To run the system for 1 workday:
0.0924 €/kWh * 0.3 kWh * 15 = 0.416 €
0.0571 €/kWh * 0.3 kWh * 9 = 0.154 €
Total: 0.416 + 0.154 = 0.57 €/workday
To run the system for one week with day, night and weekend rates:
0.0924 €/kWh * 0.3 kWh * 75 = 2.079 €
0.0571 €/kWh * 0.3 kWh * 93 = 1.593 €
Total: 2.079 + 1.593 = 3.672 €/week
To run the system for a whole year:
(3.672 €/week * 52 weeks) +  (0.57 €/workday) = 191.514 €/year
You can also use these calculation for other devices that run in you’re home or office.

So in conclusion to run my HP DL380 G5 for 24/7/365 I will have an electricity bill for roughly 192 €/year.

2 Comments

  1. Stijn Van De Voorde

    😯 192 EUR is nog veel geld hé. Bedankt voor de info.

  2. DreamOn

    NP 😛

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