Periodically I wonder whether to spend money on the home PC or to think about paying for permanent ``cloud’’ services, whether that’s a VPS or other hosted services. It’s a microcosm of the corporate “cloud vs on-premises” debate. Lacking any real data I’d failed to make any commitment either way.
So I put out the call at work, asking to borrow an inline power meter, and a day or two later came home with two of them! Both apparently the same moulding and case, one with an Arlec label and one unlabelled. Both seemed to give the same readings on a five minute test so I plugged one in and left it there for a fortnight1.
Real time power consumption seemed to be around 100W, which very conveniently is 2.4kWHr/day. Current electricity costs are $0.25/kWhr, so that’s around 60c/day, $4.20 a week, or $16 a month.
| on | off | off - on |
|---|---|---|
| 351.86666 |
Checking with the numbers logged by Andrew’s power meter:
Power meter says:
| total power(kWhr) | on time(hr) | $/day |
|---|---|---|
| 26.4 | 351.48 | $0.45 |
So “somewhere between $0.45 and $0.60 a day”
Footnotes
1 That’s 14 days for the Americans, who are apparently unfamiliar with the English term “fortnight”
