Thanks for putting this together – power is the hidden cost we rarely factor in when buying electronics. I’ve put together a calculator here: http://tinyurl.com/2jb45v in case you want to plug in numbers on your own.
harveyswik and David: Electricity is billed by the kWh, not kWpH (nor kW/h for that matter). It is spelled kilowatts-hours and not kilowatts per hour. It is a measure of energy, calculated simply by: number of kilowatts used X number of hours they were used for.
Hence,
10W (aka 0.01 kW) light bulb X 2 hours = 0.02 kWh and
20W (aka 0.02 kW) light bulb X 1 hour = 0.02 kWh, as one would expect.
Thanks Lewis, my mistake – an updated calculator is here. http://tinyurl.com/2xfmhg
good tips, that can add up in the long run - just 5 years and you’ve wasted $500 - enough to buy your own solar generator.
i wrote this blog entry more than a year ago, but it has some decent info on power consumption.
http://www.energynucleus.com
Why dont you research the matter properly before spouting pseudo science. I run 12 computers and a photocopier, which are all on 24/7. Unlike you I use a power meter to see what it costs. The average power consumption is 540 watts.
Wow, I never really thought about this before. All the more reason why to buy power efficient devices and manage your power better.
Here are some additional tips.
put your dvd writer and extra hard drives in 5.25" inch hard drive enclosures. When you are not using them, turn them off.
Hibernate your computer when it’s not in use. This allows you to resume exactly were you left off the next time your pc boots up.
— for an added bonus, use one of the applications out there that allow for suspending/hibernating your computer at an exact time each day. (before you go to bed or after you have left for work.) You can also set these applicatons to turn on automatically at a certain time so that you don’t that you computer can be on and ready for you to log in at a certain time (in the morning when you wake up/10 minutes before you arrive home from work each day).
Also,… keep in mind that the average computer uses close to 20 watts even when the computer IS NOT ON! I recently verified this with a device called kill-a-watt that displayes these readings.
My current setup is to use a program to hibernate my computer after I have left for work,… then, I have a intermec timer to shut the power off of the pc. (so that it’s not still leaching 20 watts). The intermec timer goes on 30 minutes before I arrive home). I also have my bios to “power on if power loss”.
Of course, it is nice to have my torrents leaching when I’m not home, so I have a low wattage mini-itx computer that runs azurieus with the speed scheduler plugin set to download only when no one is in the hosue, or everyone is sleeping.
I hope this helps!
Another thing you will notice when looking at your power bill is that you heating costs (I use gas) costs a lot more than any of my electronic devices.
Purchase a thermostat for your central heating system and set it to turn off when no one is in the house. You can turn it off at night and make use of space heaters in the sleeping locations of the house if you need or purcahse heating blankets.
My general rule of thumb is to not use the central heating unless there is 2 or more people in the house. If just 1 person is in the house, I encourage them to setup space heaters in the room they are in that have a built in thermostat to turn off when at a certain temp.
You will find that you mon-fri times of departure and arrival are about the same for everyone in the house. When you know this schedule, you can use it to turn off device/central heating at certain times of the day.
good luck!
Tell that 2 my mom
You had some great suggestions but I’m not that computer literate so when you said let yor computer sleep, how would I do that?
14.28 cents/kWh ??
That’s not expensive. I pay 36.97 cents/kWh
Speaking of saving power by using a laptop… When at home, I let my laptop battery drain to 10% or so, then power it up at work (or a friend’s house). 
Buy a smaller refrigerator next time and you won’t have to worry about leaving your computer on. You may also be reducing your natural gas heating bill from the waste heat.
Of course, the State of California is going to solve all of our problems by disallowing the sale of incandescent light bulbs starting in 2012. That will make it even cheaper to leave our computers on. Unless, of course, they outlaw leaving your computer on.
Those of you thinking that you’d lose control of your server when moving it to a hosting provider in the effort to cut power costs might think about getting a virtual server instead. You’ll get full root access to your server on a high-bandwidth link. Costs can be in line with shared hosting.
Google “cheap virtual server” to see what’s there. I am not affiliated with any of the vendors. But I can vouch for the enormous flexibility that virtualization provides.
I recently installed a little app called localcooling.
Check www.localcooling.com. It lets you set all kinds of powersaving stuff without knowing how, and it can tell you how much energy or money or trees you saved nice app.
To Clive:
You should really consider buying a better watt-meter.
Have a look at this sweet free application… lets you minimize consumption - showing you how much you saved… really cool idea:
http://domain-hosting-design.com/2007/02/06/local-cooling-site-concept-design/
i leave my pc on 24/7 because i fold. helping find a cure for cancer is worth a few extra bucks a month.
Well that’s why I have been using LAPTOP computers for years as all my servers. Get yourself a good laptop with a low-power CPU, such as AMD Turion, and my servers take typically between 10 and 20 WATTS TOTAL. That translates to $10-$20 PER YEAR here in Florida in electricity.
By the way, if your electricity cost is some $0.11/KWH, I use the rule of thumb that everything that is on all the time costs as much per year as consumes in Watts. So a typical desktop computer with 200Watts, will cost $200/year.