Electricity Cost in california, how much....

[SnoopCat]

wats the estimate of the cost to leave an average computer on for 24hrs. (monitor, printer, speakers,etc off), just the 250watt/300watt computer in southern california. just a rough estimate please.

 

[SnoopCat]

bumps

 

[Erasmus-X]

This is pretty easy to figure out yourself. Electric companies usually charge for power usage in kilowatt-hours (kWh). You just need to find out how much you are being charged per kWh (this should be printed on your bill).

Then you need to find out how much your power your computer is consuming on average with all connnected components. This is the trivial part, because if you use power management of any kind, certain components can deactivate themselves to idle to conserve energy. Remember that a 300W power supply isn't going to always be pushing 300W unless you have it maxed out. You can get a rough estimate of how much power your system consumes by adding up the rated power usage of each individual component. Then you can proceed to figure out what it costs per unit of time by working out something similar to this:

(added power consumption of all connected components when NOT idle, in watts) * (1 kW/1000 W) * (price per kWh) * (time in hours) = COST PER HOUR OF USAGE

I'm pretty sure my math is right, but anyone is entitled to correct me if I am wrong.

 

[Bloodybrain]

That would be

(Cost)=(Power in kW)*(Time in hours)*(Price per kWh)

Just do the math for the units: (kW*h)*($/kW*h)=$

 

[Erasmus-X]

Yeah, well the simpler calculation will also work, but it can vary a lot, depending on what you do. That's why it's a lot more accurate to run a theoretical and actual average to do the calculation.

Oh well; whatever works

 

[Dulanic]

Hell here in IL I think the heat generated off my PC saves more in gas then we spend on electricity Gas prices are insane here in IL... last year 1 months bill was $100 in winter... this year its $400.

 

[josphstalinator]

the current rate is somewhere between 5-7cents/kwh. the rate consumers pay is fixed, however the rate the utilities pay isnt. for a while there the utilities were paying 30c/kwh but could only sell it at 6c!