Sorry for the potato quality.
When I posted my feeling-pleased-about-myself post about the Dell's RAM, I got a lot of static on Reddit for buying such a power-hungry computer. I didn't think it could be that much, but nothing settles arguments like data.
So, the homelab electricity usage. This Kill-A-Watt currently feeds my Dell 1950, the Bell internet gear, a small switch, a POE injector feeding a Ubiquiti access point, and a Sunfire X2200. The Dell is the lion's share of this load.
The potatoes show you that this has consumed 206 kWh in 478 hours.
The math shows us that works out to 0.43 kWh/h, or an average load of 0.43 kW. That works out to 10.34 kWh per day, which at $0.10 per kWh works out to
I don't have the exact numbers, but the Sunfire draw is a fraction of the Dell's. My current plan is to send the Dell to the colo facility where power is wrapped up in the hosting, and do my "homelab"-ing there across the internet, and use the Sunfire as the firewall at the house. That requires a lot of juggling though since the current firewall is a VM inside the Dell.
In conclusion: the power draw on these PowerConnect 1950s is quite high. For me, $1/day isn't a huge amount of money, but it does mean I spend per year in electricity what I paid for the computer in the first place. This is something important to consider when looking for homelab equipment.
