Shoutbox

I've been running my World community Grid client for 120 days now - and that's the actual time it's been working. So I thought I'd go ahead and caculate a price on this stuff just for fun...

I'm going to share these numbers in case any of you other folks would be interested in knowing how much these CPU donations actully cost on your electric bill.

Note that the end-result is bound to be very individual based on your CPU's power consumption, the number of hours a day your PC is running and the price of electricity in your area.

My scenario:
Computer using a Pentium 4 HT-enabled 3,0 GHz processor
$0.294 USD per kWh with our power company
Computer usually runs about 8 hours a day.
Using a power consumption meter I've established that my entire PC system eats 188 watts when the CPU is idle and 220 with the CPU at 100% - of course this is always the case when running the grid.

So that's an extra 32 watts for 8 hours a day I'm donating to the grid. About the same amount used by 2-3 televisions on standby.

How much money does this translate to?
32 watts / 1000 = 0,032 kW
$0.294 per kWh * 0,032 kW = $0,00941 per hour
8 hours * $0,00941 per hour = $0,07526 a day

Since my computer runs for about 8 hours a day I'll be paying an extra 7.5 cents on my electric bill every day compared to having my computer on but not running the grid. That's roughly $27.50 a year if I'm not mistaken. An amount I certainly don't mind contributing with every year.


Note that I'm not quite donating this amount to the WCG since my computer's CPU wouldn't always be totally idle even if the WCG wasn't running - especially applies to heavy-duty gamers..