UK electric costs for running a homelab rack?
- Thread starter GodAtum
- Start date
150 per month just for your homelab? What are you running?
Our 3 bed house costs averages 65/month (4 quid of that roughly is my lab) with my small lab running:
Edgerouter 6p
Edgeswitch 48
Ryzen 2700 HyperV Server
Drobo B800 SAN (fully populated)
4 Raspberry pi's
2 Poe injectors
OR modem
Hue Bridge
Looking at my ups stats it pulls an average of 190w?
Our 3 bed house costs averages 65/month (4 quid of that roughly is my lab) with my small lab running:
Edgerouter 6p
Edgeswitch 48
Ryzen 2700 HyperV Server
Drobo B800 SAN (fully populated)
4 Raspberry pi's
2 Poe injectors
OR modem
Hue Bridge
Looking at my ups stats it pulls an average of 190w?
Last edited:
Caporegime
If its 24/7 use youd be better changing tariff to Octopus Agile or similar.
Not sure how that helps, it's still 15.288p per kWh?
That would cost about £75 a month based on your numbers. Maybe your another £75 a month for the rest of the stuff in your house?
Caporegime
Octopus agile changes rate hourly based on demand. If you can avoid using much in the peak period (3-6pm) it can be very cheap. Goes down to 3-4p a kWh at low usage times or even negative (paid to use electricity!) a few times a year.
So for an usual use pattern like yours, especially if you can reduce peak usage, you'd be able to save a lot.
So for an usual use pattern like yours, especially if you can reduce peak usage, you'd be able to save a lot.
Last edited:
Soldato
I've stopped using any Enterprise gear for any homelab stuff now due to the costs, I had a bunch of R710s and similar kit and it just chewed through power like a madman. Looking at a few NUCs now, but made do for the moment with the Raspberry Pis as I don't run much in the way of services that have continuous uptime these days. But want to keep some decent kit for NSX/vSAN Labs.
Soldato
I sacked off all my enterprise gear as soon as Ryzen appeared - it's hard to justify the running cost of many old servers when you can get a modern low power (relatively) 12-16 core box going for very little these days.
Soldato
Your rate sounds too high regardless, I pay 13.5p per kwh on electric, and last year was 13p (but a slightly higher standing charge).
You should flip to a better tariff, especially if your usage is high.
Soldato
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It's not really clear whether the £150/month is for the rack or for the entire house including the rack. If it's just the rack then it's pulling over 1kW 24/7 which is ridiculous!
I thought my consumption was high at c.£90/month, and that's because I mainly work from home and the wife only works parttime so is usually also home.
I thought my consumption was high at c.£90/month, and that's because I mainly work from home and the wife only works parttime so is usually also home.
Soldato
It was a while back but I was paying about £800 for the year just for the home lab stuff.
Associate
I reckon it's very roughly £1 per watt per year at the moment for running something 24/7.
Whilst not a full homelab, My Dell r520 is idling at 70W running the CCTV and NAS duty, which i think is acceptable and at the moment not worth spending to change it to a Ryzen setup which would likely idle at 30 to 40 W.
Whilst not a full homelab, My Dell r520 is idling at 70W running the CCTV and NAS duty, which i think is acceptable and at the moment not worth spending to change it to a Ryzen setup which would likely idle at 30 to 40 W.
Soldato
My whole rack is using 240w according to my UPS, that's an R210ii, R710, KVM, switches etc. That's <£50 a month at 13.3p/kwh.
Do you have a cluster of Dell 2950's running or something?! £150 is a lot.
Do you have a cluster of Dell 2950's running or something?! £150 is a lot.