Comment by rahimnathwani
3 years ago
average residential electricity rate is 15.34 cents per kWh
This didn't seem right, as I pay more than double that here in San Francisco. (I calculated $0.35/kWh by dividing the total I paid for electricity generation and delivery, and dividing it by the number of kWh consumed.)
The linked page cites data from over a decade ago (2012).
> This didn't seem right, as I pay more than double that here in San Francisco.
Their data might be a bit outdated but the December 2023 average is $0.168/kwh according to [1].
[1] https://www.bls.gov/regions/midwest/data/averageenergyprices...
OP was talking about California, not the entire US.
The page you linked shows four California cities, each with Dec 2023 rates over $0.27/kWh.
Wow. I guess I won't get mad at my guests for running the heat 24/7 at 5¢ per kWh.
That whole section is BS in general. The server linked isn't going to use 1KW of power ever, not on the worst of days. The only real point that they're making is that "it's loud" which is true, very true, but, it's designed to run in a rack away from humans..
While their solution is more livable for them, the hardware is vastly inferior for actually hosting serious services on, and they don't seem to understand that because they're software guys who're getting away with it.
Given the electricity rates he mentioned, what would you estimate the monthly running cost to be?
Depends on load. Somewhere around $20-40? Assuming idle around 80-120w, and another 100w for the e-waste drives in their pictured listing.
His numbers are probably 8x higher than actual. So maybe $8-15/mo for electricity for one of the old servers, not $100.
It will eat much more than 80W though
https://www.globalenergyinstitute.org/2022-average-us-electr...
Within the state, there's huge variation. The average is around 25 cents. E.g. if you live in Santa Clara, you pay 16.6 cents per kilowatt hour to Silicon Valley Power, while all surrounding cities pay 45 cents-ish.
https://www.siliconvalleypower.com/residents/rates-and-fees
Mine is currently 9.4¢/kWh, no TOU, net metered. PG&E is the problem, not the data.
32 cents / kWh here in NY.
Where in CA roughly is this?
I was responding to what OP said about California rates.
My mistake, sorry. Still seems atrocious to me. It’s not like we have better power generation equipment here in NC.
The average rate is only ~15 cents per kWh because of places like SF that are effectively just scamming the consumers.
Electricity in free markets is more like 5-8 cents per kWh.
Yep electricity prices in CA are set by the gov't. Market rates are typically 10 cents/kWH
Technically the CA government only sets a maximum price, not prices themselves. Power companies can sell at market rate if they want. But that same CA government also allows monopolies, so the price ceiling becomes the floor.