So my KW/h rate has gone from 0.0817 to 0.1315 in the last two years. I went from paying $219 a month for electric to $450+ and I could no longer justify this and needed to take action - this is what I have done.

  • For storage I had 3-R710’s with 6-4tb drives each, I moved to a new to me QNAP with 6 brand new 20tb WD Red drives and moved all of the data to that and unplugged the R710’s.
  • I moved ESXi and Guests from an r630 to a new to me Dell Precision 3650.
  • I moved PFSense from an R410 to a new to me Protectli Vault micro appliance.
  • I retired the Cisco Catalyst 3560-X in favor of a new to me low power HPE 48p selectable POE switch.
  • I put my backup host (Dell Optiplex with a 4th gen i5) running Veeam on a smart switch. I have a script that shuts the computer down after the backups complete and then an hour later the smart switch powers off. The smart switch powers on the computer and I have the bios set to power on the computer after a power outage. This happens three times a week.
  • I set a group policy to set the Windows power plan to balanced from high performance for my computer and my GFs computer. This has dropped both of our computers from using 150w+ to 20-30w at idle. Identical computers 11900k/3080ti EVGA FTW3
  • My torrent host is another Dell Optiplex with a 10th gen i5, I have that set to Windows power saver mode and max 45% CPU / min 0%, it uses less than 1w at idle now.
  • I recently install a whole home energy monitor into my main panel and integrated it into HomeAssistant so I can log and monitor. (see imgur picture)
  • On top of all of this I have set my water heater from 145F to 135F, unplugged unused devices in unused rooms too.

I am happy to say my mini production environment is now running stronger and cooler, the ambient air temp in the basement has dropped from 86F to 70F. The best part of this is I just got my latest energy bill. I went from $510 last month to $270 this month! Nothing else has changed other than what I have posted here today.

Check out this screenshot of the energy monitor, with both gaming desktops, both fans, and all the basement lights and TV/AV receiver powered right now, I am only using 600ish watts! Before that I was using over 2.5kw/h
https://imgur.com/a/uqblvyw

​

  • lJakel@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Where do you live? Here in Ohio they raised the rate to 11-12 cents. However, you are allowed to shop for your rate and I pay 4 cents/kwh

    • WhatAGoodDoggy@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Personally I wouldn’t want to virtualize pfSense. It needs to be it’s own piece of hardware so it isn’t affected if you need to take the main server down.

  • CameronDev@programming.devEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    That is an insane power bill even after your cuts. Do you have the option of solar? With your power usage you should pay it off super fast when your bills drop to near zero?

  • phidauex@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Nice work! Studies have shown many times that visibility into ones energy usage is the most helpful tool in reducing energy usage. You can’t adjust effectively if you have to wait a month to see the results, being able to monitor energy live lets you make realtime tweaks to see what works.

    My homelab has been running at about 90W for a long time, but had gotten up to 150W after adding an HPE ML30 and a new switch. I’m now about to retire one host (should have an Optiplex 3060 Micro for sale soon…), combining two POE switches, and hoping to get back down to at least 100W.

  • Fruguy01@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    What’s that HPE switch model?

    I’m running a Cisco 2960X atm and an Aruba 2930F JL258A currently.

    I also have 2 Cisco WS-C3560CX-8PC-S and 3 C1000-8FP-2G-S switches I can swap things out for.

    Waiting for “winter” to get here in the south so I can run some ethernet cable through the attic to a few places and finally mount my network rack on the wall.

  • sintheticgaming@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Damn I feel spoiled I pay 12.4384¢ per kWh where I live.

    Edit: Actually I just check apparently it went up to 14.69¢ per kWh 😂

  • encryptedadmin@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I cant believe paying that much money for electric bill. I use a laptop with broken screen and keyboard for Proxmox even tho I have a poweredge r210ii. Power consumption is around 7 watts with one usb external drive to the laptop. Only have 2 VMs on proxmox.

  • hifidood@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    It’s crazy how cheap power is some places. Paying upwards of $0.42 USD a Kwh here in Southern California.

    • SamSausages@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      and a big part of the reason is taxes and regulations. People with $$ don’t care, but everyone in the bottom 75% really takes a big hit compared to their income.

  • plasmaticD@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    $.08+ /kwh USD here, and I still opted for the lowest powered 24x7 network gear feasible. Once I calculated cost/watt/year, the economics of doing lower power became real even for lower costs like mine.

    Good choices, OP!!!